The true, the good, and the beautiful are of God; their opposites are the lack of the good, therefore are evil. We must maintain or recover our awe at the beauty and wonder of the world, the world that was created for us. We are cocreators when we use are talents and creativity to contribute to these. We must find the child in us and be filled with wonder and gratitude. Best to you Gary.
I began writing semi-professionally in 2004. It was a business leadership column for my local paper. I had to learn to write with an economy of words. Later I began to write longer pieces. In 2018, i published my first book. I’ve been writing full time ever sense. The beauty of my experience is to see my own development first hand. It amazes and humbles me. It is analogous to what you write here. Thanks.
Proverbs 20:29 “The glory of young men is their strength: and the beauty of old men is the gray head.” Beauty is wisdom. Thanks for sharing beauty in this crass and vile time in history.
Gary, I agree with what you have written in this substack. I am a retired family nurse practitioner. I have always had to base my care on the “science”. But there were more than a few times I questioned the “science”. I must remember to show gratitude and appreciation for everything my loved ones and I have in our lives. Show more kindness to my fellow man. Live out this life with integrity but keep questioning the narrative which continues to be “off” like a piece of food left too long in the fridge.
The knowledge of good and evil is a human construct. Animals simply follow their programmed instincts that help them survive. Humans have twisted these values into methods that help one group survive more than others. We know this as ideological or religious supremacy.
At the base level, I don't think good and evil exist as separate values. Only in the minds of men does this dualism rear its head, but it becomes very real beyond that level of existence. The people running this show are extremely evil, and yet among their own, they strongly believe that they are delivering us from our own "evil" ways.
The human race became mentally ill a long time ago!
Are you sure this is not just another thing they tell us to shield themselves. After all, I see an awful of evidence that the powers that be are flirting with satanic symbolism, human sacrifice, and paedophilia...
I was just rereading some old notes... mostly covering the eugenics aspect of elite plans which in their minds leads to fusion with machines or genetic enhancement etc. In other words, their age old desire to become as gods themselves. There's a debate going on currently about whether "they" are 1) trying to delete the whole human species from this planet (including themselves) or 2) simply culling the population as if managing a farm or 3) transforming the population into some kind of permanent upgradeable slave units.
Hence the confusion!
The way I see it is that many factions are at work at the top, most of them co-operating for common purposes - money, power etc. Then we have the eugenicists and satanists which I believe all have the same root but branch off into their own little fanciful bubbles of madness. Scientism, transhumanism, genetic modification of all life and so on can be seen as a power trip or as a method to gain control of all "God's creation" so as to destroy it following cues from biblical stories.
I think the dominant faction has always been motivated by lust for money and power. I think it's that simple. They use religion, politics, banking, psychological warfare to maintain their dominance. The other more creepy factions appear to have taken over in recent times. Their influence is seen in the anti-human climate change policies, smart city initiatives, mass jabbing of everything that moves and so on.
The herd will either accept these moves or reject them. For now, I feel optimistic that these policies will be dropped at some point due to popular demand once people wake up a bit more. Some kind of middle ground will emerge.
On the satanic sacrifice and pedophilia... it's always been there in the background. The high priests of these cults still depend on numerology for timing of events. They still have to perform blood sacrifices to the gods and blackmail all their top guys. If their goal is to take over the whole world and hand it on a platter to their imagined master commander, then they've almost achieved that goal. If what they're up to is part of a ritual performance where light eventually banishes the darkness for a thousand years, then they are masterfully playing their roles to create sufficient despair and chaos so that the light will bring relief. Bad cop/good cop routine.
I don't think we can really know what goes on. I certainly don't. But we have the typical Hollywood portrayal of satanic elites and some witness testimony to go on. It's my belief that all of this activity is going on around the world constantly especially on their holy satanic days. That's why I think we need to understand institutionalized psychopathy more. They are obviously drawn to hurting innocents and if possible mass ritual murder in the form of war. What I don't know is if the religious/mythological/symbolic aspect of it is just fancy dress role-playing for sick psychopaths or if they are actually communing with entities from beyond this realm.
Either way... they are revealing their true nature and we're going to have to deal with them somehow. And that means we're also going to have to change.
I communicate with my animals all the time! And yes, I believe they have self awareness, consciousness and a soul just like us. They simply lack our ability to reason on a higher level. I've also seen alpha sheep fighting back at times. Probably the same ratio in humans. And that's why we're always on the back foot.
