Posts tagged Supermarket
Sustainable Living Dilemmas
Nov 2nd
It’s tough to have a conscience! If you’re trying to live in a way that is sustainable and ethical, you can sometimes end up facing some tough decisions. If you haven’t faced them yet, this should get you thinking and asking yourself the hard questions.
You’ll have to tackle these dilemmas on your own, but one suggestion (i.e. this writer’s solution) is given for each. And these are just some of the questions.
Food miles vs Fair Trade. On one hand, it’s important to support local farmers and growers, and to keep carbon emissions to a minimum. On the other hand, some developing countries rely on exporting food as their main way out of the poverty trap and need folk like you to buy them – double this for Fair Trade products, which have often been set up by aid agencies to help people help themselves. One answer: buy fresh fruit and veggies as locally as possible but buy Fair Trade coffee, tea and cocoa.
Budget vs. Packaging. Why is it that the cheap stuff has more packaging than the expensive stuff (or comes in plastic rather than recyclable wrapping)? Many of us are looking for ways to cut costs here and there, but sometimes the more sustainable option is the more expensive? Do you reduce costs (and use the money saved for a good cause) or reduce waste? One answer: go for the cheaper one and become fanatical about recycling all you can. Some people have opted for sending back all unwanted packaging to the supermarket or to the manufacturer and letting them deal with it – eventually, they’ll get the message!
Cheap vs. Designer. On one hand, you may want to avoid the ethos of flaunting your wealth and spending large amounts of money on, say, footwear, buying cheaper brands and putting the money saved elsewhere. However, those cheaper brands of shoes may well (a) be produced by some company overseas that exploits workers shamelessly and (b) only last a year before they fall to bits; the expensive shoes last a lifetime and the companies pay their workers better. One answer: go for well-made items. They are cheaper in the long run as well as being better ethically. See Terry Pratchett’s Men at Arms for an explanation of how this works.
Genetic Modification vs. Medicine. You may be completely against genetic modification, and fair enough too. However, hundreds of Type 1 diabetics around the world are kept alive thanks to insulin sourced from genetically modified pigs. This is one where the answers are clear-cut: accept the life-saving medication with gratitude but avoid genetically modified food.
Stress vs. Soda. It’s true that making your own natural domestic cleaners are better for you and better for the environment. It’s also true that some natural cleaners need a bit more elbow grease, which can leave you exhausted and frazzled – which is also bad for your health. However, plain baking soda doesn’t need any more elbow grease than some chemical-laden spray-on wonder product. And many products can be made up well beforehand when you have a bit more time to potter around.
Reducing energy vs. Health. It’s true that you can reduce your energy consumption and power bill by turning off the heater a bit more (or turning down the central heating) and by lowering the thermostat on your hot water cylinder. However, a warm home where the average room temperature is 15-20C is healthier to live in and helps the body fight off oodles of infections. Also, if your hot water cylinder temperature drops below 60C, it can become a breeding ground for horrible bacteria. Answer: only heat the rooms you need, insulate your house like anything and lag the hot water pipe. Also limit the amount of hot water you use.
Love Energy – Apathy and How to Reverse It
Oct 13th
Relationships that lead to marriage usually begin with intense love and romance. This is so wonderful that persons begin to want more, but as soon as they want more, it is gone because you cannot get happiness. It is the by-product of giving.
When people begin to want more, it becomes like shopping in the supermarket. Soon they want more for less, and the relationship becomes need oriented. Each begins demanding more and giving less. Eventually the needs of one or the other are hurt, causing one to pull away, and then we have distance and apathy.
Thus the energy shifts from moving outward to moving inward to not going anywhere, as the relationship moves from love to need to apathy. These three stages are equivalent to moving from hot to cold to lukewarm.
There is a formula for returning this to intense romance once more. That formula is to trigger the need, but prevent all hurt and jealous feelings.
This can be applied to the relationship that has become need oriented or even distant and apathetic. Here, one of the pair must make a move in the direction of independence, but without causing hurt or jealous feelings. It is important to stir only interest which is attention directed out from the apathetic one. This attention directed outward becomes love as long as hurt and jealous feelings are not triggered.
For example, one couple had been married for forty years, and the wife decided that was long enough. She had collected a shopping list of everything she found wrong in the marriage, and she decided to move out. Both believed strongly in one marriage, and neither would go against wedding vows or have an affair, so that was not a worry on the part of either. Nonetheless, the husband was quite upset about the separation.
This man really enjoyed dancing, so I suggested that he ask his estranged wife if she would mind if he joined a dance club, a group of people who went to different places throughout each week just to socialize and dance. He really didn’t need her permission because she already chose to leave him, but it was critical for him to get her to say it was OK because her giving permission reduces or eliminates jealousy and anger on her part. He explained to her how he was getting lonely for human companionship, and she agreed to his pursuing his new interest.
Since she agreed to the arrangement, she could not justifiably feel hurt, jealous, or angry. Frequently, he invited her to come along. He was very loving and gregarious, and at the dances, he made certain none of the women were left out. If any lady had not had not been asked to dance, he would be sure to ask her.
