Book Reviews
by Daniel J. Benor, MD (unless otherwise noted)
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Freddy Silva. Secrets In The Fields: The science and mysticism of crop circles
 Charlottesville, VA: Hampton Roads 2002. 332 pp $19.95 9pp refs Richly illustratedFreddy Silva was an art director, writer and photographer who worked in graphic design by profession, and an avid student of Earth Mysteries. In 1990 he was smitten with curiosity when he saw a photo of a crop circle. He has devoted much of his time since then to a passionate study of these fascinating messages from as yet unidentified sources.
Silva is keenly aware of the general skepticism that many hold about crop circles. The media have trumpeted the claims of a few people that they have created these patterns in crops in England and elsewhere, generating doubt and leading many people to dismiss all of the crop circles as hoaxes. Silva goes to great lengths to dispel these doubts. He marshals a host of facts and arguments that provide very strong support for his contention that these are mysterious creations of as yet unknown sources. Challenging the credibility of hoaxers’ claims are the following observations:
· The numbers (many dozens each year), sizes (some 700 feet in diameter), precision and complexity of designs of many of the crop circles in England make it extremely unlikely that any person or group of people could produce them.
· The fact that they appear overnight would require hoaxers to work in the dark to produce them – again highly unlikely.
· The ways in which the stalks of plants are laid down in the circles – in woven patterns, often with several layers of weaving, each with its own distinct pattern – is beyond the capabilities of any hoaxer.
· The fact that the stalks of plants are bent at right angles, without damaging the growth of the plants.
Silva meticulously documents the appearance of the circles over recent years and past centuries, considering esoteric and mystic symbolism in the designs that may give clues to the messages that many suggest these remarkable creations must contain. The natural question is, “So who is behind these apparent communications?” Silva suggests that in part they are products of collective consciousness, and in part the creations of extraterrestrials.
This book is very highly recommended for anyone wanting to explore the crop circle phenomenon. See also Silva’s article in this issue of IJHC, which explores the theory that sound may mediate the formation of crop circles.
Tess Castleman. Threads, Knots, Tapestries: How a tribal connection is revealed through dreams and synchronicities
 St Paul, MN: Daimon Verlag 2004. Threads, Knots, Tapestries was a great delight to read and savor. Castleman has the courage to explore and report upon collective consciousness with her clients in dream group therapy like no one else I have ever known. Where most dream therapy groups have the participants discussing and analyzing each others’ dreams, Castleman’s participants actually dream each others’ dreams – not just each other’s issues.
Castleman recommends groups of 7 clients, meeting in one of three formats:
Once weekly for 1 hour – allowing one client to share a dream and then others relate to it;
Once every 2 weeks for 3 hours – allowing processing of up to 6 dreams; and
Once monthly for 7 hours – only for therapists, as this is a very intense format, in which each participant usually shares in some depth at every meeting.
Castleman finds that the depths of intimate disclosure and sharing of personal, individual psychological processes brings group participants very close together. They begin to find that they are dreaming each others’ dreams. That is, one or more clients at a given session and/or the therapist may have dreams that clearly reflect the content and process of another group participant’s life situation and issues. Often, personal and intimate details of the other person’s life – both recent and past – appear in these dreams. Castleman’s metaphoric style is lively and engaging.
It takes some time on the potter’s wheel before the vessel is ready to sit on the fire. Dream group is much like crafting a cauldron; it needs to be watertight, able to withstand high heat, and ultimately fulfill its purpose of being able to “cook the stew.” (p. 4)
In addition to collective dreaming, group members begin to find they have remarkable coincidences in their lives that link them even more closely to the group. They may encounter each other unexpectedly outside the group in highly unlikely places; discover that they have acquaintances and occurrences appear simultaneously with a frequency that suggests more than random, chance interactions and overlapping of separate events.
Dream group members have an uncanny habit of dressing in the same colors or in the same clothing on given days. Dreams will be congruent beyond the average level of coincidence. In one group I have led since 1986, we almost always identify a theme for each time we meet. Sometimes everyone’s dream will actually be about the same issue. (p. 102)
From among many synchronistic coincidence that Castleman describes, here is one about meeting the same person: Castleman invited three First Nation friends who were visiting her to attend a local Native American ceremony announced at a local church. They were all distressed at the patent lack of true Native American ritual or expressions of genuine spirituality in the Anglo person who was dressed in gaudy colored clothes and did not appear to have any depth of understanding of that which he purported to be teaching. They left after only a few minutes. Several years later, a client of Castleman reported he was struggling to extricate himself from a cult-like group near where he attended a school, forty miles away from Castleman’s office. The leader of the group turned out to be the same man Castleman and her friends had felt was a sham rather than a shaman.