Elephants are up there too in the intelligence game but they will destroy their entire habitat and move on to the next one if left to their own devices. Elephant population management is down to a fine art in Africa. On the one hand human farmers want their crops left alone and on the other the elephants attract tourists, so what to do? They tried sterilizing the female elephants to keep numbers down but that was too pricey so they allowed seasonal hunters back in to cull the male population. Sometimes the authorities injure a male and let it suffer so that the rest of the herd stay away from the farms.
My point? Every single organism on this planet is trying to survive in one way or another. While we're responsible for a lot of habitat destruction we also try to help where we can. And even if we all became vegetarian tomorrow, species would still be dying off at a fast rate. 99% of all species that ever lived have become extinct. Maybe we should just be grateful that we're here at all and try to enjoy it while it lasts.
So beautifully expressed and fully resonant for me. Of course. And what a perfect backdrop of understanding to consider the atrocity we call health-care in our world now? How disconnected have we become when we submit to a system that can't even figure out the basics of care (sunlight, beauty, frequency, kindness, nutrition) even when we know what actually makes us feel better? Now to such a contorted extent we freely offer our precious bodies like guinea pigs.
"If he substitutes for his cry of revolt a frantic adherence, at once he is led to blind himself to the absurd which hitherto enlightened him and to deify the only certainty he henceforth possesses, the irrational " " Thus it is that,through a strained subterfuge, he gives the irrational the appearance and God the attributes of the absurd: unjust, incoherent and incomprehensible. Intelligence alone in him strives to stifle the underlying demands of the human heart,since nothing is proved, everything can be proved"- Albert Camus- the myth of Sisyphus.
Animals have no ideological aspirations or dogma that they push. We, as humans, admire them for this but also pity them for the same reason. Having contempt. Animals only have their senses & their bodies (mind & matter) to navigate life. It is sufficient & they express gratitude despite the suffering inherent in life. For humans, in the time of testing, we tend to default to defending or rationalising the narratives or ideologies that promise to fulfill our aspirations, that form our "identity" or "personality view" or "atta" that the Buddha talked about- ego, soul etc. These "mental contents" are our constant companions & inheritance or legacy unless they can be sloughed being seen as apostates to the grace inherent within nature, within us. We are "reality soldiers", casting the rotten corpses of the patriarchal bodies of "knowledge" onto the sacrificial bonfire, as vanity.
Gary, this was, indeed, and inspired and inspiring original post that immediately caught my attention. You are on point here! I would only add that we have been mass-programmed for more than a century with this inverted, perverted, death-cult crap. We must admit that we were weak enough to succumb to it, but know in our hearts that none of this is truly our fault.
After that, if anyone continues to commit atrocities upon humanity and Mother Earth — and especially the children — then they have no redress in the Divine Realm.
Change is required as one traverses the narrow path of Divine Order.
I am wondering, what is the beautiful and elegant and simple solution to the current world situation? SERIOUS QUESTION. YOUR THOUGHTS VERY WELCOME.
Then, unlike you, I have always (since childhood) known that there is right and wrong, good and bad. For me, a huge awareness of something being massively wrong came in about 2005-2006, when my students (college level) came in, convinced of something utterly illogical and anti-factual, that all opinions are equal. If it interests you, I did a short (3 min) video on the experience: https://truthsummit.info
Synchronously, on my ultimate solution idea, this came up my facebook memories today which I wrote a few years ago
WHY WE NEED TO TEACH KIDS TO BE MIND FIT AS WELL AS BODY FIT
In my view, the current messages about diet and exercise being put out by governments, the media and academics, while laudable, are somewhat ill-conceived.
This is because they focus on what we might call “body fitness” - diet and exercise for the avoidance of heart disease, diabetes, obesity and cancers in later life. I would make the case that the emphasis needs to be shifted towards “mind fitness”. My reasoning is as follows.
(i) Without the right mind tools and attitude, most young people will not have the self-discipline or problem solving skills to sustain a body-fit lifestyle.
(ii) Many of the body-fit orientated diet and exercise messages may actually be detrimental to brain health. Low fat diets can starve the developing brain of good fuel, for example. Repetitive, monotonous (gym based) exercise routines with limited social quotient do not stimulate the brain to create new neural pathways, unlike constantly learning new dance routines, or walking in new places as part of a social group. Making the body fit whilst starving the brain of stimulation is not optimal for mental health or prevention of neuro-degenerative disease in later life. A lean body with a flabby brain does not equate to “healthy”!
(iii) On the other hand, we now know that mind fitness can create body fitness. It has been demonstrated that we can build muscle just by imagining lifting weights, that people with Parkinson’s can improve just by thinking about moving in ways which light up the movement centers of the brain with MRI training, that athletes can control their heart rate with mindfulness, and that the overall health benefits of meditation, visualization and controlled breathing are now well established.