One evening, his wife finally agreed to go with him to a dance. She watched in amazement as one woman after another asked him for a dance, and several told her how lucky she was to have him for a husband. Her interest in him soon returned. That was many years ago, and today, they are living together as a very happily married couple.
This approach was learned partly through a dream, in regard to a very challenging therapeutic situation that was about to lead to divorce. In the mid-1970s, during sleep, I received information that the situation would resolve because it would prove what was written in the Gita, in terms of the three Gunas: Sattva, Rajas, and Tamas. Sattva is the highest level, followed by Rajas, and then Tamas. I equate Sattva with love, or energy flowing outward; Rajas with need or desire, or energy flowing back to the self; and Tamas with apathy, or no energy going anywhere. There are biblical references to this as well. Christ made reference to preferring persons hot or cold, but definitely, not lukewarm. Tamas is the lowest of the three Gunas. I equate it to apathy or being lukewarm.
In the Gita, it states that the route from Tamas to Sattva sometimes is through Rajas, or stated in English, the route from apathy to love sometimes is through need. I realized then that it is possible to instantly convert persons from apathy to love by triggering need but preventing hurt or jealous feelings. It is possible to take the most distant, apathetic relationship-trigger need but prevent hurt or jealous feeling-and thereby precipitate intense feelings of love and romance.
Perhaps this is the formula the Lord uses in the book of Revelations and several places in the Old Testament. When people see utter devastation and carnage, terrors beyond imagination, they become fearful of losing their lives (need) and then turn their attention to God (energy directed outward); and as they think about Him, their need begins to turn to love and appreciation.
This treatment modality requires much more explanation than we have space for in this book, but it has saved many marriages that were destined to fail.
One more example is a sixty-year-old librarian who was married to a man who belonged to half a dozen organizations and was president of several of them. She could go to the meetings with him, but she felt ignored and left out of his life altogether. I suggested she become more independent, go places and do things on her own; but she would have to let him know she really cared about him, that he was number 1 in her life, and she preferred to be with him. There are a lot of social clubs such as dance clubs, bird-watching groups, book clubs, etc.; and she could ask if he would mind if she joined one of them. I told her to preface any question with “do you mind if…” and this would stir interest, but should not provoke jealousy. I also suggested she think about this for a couple of weeks and put it into her own words.
The very next morning, as he was hiding behind the newspaper and drinking a cup of coffee, she said, “Bill, would you mind if I had an affair?” He spilled his coffee all down his front, but the very next week he took her for a tropical vacation in the Bahamas.
Had she said “You don’t pay any attention to me, so I am going to have an affair,” she would have stirred hurt, jealousy, and anger instead; and the result would have been just the opposite.
This is not a recommendation for risqu? behavior. This extreme example is used to illustrate this elusive flow of love energy; and the powerful dynamic of how to take the lukewarm person, trigger the need, but prevent hurt or jealous feelings and thereby propel the person into powerful feelings of love. Any movement toward independence can serve the same purpose.
Sigmund Freud, in The Ego and the Id, wrote that the effectiveness of the therapy of the future might depend primarily on the mobilization of energy. This mobilizes energy.
When you understand the flow of love energy, you can actually redirect it. To help a person recover from a serious illness, get that person to help someone else or to help others with the same illness. One of my patients with AIDS experienced a substantial improvement in his condition when he started counseling people in the hospital dying from the disease. Get the patient’s energy flowing outward, have the patient help others, and encourage the person’s spiritual practices. Here you might have to redirect the person from the “give me, give me, give me” prayers to “I love you, I love you, I love you” type prayer.
Fear is the antithesis of love, and it is counterproductive. It focuses attention and energy on the self. Picturing the self to be well, the body free from disease, knowing and trusting this is so, and helping others recover-perhaps from similar problems-is far more productive. For the healing process, it is important to avoid hatred, bitterness, nonforgiveness, worry-and to focus instead on intensifying love, caring, and doing for others with no regard for
anything in return. Maximum enhancement comes through the expression of devotional love and appreciation. All of this increases the life force, the healing energy, and the recovery process.
With further inspection, this love energy continues to follow precise laws that are like other laws of physics and which are quantitative. Of all things to study in medicine today, it is the analysis of love energy itself which might be the most rewarding and productive. It is this love energy to which I hope to devote a large portion of the remainder of my life. Likely, it is the most important factor for healing and for longevity since Hans Selye discovered stress, and it is equally as invisible as was stress at the beginning of the twentieth century.
As an asside, there is a growing awareness of the absolute importance of aiming for the bull’s eye and directing love toward God. This truly enhances the flow of love energy because we do not hold back out of fear of rejection. We begin to emulate love at its source, and we begin to experience a multiplicity of blessings, which magnifies our love still further. The great commandment-to love God with all our heart, all our mind and all our soul-is a commandment of mercy and compassion, for nothing instills more joy and more blessings.