The spectrum of interactions between group members group allowed and encouraged by psychotherapists ranges from the pole of insistence on complete abstention from personal exchanges outside the group, to the opposite pole of being open to any and all interactions that participants wish to explore (so long as they are not distinctly damaging to the participants). Castleman is a strong advocate for what she calls gooey interactions.
Dreams-whether the ego realizes it or not-are extremely gooey. Gooey is a word I use to describe the part of us that comes from the fertile self, the self where we are creative, spiritual, sensual, heroic, saintly, and passionate. (p. 37)
The richness of life interactions of group participants outside the group meetings deepens and enhances the sharing and processing within the groups. Participants may have individual meetings, parties or retreats, and may develop personal relationships with other group members. Castleman feels this is a much more genuine and helpful way of conducting a group that is a very deeply meaningful life experience.
Dreams are the intimate, revealing bonding, illuminating, connecting, and magical goo from which relationships naturally form. (p. 65)
The dream maker, the teacher within each one of us, in generally a kind teacher. We only get confronted harshly (as when one has a terrifying nightmare) when we absolutely ignore obvious data. Sometimes this data presents itself in a dream, a synchronicity, an “omen,” a vision, or possibly an insight. Sometimes this confrontation appears from those around us as corrective feedback or sometimes in a slow progression of awarenesses. In dream groups, the whole of the group, with some individual exceptions, is a body that mirrors truth for a member if the trust and bondedness has had a chance to develop. Attacking and accusing styles of confrontation are rarely helpful, but the base foundation of love and respect are. Love is the great healer and teacher of all human experience, and dream group is largely about connecting to that energy within ourselves and the members of the group. Clever interpretations of dreams are far less important than the attitude and atmosphere of the people participating. Despair, violence, “inappropriate” sexual fantasies, anger at the facilitator or someone in the group are all delightful pieces of the puzzle that give one clues to the unfolding process. There are no taboos, none that I can think of, that are unacceptable in the discussion and amplification of dream images. (p. 41)
Castleman is a full participant in the group, sharing her own dreams with the group. However, she has very clear boundaries in this regard, weighing very carefully the content and timing of her sharings so that she does not push the river of therapy with her own agendas. She also illustrates how this careful sharing of dreams can be helpful with individual therapy.
The phenomena of projected self-identification. This is the experience in which the therapist has emotions of fantasies that are attributed to the client rather than the therapist. Theoretically, the therapist has “caught” the unconscious process of the client and, by bringing it into the session, can aid in making the material conscious. The same occurrence works in groups when the group mirrors the unconscious feelings of the person working. (p. 80)
Castleman views these manifestations of collective consciousness as synchronicities. “Synchronicity is one way the ego gets a bump on the head that not all of reality is as it seems.” (p. 91) She believes they help to move our awareness into deeper layers of individual and collectivbe consciousness.
A skeptic might suggest that with hundreds and thousands of dreams and dream images that arise in the dreams of a group, there are bound to be matching elements. Castleman suggests otherwise:
Following are two dreams I had that were both identical to dreams of two of my analysands:
1. I am at a beach in India. Giant stone statues lie on the beach. They seem to be ancient gods and goddesses.
2. I am married to Kevin Bacon. He is unfaithful, and I am sad and angry.
The first dream was brought into analysis by a male analysand a few days after I had dreamed it myself. The second dream came from a female analysand, and was also the same dream I had had a few nights earlier.
I relate to specifics of these dreams to make it clear that they are not common variety dreams. (p. 91)
Castleman marshals many examples of how synchronicities helped to move individual and group therapy into deeper levels of awareness.