(iv) In my experience, if we were to teach mind fitness, then attention to body fitness simply follows naturally anyway.
Unfortunately kids just aren’t being taught about mind fitness. We are not providing children with the cognitive behavioural tools [of the type we, as adults, typically only receive ourselves when we are mentally ill enough to have to attend therapy…], the positive mental attitude techniques nor the self-reflective thought processes, which they need to be mind fit. We are certainly not teaching kids about the connection between food and neuro-health, and this is easily demonstrated: ask a class at school to raise their hands if they have ever heard of essential fatty acids; now repeat the experiment by asking if they ever heard of essential amino acids!
Here is our problem, then. Who is going to teach the first cohort of kids to be mind fit, when very few people in government, the media or academic institutions know or understand about this stuff themselves?
How can they know or understand, when no-one taught them either?
I agree totally. We need mind fitness. More than that, we need "mind love" - the love of thinking. In about 2006, I wrote a series of short posts on the COGNI SUTRA - the love of thinking. Yes, the kama sutra came to mind. My experience is that good thinking is a joy, a thrill, an immense pleasure. Instead, kids are widely discouraged from loving that. People who think are "egg heads" and worse. They're usually shown as puny and uncharismatic. Yukk!! Here, by the way, is the IDEA EMPORIUM: https://www.elsas-word-story-image-idea-music-emporium.com/the-idea-emporium.html. And then, here is the start of my long-ago post, on my very first site, on the COGNI SUTRA: https://www.elsas-word-story-image-idea-music-emporium.com/good_thinking.html
Elsa asks, "I am wondering, what is the beautiful and elegant and simple solution to the current world situation?"
All the answers thus far are very helpful. We are in this world Body, Mind and Soul. So in essence we must understand life, or we are doomed. healthy diets, healthy activities, healthy minds, awakened intuition.
I think and feel that the answer is in understanding those thoughts actions and attitudes that always and universally end in happiness, despite the labors required, and those thoughts actions and attitudes, that always and universally end in misery, despite temporary satisfaction. All people want to satisfy wants, and end misery, we simply generally lack the wisdom to do so.
Just as the vaccines, had they truly been safe and effective, would have needed no tyranny to have been adopted by most all, so the wisdom of universal happiness, will be effective in all social constructs.
Question everything - essential. On the other hand - speaking as someone with a lifelong teaching calling, as well as other callings, I can't go with: "Voluntary leaders/ teachers have proven to be corrupt or corruptible." It depends on the teachers, I say. Also you "invisage the next teachers are people who are requested by their community to teach" - in other words, you seem to see people from the community as less corrupt or corruptible than the teachers. That makes no sense. So many people in the community as severely brain-numbed, and it is teacher-reachers among us - like Gary, like myself, like quite a number of the writers on Substack - who are doing what we can to explore and awaken. The community did not call us. We are called, from within ourselves.
I don't have any paywalls. I have had a blog - no charge - since 2006.
On the other hand, I do believe people have the right to have paywalls - all of us need money to survive.
By the way, I do have a private Substack, for members only. I do believe we are are entitled to have private spaces. My private Substack is for people with a specific interest. I sent out several emails to see who was interested.
I am not meaning that this concept provides the answers. but suggesting that it helps us recognize the right the answer when we find it. Lets take a piece of the current problems, say covid. The elegant solution was that if we are healthy and have properly functioning immune systems, the virus never posed a threat to us. So the answer was to make our immune system optimized, including getting good sleep, addressing chronic stress, supplement vitamin D, eating healthy, maybe be some nasal irrigation, all of which have a myriad of other benefits too. Compare this to the ugly, convoluted mess we got, which has destroyed many people’s immune systems and left them in chronic stress.
The simple long term solution to all the problems we face, in my view, is getting to the kids, and teaching them how to think critically for themselves, how to regulate themselves, and the right values. Just not sure how we rescue them from the ugly mess that has currently got its claws into them.
I am drawing a distinction between knowing right and wrong (yes I knew the difference, and indeed like many folks who end up with a chronic condition, I set impossibly high standards for myself and subjugated myself to too many black and white rules) , from good and evil as tangible forces manifest in the universe.
I think you'd love my new program!! I once again suggest you become a part. It is, of course, all our choice.
