Healing Our Society

I sometimes wonder if we realize what we are doing to our bodies an our minds any more. I just heard recently about a 90+ year old man in Tennessee who refuses to take pharmaceuticals and has taught himself about herbs instead. It makes so much more sense to me that we can use what is all around us naturally instead of putting processed chemical concoctions into our bodies. So much of that knowledge of the plants has been lost through growth and technology. It used to be that the medicine man, or the shaman, or the village healer held a special place in the tribe, but now days, it's the celebrity or the athlete who is held in the spotlight.

I hope to see a shift in our culture someday back to the time in life when we didn't have  everyone around us trying to make a buck. I think we were all put on this earth to help each other and support each other, not try to take things from each other. It seems to me that societies that have less money seem to be happier all around. I think it's because they're not so caught up in the idea that the amount of money they have somehow determines their worth as a person. I think we put far too much value on little pieces of paper in our society, money, college degrees, their just pieces of paper that we give an arbitrary meaning to.

I know so many smart talented people that don't have a piece of paper that tells the rest of the world that they're smart, so they work in bars or restaurants, or some other hourly job that let's them barely scrape by. I see this and I think about how much these people have to offer to the world, but because they don't have that piece of paper, that will go unnoticed by most of the world.

We don't have to have prestigious jobs or nice cars or big houses to be good people. There is beauty in simplicity that this world seems to have forgotten. It's funny to see the reaction people have when I tell them that my family has one car. There is this look of shock and disbelief hat two people can survive in this world with one vehicle. But for us, we don't need another car, would it be nice to have, sure, but it's not a need. does it take additional planning and a little forethought on our parts, of course, but we make it work.

We assign these arbitrary statuses to things instead of actions. a car is a status symbol, not a compassionate heart. It's time to start rewarding compassion again and stop letting things dictate our lives.

The War on Consciousness Debate

There has been a lot of debate recently about the decision by TED to remove the the TEDx talks given by Graham Hancock and Rupert Sheldrake from the TEDx YouTube channel.  The original TED Scientific Board's Statements said "Rupert Sheldrake bases his argument on several major factual errors, which undermine the arguments of talk." and "Grahm Hancock's talk, again, shares a compelling and unorthodox worldview, but one that strays well beyond the realm of reasonable science." 

Both Rupert Sheldrake and Graham Hancock responded to the statement's issued by the TED Scientific Board, and Graham Hancock very publicly took to social media to assert censorship.

In response to the outcry of censorship, TED re-posted the talks on it's blog with the "warning" that the talks are both provocative and have factual problems with their arguments.

View the original statement from TED's Scientific Board, the responses by Graham Hancock and Rupert Sheldrake on TED's blog Open for discussion: Graham Hancock and Rupert Sheldrake from TEDxWhitechapel

The TED's revised statement regarding the talks can be also be found on TED'sGraham Hancock and Rupert Sheldrake, a fresh take blog.

I'm not going to try to argue who was right and who was wrong here, there is a place for that in the discussion forum on the videos. I applaud TED for re-posting the videos for people to see,  it's important that we look at other peoples viewpoints, take them all in, think about them, and form our own opinions. 

Did TED exercise censorship when they removed the talks, do the talks delve into the realm of pseudo-science, is this all just a great big misunderstanding that got blow way out of proportion? Watch the talks and decide for yourself, let me know your thoughts in the comments.

Awake in a Sleeping World

http://emmaluarts.com

I look around me and see so many people that are asleep. They are content to live their lives believing what they are told and sleepwalking through life. We all awaken in our own time, and we cannot hold it against those that are still asleep.  I look at my experiences with Ayahuasca, and I realize, it's not a quick fix, there is so much work that needs to be done after returning home. It's kind of like antibiotics, if you stop taking them too soon, the bacteria just comes back stronger. 

For those of us who have had psychedelic experiences, if you have ever tried to explain a journey to someone who has not experienced psychedelics, you find that you are unable to make them understand your experience. It's like trying to explain the color yellow to a blind person. Many of us become frustrated when trying to explain the idea of using something that is illegal as medicine, as so many people have very defined views of psychedelics as being bad because they are illegal. Because these medicines are illegal in our society there is a fine line that many of us walk. 

We must maintain a balance between our journeying and our daily lives, particularly if we work in conservative while-collar jobs. I find that when working around people on a daily basis that are, for the most part, still asleep, that I must temper my experiences and be aware of who I am talking to and how in depth I go about my experiences. When discussing my Ayahuasca journeys, I find that I have slightly more lee way, as there are so many people that are still unaware of what Ayahuasca is as opposed to psilocybin or LSD. 

Often times after a psychedelic experience, people continue to feel the connection that we all have to each other and the world around us, but something we have to realize is that although we have changed, the world around hasn't. There will still be people in the world who are  selfish, arrogant, and angry. We must have compassion for those that continue to live in the world surround by their drama, their pain, their anger, or those who are simply still asleep.