The shocking coincidence, almost impossible to believe, has a way of breaking the ego’s set attitude that it sees all, knows all, understands all. There, right in my consulting room, the mysterious magnificent process reveals a potent magic. One races to explain or justify such an experience. Perhaps there is no teleological meaning. Perhaps the experience speaks for itself – it stands as the mystery against a backdrop of the banality and routine of life. It is at such times that I know we have entered sacred space. It is here transformation and change occurs. Synchronicity in analysis and dream groups reveals a connection between two or more persons attempting a task together-the task of individuation, wholeness, meaning. It reveals an irrational level of the unconscious that is even more common and prominent in dream groups. It suggests that we are unique selves; we live on a foundation of archetypal truth, and in between lies a tribal, relational field where psyched intersect in a mysterious yet rather common way. (p. 92)
While Castleman allows that psychic awareness may account for some of the shared dreams and synchronicities, she tends to dismiss this realm of discussion, suggesting that people who demonstrate psychic abilities “tend to have suffered substantial wounds in early life” (p. 142). She also views what to this reviewer are simple, telepathic communications between group participants as synchronicities (e.g. p. 94). Such cases have been extensively documented in the parapsychology literature. My own opinion is that synchronicities go way beyond such simple levels of communication, and Castleman amply illustrates and analyzes cases of these sorts – the greatest contribution of this book. Of course, as telepathy, clairsentience and precognition are phenomena that are as yet unexplained within Western science, we could speculate that these are manifestations of synchronicities – an aspect of collective consciousness.
Castleman also stops short of any in-depth consideration of spiritual considerations of the implications of synchronicities. For instance, while speculating (p. 207) that bereavement apparitions may relate to a valid experience of an outer, spiritual reality (rather than being a projection from the mind of the person experiencing them), she stops short of exploring this dimension in any detail. In Healing Research, Volume 3, Personal Spirituality, I bring extensive reports and research to show that apparitions occurring during bereavement are experienced by at least two out of three people who have lost someone close to them. The communications with these spirits are often deeply meaningful and informative to the bereaved.
This book is a wonderful resource for anyone questioning whether synchronicities are real. Moreover, the demonstrations of collective consciousness through shared dreams and synchronicities points to a oneness of human beings that transcends personal and social interactions.
In today’s world the tribe is ill. The tribe that carries both the conscious and unconscious support of the individual is fractured and disbursed into a distant web rather than a contained pueblo of community life. (p. 187)
We are one with every other living being on our planet. Going beyond Castleman’s discussion, we are also one with our planet, Gaia, itself. As we open to this oneness, we will have the feedback of its reality through synchronicities such as Castleman explores and shares.
Elizabeth Johnson Taylor. What Do I Say? Talking with patients about spirituality
 West Conshohocken, PA: Templeton Foundation Press 2007This book is an excellent introduction for health care practitioners in dealing with spiritual issues common in clinical practice. Elizabeth Johnston Taylor presents the subject clearly, enhanced with quotes, cartoons and pointers towards further reading. I particularly like her exercises for readers to explore and examine their own spiritual beliefs and awarenesses, and to practice varieties of ways they can respond to patients’ spiritual issues.
This book addresses the question of how to form healing verbal responses to patients’ expressions of spiritual pain. Although offering healing verbal responses is a fundamental skill for health care professionals, it is not the only approach for nurturing the spirit. Being silently present, reading inspirational materials, offering prayer, and encouraging journal writing or dream analysis are examples of other approaches. (p. 5)
Thoughtful quotes help the reader consider these issues. For instance,
The compassionate man says, “I love you because I understand you.” The empathizing man says, “I know how you feel.” The sympathizing man says, “I feel for you.” Empathy and sympathy are… devoid of healing power. They have a temporary soothing effect, but they do not heal.
– T. Hora (Johnson, p. 14).
I don’t happen to agree with this quote, but it did give me excellent food for thought. (My own belief is that empathy is a necessary part of compassion, and that it can be very healing for people to experience empathetic listening.)
On clearing caregivers’ issues, so that they can be present with the people they are helping:
Larson described these issues as “interpersonal allergies.” Such allergies include the fears of: 1) our own death, 2) being hurt, 3) hurting others, and 4) being engulfed by others’ problems.
– David Larson (Johnson, p. 18)
While issues such as praying with patients are suggested, nowhere is there a hint of pushing the practitioners’ beliefs upon the patient. On the contrary, Taylor repeatedly alerts readers maintain their neutrality and respect in dealing with patients’ spiritual and religious issues.
The book comes in a version that includes a DVD with the same title, but nowhere is there mention of what is on the DVD. (I therefore gave this a pass, not knowing whether it would be of interest or worth my time.) An index would also have enhanced this useful book.