About the virus, my answer is also ultra simple. Yes, do all you can to boost your immune system. I took another step, crucial for me. It's the step that made everything fine for me. Find just about 100% effective treatments, or better yet treatments which can also be used as preventatives, . I found 3 treatments, 2 of which also work as preventatives (and later found several more excellent treatments). I also created a website: https://SpeedTheSpread.info - meaning, speed the spread of truth. I got hold of one of those treatments / preventatives - which meant, for me, that I could go anywhere, everywhere, hug people, all people. About the website - I had too many other interests to get behind it in a big way. This also isn't my core area. Medical people, truth-tellers, were at the forefront of the drive for truth.
About the solution you propose. I believe the coming solution is something quicker. And then, yes, we need to take back the education system, and lots else, like the media system.
Wonderfully put Gary, I literally could not have put it better myself, as you know, being a consumer of my own efforts 😁. The elegance and humility that you bring to these most divisive issues is refreshing. I have been trying to write more objectively of late, but the problem is that my inspiration seems stronger when something has riled me.
Gary Sharpe says; "When I was still an academic scientist, I found that, more often than not, the right answer ended up being a most simple and elegant explanation. There was very often a certain beauty to the solution. Meanwhile, the need for highly convoluted, tortured arguments..."
"It seems I understood, even back then, that beauty and grace is an intrinsic part and parcel of the universe, and more-over, we humans are able to sense, and tune-in to this."
All well stated, and I think very true. The "highly tortured" writing of some "experts" wrongly resonates in the mind reading them, if that mind is searching for understanding, for truths. When I first began reading on sites like "Climate Audit" and certain more political sites, I would on occasion encounter this "Highly tortured" writing. Initially I thought I was just slow on the uptake. I would on occasion, read, and then reread. I eventually understood, these were often the most lettered, using paragraphs to make one tortured point, and clearly they had been taught to write this way. The frustrated not understanding feeling I found, was because the words meant and added nothing, and the essential message conveyed was often simply wrong or trivial. The paragraphs were a kind of shell, protecting the flawed reasoning hidden within the verbosity. ( I found most of Obama's talks, especially in any of the rare times he actually received a difficult question, to be like this.)
However the positive side of your post is very uplifting. "...beauty and grace is an intrinsic part and parcel of the universe, and more-over, we humans are able to sense, and tune-in to this."
It has been said that intrinsic truth when comprehended vibrates "pure feeling, and pure intellect, are both intuitive and become one." the heart and brain resonate and recognize it. I am working on a post you may enjoy. The title - "Is the inability of science to solve life's Mystery absolute? I will not reveal my answer yet, but within it this is stated...
"Science now admits that all the information in the cosmos, must be there from the beginning. Whether one accepts the Big Bang, or Multi verse or steady state, it does not matter. All the energy or power, all the information eventually manifest, always was. Just as energy is neither created or destroyed, the same with information. Sometimes when a new truth is comprehended, the very nerves in the body thrill, these goose-bumps are somehow truth known, convincing to the very atoms! Who knows an orange better, the scientist that has never eaten one, measuring it with a dozen experiments, or the hungry overheated man enjoying eating it.
The heart and brain are connected, and science is I think just touching on this understanding. One can calm the heart, by calming the mind, mediation, affirmation, etc, and one can calm the mind by calming the heart, and feeding the calm heart into the brain. The connection in electrical energies and even more subtle energies flowing between heart and brain is just starting to be touched by science. The role of the vagus nerve is just being touched.
I think your work is a part of this advance. Neuroplasticity is a part of this. This man's work https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuOvn4UqznU is a part of this. It has been said that "Pain is a prod to remembrance" Perhaps the silver lining in the COVID storm of misery will be a mass exodus from the corrupted institutions, and to these advances in over all holistic healing of the mind, brain heart and soul.
Thank you for the link. I appreciate it ALL. Your exploration of the thought process, and the emotions of memory affecting health is I think a step closer to the essential cause of much illness than even the breaking research into the brain heart vagus nerve, etc... Those may well be the physical mechanism of thought - feeling caused stress disease. Have you seen the "fasting for Survival" lecture?
There is an old 910 song about mystery, "Aw sweet mystery of life." Can cultures move from phenomena to noumena?
The true, the good, and the beautiful are of God; their opposites are the lack of the good, therefore are evil. We must maintain or recover our awe at the beauty and wonder of the world, the world that was created for us. We are cocreators when we use are talents and creativity to contribute to these. We must find the child in us and be filled with wonder and gratitude. Best to you Gary.
I began writing semi-professionally in 2004. It was a business leadership column for my local paper. I had to learn to write with an economy of words. Later I began to write longer pieces. In 2018, i published my first book. I’ve been writing full time ever sense. The beauty of my experience is to see my own development first hand. It amazes and humbles me. It is analogous to what you write here. Thanks.
Proverbs 20:29 “The glory of young men is their strength: and the beauty of old men is the gray head.” Beauty is wisdom. Thanks for sharing beauty in this crass and vile time in history.
Gary, I agree with what you have written in this substack. I am a retired family nurse practitioner. I have always had to base my care on the “science”. But there were more than a few times I questioned the “science”. I must remember to show gratitude and appreciation for everything my loved ones and I have in our lives. Show more kindness to my fellow man. Live out this life with integrity but keep questioning the narrative which continues to be “off” like a piece of food left too long in the fridge.
The knowledge of good and evil is a human construct. Animals simply follow their programmed instincts that help them survive. Humans have twisted these values into methods that help one group survive more than others. We know this as ideological or religious supremacy.
At the base level, I don't think good and evil exist as separate values. Only in the minds of men does this dualism rear its head, but it becomes very real beyond that level of existence. The people running this show are extremely evil, and yet among their own, they strongly believe that they are delivering us from our own "evil" ways.
The human race became mentally ill a long time ago!
Meditation and holistic medicine are the cure.
Are you sure this is not just another thing they tell us to shield themselves. After all, I see an awful of evidence that the powers that be are flirting with satanic symbolism, human sacrifice, and paedophilia...
I was just rereading some old notes... mostly covering the eugenics aspect of elite plans which in their minds leads to fusion with machines or genetic enhancement etc. In other words, their age old desire to become as gods themselves. There's a debate going on currently about whether "they" are 1) trying to delete the whole human species from this planet (including themselves) or 2) simply culling the population as if managing a farm or 3) transforming the population into some kind of permanent upgradeable slave units.
Hence the confusion!
The way I see it is that many factions are at work at the top, most of them co-operating for common purposes - money, power etc. Then we have the eugenicists and satanists which I believe all have the same root but branch off into their own little fanciful bubbles of madness. Scientism, transhumanism, genetic modification of all life and so on can be seen as a power trip or as a method to gain control of all "God's creation" so as to destroy it following cues from biblical stories.
I think the dominant faction has always been motivated by lust for money and power. I think it's that simple. They use religion, politics, banking, psychological warfare to maintain their dominance. The other more creepy factions appear to have taken over in recent times. Their influence is seen in the anti-human climate change policies, smart city initiatives, mass jabbing of everything that moves and so on.
The herd will either accept these moves or reject them. For now, I feel optimistic that these policies will be dropped at some point due to popular demand once people wake up a bit more. Some kind of middle ground will emerge.
On the satanic sacrifice and pedophilia... it's always been there in the background. The high priests of these cults still depend on numerology for timing of events. They still have to perform blood sacrifices to the gods and blackmail all their top guys. If their goal is to take over the whole world and hand it on a platter to their imagined master commander, then they've almost achieved that goal. If what they're up to is part of a ritual performance where light eventually banishes the darkness for a thousand years, then they are masterfully playing their roles to create sufficient despair and chaos so that the light will bring relief. Bad cop/good cop routine.
I don't think we can really know what goes on. I certainly don't. But we have the typical Hollywood portrayal of satanic elites and some witness testimony to go on. It's my belief that all of this activity is going on around the world constantly especially on their holy satanic days. That's why I think we need to understand institutionalized psychopathy more. They are obviously drawn to hurting innocents and if possible mass ritual murder in the form of war. What I don't know is if the religious/mythological/symbolic aspect of it is just fancy dress role-playing for sick psychopaths or if they are actually communing with entities from beyond this realm.
Either way... they are revealing their true nature and we're going to have to deal with them somehow. And that means we're also going to have to change.
You may enjoy my post here...
https://anderdaa7.substack.com/p/does-absolute-power-corrupt
I communicate with my animals all the time! And yes, I believe they have self awareness, consciousness and a soul just like us. They simply lack our ability to reason on a higher level. I've also seen alpha sheep fighting back at times. Probably the same ratio in humans. And that's why we're always on the back foot.
Elephants are up there too in the intelligence game but they will destroy their entire habitat and move on to the next one if left to their own devices. Elephant population management is down to a fine art in Africa. On the one hand human farmers want their crops left alone and on the other the elephants attract tourists, so what to do? They tried sterilizing the female elephants to keep numbers down but that was too pricey so they allowed seasonal hunters back in to cull the male population. Sometimes the authorities injure a male and let it suffer so that the rest of the herd stay away from the farms.