References:
Hora, T. Beyond the Dream: Awakening to Reality, 2nd ed. New York: Crossroads, 1996, p. 79.
Larson, D.G. The Helper’s Journey: Working with People Facing Grief, Loss, and Life-Threatening Illness. Champaign, IL: Research Press 1993.
Jennifer Harper, ND, PhD, Msc. Nine ways to body wisdom: blending natural therapies to nourish the body, emotions, and soul,
 London: Thorsons/HarperCollins 1997, 2000. 324 pp. 13 pp resources 5 pp suggested reading $16.99 £9.99 In a very readable and user-friendly style, this unusual book offers many suggestions for health and healing within the frameworks of Chinese medicine, augmented with other complementary/ alternative therapies. For instance, in Chinese medicine various elements and organs are associated with emotions. The Earth Element is linked with worry or sympathy; Wood Element with frustration and anger; Fire Element with laughter and joy; Water Element with fear; and Metal Element with grief. Each of us has natural traits and characteristics that incline us towards the spectrum that is typical for one of these elements. Harper provides a questionnaire that allows readers to identify their element.
… There are five emotions, which are connected to the five elements and to the maor yin organs (the liver, heart, spleen, lungs and kidneys). Anger relates to the liver, you to the heart, pensiveness to the spleen, grief to the lungs and fear to the kidneys. Extremes of emotions can have a negative impact on the organs, especially when they are intense or have been suppressed for some time, just as an imbalanced organ can have a profound effect on the state of our emotions. (p. 3)
Life rhythms are important in Chinese medicine because each organ has a two-hour period during the day or night when it is at its maximal activity and greater sensitivity to treatment. Various foods support various organs and energetic processes. Harper simplifies this complex series of relationships with tables that help to identify the various elements related to organs and feelings and their special times of peak energetic activity. Detailed lists of approaches that can help with problems of each organ – as it is associated with its particular Element – help to identify ways for healing. What I find particularly helpful is the attention to both physical and psychological issues that are often interlinked.
Harper’s nine ways to understand and deal with health issues include: nutrition, herbs and spices, exercise, reflexology, acupressure, aromatherapy, flower remedies, affirmations, and visualizations/ meditations. While the index is amply detailed, I found that by using the table of contents I was able to identify which organs are associated with which elements – within the frameworks of Harper’s discussion - and then explore which of the nine approaches could be helpful for problems with that organ.
This is a rich feast for therapists, augmented with helpful illustrations, resources and references. Those with little familiarity with complementary/ alternative healing may find the wealth of details a bit overwhelming. Patience and persistence, however, may lead readers to remedies and therapies that are helpful and safe.
LaVonne Harper Stiffler. Synchronicity & Reunion: The Genetic Connection of Adoptees & Birth Parents
Conroe, TX: LaVonne Harper Stiffler Matek Communications 1982, p. 4. LaVonne Harper Stiffler has written one of the best books on synchronicity that I have ever seen. Synchronicities are coincidences that are often so improbable as to make them deeply meaningful to the participants in these highly unlikely interlinkings of experiences. This book details numerous amazing reports – from people who were adopted early in life and from their birth parents – relating how they were helped through highly unusual synchronicities to locate each other. Stiffler’s narration is supplemented by the most extensive references I have ever seen on synchronicity. In addition to the literature on synchronicities, she brings many relevant facts, insights and references to help explore in greater depth the meaningfulness of the birth bond and its influence on the lives of all of the family members who are related through that bond. As an example:
… adoptive parents have often lost the ability to have a biological child of their own; adoptees have lost identity and genealogy; and birth parents have lost not only an infant, but a preschooler, a teenager, an adult, and their grandchildren. It may not be until reunion that one is able to fully comprehend the deeper meaning of loss of self, finally recovering a new individuation and true self… and a wholeheartedness without pretense... (p. 17)
There are somewhere between five and eight million adoptees in the US. In 1984, a survey revealed that about half a million of these people were looking for or had located their birth families. This search is made extremely difficult by laws that lock all adoption records in all but three of the fifty states. The search from either side of the birth bond requires extreme persistence. In many of the instances documented, there were intuitive or psychic awarenesses that facilitated the ultimate reconnections. In addition, there were numerous instances of apparent chance meetings with people or other unlikely events that facilitated the reunions.