My point? Every single organism on this planet is trying to survive in one way or another. While we're responsible for a lot of habitat destruction we also try to help where we can. And even if we all became vegetarian tomorrow, species would still be dying off at a fast rate. 99% of all species that ever lived have become extinct. Maybe we should just be grateful that we're here at all and try to enjoy it while it lasts.
So beautifully expressed and fully resonant for me. Of course. And what a perfect backdrop of understanding to consider the atrocity we call health-care in our world now? How disconnected have we become when we submit to a system that can't even figure out the basics of care (sunlight, beauty, frequency, kindness, nutrition) even when we know what actually makes us feel better? Now to such a contorted extent we freely offer our precious bodies like guinea pigs.
Thank you.
"If he substitutes for his cry of revolt a frantic adherence, at once he is led to blind himself to the absurd which hitherto enlightened him and to deify the only certainty he henceforth possesses, the irrational " " Thus it is that,through a strained subterfuge, he gives the irrational the appearance and God the attributes of the absurd: unjust, incoherent and incomprehensible. Intelligence alone in him strives to stifle the underlying demands of the human heart,since nothing is proved, everything can be proved"- Albert Camus- the myth of Sisyphus.
Animals have no ideological aspirations or dogma that they push. We, as humans, admire them for this but also pity them for the same reason. Having contempt. Animals only have their senses & their bodies (mind & matter) to navigate life. It is sufficient & they express gratitude despite the suffering inherent in life. For humans, in the time of testing, we tend to default to defending or rationalising the narratives or ideologies that promise to fulfill our aspirations, that form our "identity" or "personality view" or "atta" that the Buddha talked about- ego, soul etc. These "mental contents" are our constant companions & inheritance or legacy unless they can be sloughed being seen as apostates to the grace inherent within nature, within us. We are "reality soldiers", casting the rotten corpses of the patriarchal bodies of "knowledge" onto the sacrificial bonfire, as vanity.
Reality soldiers... like it!
Gary, this was, indeed, and inspired and inspiring original post that immediately caught my attention. You are on point here! I would only add that we have been mass-programmed for more than a century with this inverted, perverted, death-cult crap. We must admit that we were weak enough to succumb to it, but know in our hearts that none of this is truly our fault.
After that, if anyone continues to commit atrocities upon humanity and Mother Earth — and especially the children — then they have no redress in the Divine Realm.
Change is required as one traverses the narrow path of Divine Order.
Yes, that is a very important point.
I am wondering, what is the beautiful and elegant and simple solution to the current world situation? SERIOUS QUESTION. YOUR THOUGHTS VERY WELCOME.
Then, unlike you, I have always (since childhood) known that there is right and wrong, good and bad. For me, a huge awareness of something being massively wrong came in about 2005-2006, when my students (college level) came in, convinced of something utterly illogical and anti-factual, that all opinions are equal. If it interests you, I did a short (3 min) video on the experience: https://truthsummit.info
Synchronously, on my ultimate solution idea, this came up my facebook memories today which I wrote a few years ago
WHY WE NEED TO TEACH KIDS TO BE MIND FIT AS WELL AS BODY FIT
In my view, the current messages about diet and exercise being put out by governments, the media and academics, while laudable, are somewhat ill-conceived.
This is because they focus on what we might call “body fitness” - diet and exercise for the avoidance of heart disease, diabetes, obesity and cancers in later life. I would make the case that the emphasis needs to be shifted towards “mind fitness”. My reasoning is as follows.
(i) Without the right mind tools and attitude, most young people will not have the self-discipline or problem solving skills to sustain a body-fit lifestyle.
(ii) Many of the body-fit orientated diet and exercise messages may actually be detrimental to brain health. Low fat diets can starve the developing brain of good fuel, for example. Repetitive, monotonous (gym based) exercise routines with limited social quotient do not stimulate the brain to create new neural pathways, unlike constantly learning new dance routines, or walking in new places as part of a social group. Making the body fit whilst starving the brain of stimulation is not optimal for mental health or prevention of neuro-degenerative disease in later life. A lean body with a flabby brain does not equate to “healthy”!
(iii) On the other hand, we now know that mind fitness can create body fitness. It has been demonstrated that we can build muscle just by imagining lifting weights, that people with Parkinson’s can improve just by thinking about moving in ways which light up the movement centers of the brain with MRI training, that athletes can control their heart rate with mindfulness, and that the overall health benefits of meditation, visualization and controlled breathing are now well established.
(iv) In my experience, if we were to teach mind fitness, then attention to body fitness simply follows naturally anyway.
Unfortunately kids just aren’t being taught about mind fitness. We are not providing children with the cognitive behavioural tools [of the type we, as adults, typically only receive ourselves when we are mentally ill enough to have to attend therapy…], the positive mental attitude techniques nor the self-reflective thought processes, which they need to be mind fit. We are certainly not teaching kids about the connection between food and neuro-health, and this is easily demonstrated: ask a class at school to raise their hands if they have ever heard of essential fatty acids; now repeat the experiment by asking if they ever heard of essential amino acids!
Here is our problem, then. Who is going to teach the first cohort of kids to be mind fit, when very few people in government, the media or academic institutions know or understand about this stuff themselves?
How can they know or understand, when no-one taught them either?
~
I agree totally. We need mind fitness. More than that, we need "mind love" - the love of thinking. In about 2006, I wrote a series of short posts on the COGNI SUTRA - the love of thinking. Yes, the kama sutra came to mind. My experience is that good thinking is a joy, a thrill, an immense pleasure. Instead, kids are widely discouraged from loving that. People who think are "egg heads" and worse. They're usually shown as puny and uncharismatic. Yukk!! Here, by the way, is the IDEA EMPORIUM: https://www.elsas-word-story-image-idea-music-emporium.com/the-idea-emporium.html. And then, here is the start of my long-ago post, on my very first site, on the COGNI SUTRA: https://www.elsas-word-story-image-idea-music-emporium.com/good_thinking.html
Elsa asks, "I am wondering, what is the beautiful and elegant and simple solution to the current world situation?"
All the answers thus far are very helpful. We are in this world Body, Mind and Soul. So in essence we must understand life, or we are doomed. healthy diets, healthy activities, healthy minds, awakened intuition.
I think and feel that the answer is in understanding those thoughts actions and attitudes that always and universally end in happiness, despite the labors required, and those thoughts actions and attitudes, that always and universally end in misery, despite temporary satisfaction. All people want to satisfy wants, and end misery, we simply generally lack the wisdom to do so.
Just as the vaccines, had they truly been safe and effective, would have needed no tyranny to have been adopted by most all, so the wisdom of universal happiness, will be effective in all social constructs.
https://anderdaa7.substack.com/p/does-absolute-power-corrupt
Question everything - essential. On the other hand - speaking as someone with a lifelong teaching calling, as well as other callings, I can't go with: "Voluntary leaders/ teachers have proven to be corrupt or corruptible." It depends on the teachers, I say. Also you "invisage the next teachers are people who are requested by their community to teach" - in other words, you seem to see people from the community as less corrupt or corruptible than the teachers. That makes no sense. So many people in the community as severely brain-numbed, and it is teacher-reachers among us - like Gary, like myself, like quite a number of the writers on Substack - who are doing what we can to explore and awaken. The community did not call us. We are called, from within ourselves.
I don't have any paywalls. I have had a blog - no charge - since 2006.
On the other hand, I do believe people have the right to have paywalls - all of us need money to survive.
By the way, I do have a private Substack, for members only. I do believe we are are entitled to have private spaces. My private Substack is for people with a specific interest. I sent out several emails to see who was interested.
I don't claim anyone is below me.
I am not meaning that this concept provides the answers. but suggesting that it helps us recognize the right the answer when we find it. Lets take a piece of the current problems, say covid. The elegant solution was that if we are healthy and have properly functioning immune systems, the virus never posed a threat to us. So the answer was to make our immune system optimized, including getting good sleep, addressing chronic stress, supplement vitamin D, eating healthy, maybe be some nasal irrigation, all of which have a myriad of other benefits too. Compare this to the ugly, convoluted mess we got, which has destroyed many people’s immune systems and left them in chronic stress.
The simple long term solution to all the problems we face, in my view, is getting to the kids, and teaching them how to think critically for themselves, how to regulate themselves, and the right values. Just not sure how we rescue them from the ugly mess that has currently got its claws into them.
I am drawing a distinction between knowing right and wrong (yes I knew the difference, and indeed like many folks who end up with a chronic condition, I set impossibly high standards for myself and subjugated myself to too many black and white rules) , from good and evil as tangible forces manifest in the universe.
I think you'd love my new program!! I once again suggest you become a part. It is, of course, all our choice.
About the virus, my answer is also ultra simple. Yes, do all you can to boost your immune system. I took another step, crucial for me. It's the step that made everything fine for me. Find just about 100% effective treatments, or better yet treatments which can also be used as preventatives, . I found 3 treatments, 2 of which also work as preventatives (and later found several more excellent treatments). I also created a website: https://SpeedTheSpread.info - meaning, speed the spread of truth. I got hold of one of those treatments / preventatives - which meant, for me, that I could go anywhere, everywhere, hug people, all people. About the website - I had too many other interests to get behind it in a big way. This also isn't my core area. Medical people, truth-tellers, were at the forefront of the drive for truth.