A female adoptee was… surprised to learn that both she and her mother were living less than a two-hour drive apart, having moved to Arizona from Hawaii and New England before finding each other. “Why were we both in Arizona? Neither of us especially enjoyed the climate. We both feel that in the span of Hawaii to New England, Arizona must be a mid-point. Very strange!” (p. 9).
Various chapters focus on a variety of synchronistic links, such as names that were common to the birth family and the adopting family (where the two families had no contact whatsoever); genetic links of twins that seemed to produce even more highly unusual synchronicities; and links of timing in participants’ lives.
Stiffler points out that unusual synchronistic experiences often lead the participants to open into spiritual awarenesses. She gives numerous and varied examples of the wonderment of traveling life’s pathways and meeting people who teach us deep lessons through these synchronistic encounters.
Stiffler’s discussion of possible higher levels of causalities is innovative and erudite, demonstrating a broad knowledge of philosophy and science surrounding this subject. For instance,
Teleology, an aspect of metaphysics, is the doctrine or study of ends or final causes, especially as related to the evidences of design or purpose in nature. As part of the philosophy of vitalism (as opposed to mechanism), natural phenomena are thought to be determined not only by mechanical causes but by an overall purpose, directed toward a definite end. Synchronicity was described by Combs and Holland (1990) as a riddle to be lightheartedly enjoyed as the playful purpose of a trickster, rather than the rational Logos of classical Greece and Rome, but they concluded:
The inescapable insinuation of synchronicity, however, is that the cosmos is undergirded by teleology. Synchronicity reminds us of this order and beckons us to enter into it. Purpose in the form of synchronistic coincidences finds us even in the banalities of our daily routines...its purpose cannot in the end be grasped with the rational mind. It must be lived with one's whole being. (Combs and Holland, p. 144; Stiffler, p. 79)
Psychic and intuitive experiences are noted, but their full significance is not delved to any depth. This is my only criticism of Stiffler’s book: a serious understatement and lack of in-depth discussion of psychic experiences and their meaning – in the context of the vast literature on psychic, healing and spiritual research (Benor, 2001; 2006).
Reference:
Combs, A., & Holland, M. Synchronicity: Science, myth, and the trickster. New York: Paragon House 1990.
Christina Pratt. An Encyclopedia of Shamanism
 New York: Rosen Publishing 2007. Volume 1, 304 pp; Volume 2, 368 pp 8 1/2 x 11 HB $325 PB $150Christina Pratt, director of the Last Mask Center for Shamanic Healing in Portland, OR, brings us an outstanding reference on Shamanism. An introductory section orients the reader to various aspects of shamanism, distinguishing shamanism from healing and psychic practices. Pratt writes clearly and succinctly, and has obviously invested enormous efforts in producing this very detailed information.
For the shaman the authority is the helping spirit(s) – not belief, tradition, dogma, or the particular way a healing worked yesterday. The shaman is not involved in maintaining the status quo. The shaman’s task is twofold – first, the accurate diagnosis of the seen and unseen energies at the root of the problem, and second, carrying out the specific choreography of energies needed to resolve the problem. The shaman knows that similar symptoms do not necessarily imply the same root problem. Therefore, the shaman consults the spirit realm first and proceeds as directed by his or her helping spirits. What works is all that matters. Shamans work in omplete trust that the helping spirits know what will work and what won’t. through their practice, shamans bridge the perceived gap between the physical and spiritual realms in order to restore harmony within the individual, between the individual and the community, and between the community and the spirit world. (p. xxviii)
Numerous cross-referenced entries in this Encyclopedia are indicated by bolded words, making any exploration a lovely journey of discovery, as one link leads to another. Many entries are followed by relevant references. The index is detailed and likewise helpful.
The focus is on the academic end of the spectrum of the study of shamanism. Overlaps with healing are discussed clearly but very briefly. Practitioners of various other clinical forms of healing may not find this reference as relevant to their interests as those in academia.
I would have liked to see a separate and more extensive list of references for further reading. Failing to include Stanley Krippner’s work on shamanism seems a serious omission here. The index, likewise, could be improved by inclusion of authors cited.
This is a reference that will be appreciated by any serious student of shamanism and anyone wanting clarifications about the history and practice of shamanism. The price is likely to make this a library reference for the most part.