About the solution you propose. I believe the coming solution is something quicker. And then, yes, we need to take back the education system, and lots else, like the media system.
Great article, thanks.
Wonderfully put Gary, I literally could not have put it better myself, as you know, being a consumer of my own efforts 😁. The elegance and humility that you bring to these most divisive issues is refreshing. I have been trying to write more objectively of late, but the problem is that my inspiration seems stronger when something has riled me.
Gary Sharpe says; "When I was still an academic scientist, I found that, more often than not, the right answer ended up being a most simple and elegant explanation. There was very often a certain beauty to the solution. Meanwhile, the need for highly convoluted, tortured arguments..."
"It seems I understood, even back then, that beauty and grace is an intrinsic part and parcel of the universe, and more-over, we humans are able to sense, and tune-in to this."
All well stated, and I think very true. The "highly tortured" writing of some "experts" wrongly resonates in the mind reading them, if that mind is searching for understanding, for truths. When I first began reading on sites like "Climate Audit" and certain more political sites, I would on occasion encounter this "Highly tortured" writing. Initially I thought I was just slow on the uptake. I would on occasion, read, and then reread. I eventually understood, these were often the most lettered, using paragraphs to make one tortured point, and clearly they had been taught to write this way. The frustrated not understanding feeling I found, was because the words meant and added nothing, and the essential message conveyed was often simply wrong or trivial. The paragraphs were a kind of shell, protecting the flawed reasoning hidden within the verbosity. ( I found most of Obama's talks, especially in any of the rare times he actually received a difficult question, to be like this.)
However the positive side of your post is very uplifting. "...beauty and grace is an intrinsic part and parcel of the universe, and more-over, we humans are able to sense, and tune-in to this."
It has been said that intrinsic truth when comprehended vibrates "pure feeling, and pure intellect, are both intuitive and become one." the heart and brain resonate and recognize it. I am working on a post you may enjoy. The title - "Is the inability of science to solve life's Mystery absolute? I will not reveal my answer yet, but within it this is stated...
"Science now admits that all the information in the cosmos, must be there from the beginning. Whether one accepts the Big Bang, or Multi verse or steady state, it does not matter. All the energy or power, all the information eventually manifest, always was. Just as energy is neither created or destroyed, the same with information. Sometimes when a new truth is comprehended, the very nerves in the body thrill, these goose-bumps are somehow truth known, convincing to the very atoms! Who knows an orange better, the scientist that has never eaten one, measuring it with a dozen experiments, or the hungry overheated man enjoying eating it.
The heart and brain are connected, and science is I think just touching on this understanding. One can calm the heart, by calming the mind, mediation, affirmation, etc, and one can calm the mind by calming the heart, and feeding the calm heart into the brain. The connection in electrical energies and even more subtle energies flowing between heart and brain is just starting to be touched by science. The role of the vagus nerve is just being touched.
I think your work is a part of this advance. Neuroplasticity is a part of this. This man's work https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuOvn4UqznU is a part of this. It has been said that "Pain is a prod to remembrance" Perhaps the silver lining in the COVID storm of misery will be a mass exodus from the corrupted institutions, and to these advances in over all holistic healing of the mind, brain heart and soul.
All the Best...
Yes,, jargon and technical terms are also a tell of gate-keeping and cover-up.
Beautiful words and thoughts on the positive side, very much looking forward to your article!
On the topic of mystery, here is an older post I wrote, which you might like https://garysharpe.substack.com/p/the-mundane-mystery-and-metamorphosis
I found time-restricted eating the lynch pin of resolving my insomnia/broken circadian rhythm.
Thank you for the link. I appreciate it ALL. Your exploration of the thought process, and the emotions of memory affecting health is I think a step closer to the essential cause of much illness than even the breaking research into the brain heart vagus nerve, etc... Those may well be the physical mechanism of thought - feeling caused stress disease. Have you seen the "fasting for Survival" lecture?
There is an old 910 song about mystery, "Aw sweet mystery of life." Can cultures move from phenomena to noumena?
Thank you!
I certainly agree we have to keep speaking out and standing up, and doing the research ourselves, otherwise all is definitely lost.
What I think we are all struggling is how to wake them up, and bring them back to their senses.
some, a friend of mine with Parkinson's believes that it is caused by a fungal infection, by a type of fungus that feeds off dopamine!!