Suzane Northrop. Everything happens for a reason: Love, Free Will, and the Lessons of the Soul
 NY: Northstar2 2004. 267 pp No refs or index $24.00Suzane Northrop shares a wealth of her experiences as a channeler, presenting arguments and anecdotes to show that:· We choose lessons in our incarnations and that every experience we have in life is another lesson.
· Issues that arise in our relationships are particularly important, because we choose our parents and attract to ourselves those people who resonate with the life lessons we have agreed to take on.
· Dead People (DP) continue to care about us often reach out with messages and respectful interventions (such as bringing us into contact with people we might benefit from, if we choose to interact with them).
· Synchronicities – those unusual coincidences that are deeply meaningful in our lives – are arranged by DP to alert us that there is more to life than we often acknowledge.
This is a helpful book to those who have a wish or feel a need to communicate with DP through a person who channels these communications. Northrop also provides helpful suggestions on how we can facilitate direct communications between DP and ourselves through methods such as meditation and holding the intent for such messages to come through. Again, Northrop provides lovely anecdotes to illustrate such communications – that occur often through dreams or physical manifestations (such as the movement of an object or activation of an electronic device).
What I see as most important is the responsibility Northrop puts upon each of us for what happens in our relationships with others. For instance, Northrup teaches that DP only hold us in love, and release all other feelings they may have experienced or held in our relationships with them. If we were hurt or angry in our experiences with a DP, we can know that once they are dead, it is up to us to clear our feelings towards them. My personal experience as a therapist is that this is some of the best advice we can take on board, in relating to the living and to DP.
Some of what Northrop shares is at variance with the experiences and observations of other channelers and students of these subjects. For instance, Northrop states that our relationships with DP never end. Other channelers indicate that DP may often move on to further levels of existence, severing the relationship and becoming unavailable to us. Other channelers and intuitives report that DP may hold resentments towards us and may sometimes even interfere in our lives maliciously because of these feelings. Synchronicities are attributed, by many other students of these magical coincidences, to our own unconscious wishes and expectations, manifested through the collective consciousness.
Having cautioned the reader that this book is about Northrop’s views and experiences, I still warmly recommend it for its practical and spiritual orientation to what others often call spirit communications. Many examples illustrate how the information communicated consoles those still living and reassures them that physical death is not the end of existence. This is an important message in our society, which in many aspects is afraid of death and skeptical about an afterlife.
Joseph Barry Martin, PhD with Miriam Sanua. Travelling Light: A call to great power through the nine inner places of truth, freedom and love consciousness
 Victoria, BC: Source Co-Creations 2007. 537 pp 10 pp bibliography US31.99 CAN $36.99 Available through josephmartin@shaw.ca www.SourceCo-Creations.com Joseph Martin with Miriam Sanua have put together an unusual book. It contains a wealth of discussions and suggestions for holistic health and healing. Martin presents wonderful varieties of stories, myths, meditations, questionnaires for self-exploration, and exercises for self-healing. I was particularly taken by the Jungian interpretations of Grimm’s Fairy Tales, which suggest ways that we can look more deeply into our own lives and relationships to find more profound understandings of our situations in life – in order to bring about the healings we seek.
I also resonate with the Martin’s and Sanua’s understandings of some of the functions of pain in our lives:
When the pain is greatest and completely unbearable, you will finally do something to find your life. Only then will you engage the process we call dropping off the edge of the world. You will need to crush the wall of false beliefs that exists between your individual psyche and the outer society’s cognition incarceration. This psychological wall, which the ancient shamans call the wall to inner remembrance, will impulse your soul to awaken. This is the beginning of the remembrance to being love. (p. 12)
And with their understanding of some of the challenges of life:
Sultan Walad, the son of Rumi, speaks to us about this new life in soul: “A human being must be born twice. Once from his mother, and again from his own body and his own existence. The body is like an egg, and the essence of man must become a bird in that egg through the warmth of love, and then he can escape from his body and fly in the eternal world of the soul beyond time and space. (p. 47)
This book is a labor of love, a compilation of an enormous, rich collection of healing morsels, meals and feasts. It is organized into chapters on holistic levels of being:
Divine-Human Physical;
Divine-Human Emotional and Inner Child;
Divine-Human Mental;
Divine-Human Spiritual;
Divine-Human Unconscious, Archetypes, Dreams, Shadow, Soul Parts and Inner Child; Divine-Human Creativity;
Divine-Human Soul Vocation and Abundance;
Divine-Human Mythology; and
Divine-Human Soul Relationships;
Each of these is discussed within First Nation Medicine Wheel aspects of the four directions.
Martin brings to this book his wonderful combination of Western university education, along with his many years of choosing to live with his Mohawk people – to reclaim this heritage.
To provide a taste of their writing, I quote at some length from the section on the Divine-Human Spiritual:
From a First Nations worldview it is respectful to give honour to mitakuye oyasin or ‘All Our Relations’ as we say. We are all part of One Sacred Hoop, and what happens to one happens to all. In this regard, we give care and concern to our conscious unity with minerals, plants, animals, other humans, and Ancestors, our Seven Generations of descendents from now, and all other beings in the universe.
We expand this awareness to consider our conscious integration with all the Suns, planets, stars, and galaxies, knowing them to be both highly intelligent beings and also where are Ancestors previously resided before coming to Mother Earth.
We experience the fact that, in the fourth and higher dimensions, as well as while living in this changing third dimension, all time is now, and all space is within our own heart and body. The centre of the universe is our own heart; and the centre of the universe is in every being’s heart – from the ant to the jaguar to all other humans. Knowing this, reverence is given to all creatures of the Creator who share this Good Red Road with us. Time and space converge in the Zero Point of Source and all your lifetimes are lived simultaneously in this very moment.
Developing acute awareness of the very subtle high etheric Spirit energies coming to and through us is, of course, crucial to living in both the Spirit and Earth worlds at the same time. Energetically, we are like radios. We can receive, transceive, transmute and transmit energies as they move through our Four Bodies. It is the heart that does the inner work of transformation and sending out healing, loving vibrations. This is given out at the frequencies that beings around you are able to receive.
When you are totally in tune consciously and energetically with Spiritual Masters and their traditions, you have the experience and knowing or gnosis which is the spiritual intuition that you are wanting to develop. In this process, the ego gives up its petty desires and lower materialistic addictions that keep the soul enslaved, and instead the ego dissolves devotionally into the Self in Source and finds its purposeful loving service in the world. And in order to get to this stage, one must first go on the underworld journey to find and attain the nine inner places of greater power.
Once your heroic journey is complete, at least the first spiral of it for there are many spirals back home to Source, then you will find that you are beauty inside, beauty outside, and beauty all around you, to paraphrase a Navajo chant. Life in each Now is a flow of grace and gratitude. You live in the inner heart of spiritual silence where infinite peace, joy, love and creativity abound. The Good Red Road of the Earthwalk and the Blue Road of Spirit merge to give you a Violet Unity Road, the Tehanakerehkwen blessing. You know and feel the unity of all the Grandmothers and Grandfathers enriching your days and nights. You have a Spirit world knowing of how life on Earth is to be lived for you personally, in every second. Deepest heart intuition guides you, no longer your ego planning circumstances of which it knows nothing. (pp. 298-299)
I found this a most stimulating book, despite the complexity of the organization and subdivisions of information that made it difficult for me to track some of the threads of the discussions. In seeking to understand the pattern of presentations, the Table of Contents was more helpful than the meager Index. Once I let go of my expectation of knowing where I was being led, and simply enjoyed the richness of the materials being shared, all was well and my reading was richly rewarded.
Helke Ferrie. Dispatches from the War Zone of Environmental Health
 Alton, Ontario, Canada: Kos Publishing, Inc., 2004, p. 3.
Helke Ferrie is a remarkable woman in many ways. She and her husband raised a family of 3 biological and 12 adopted children, many of whom had major medical problems. In her own words:
When I became seriously ill in the early 1990s with what turned out to be a chronic illness called Myasthenia gravis and was told that the cause is unknown and no cure exists, the doctors were talking to an anthropologist who knew that every disease has a history and therefore had a cause that’s knowable. That implies, in principle, the possibility of a cure. I did not accept this standard verdict, found the cause of my illness to be a combination of years of exposure to DDT, while living in India, and a mouth full of mercury amalgam fillings; their removal and a subsequent detoxification protocol restored my health.
This experience of disease and medical ignorance (medicine in general and the education of doctors sorely lack the historical perspective) and coming face to face with the criminal refusal by the majority of the dental community to take responsibility for their toxic treatments, led me to write an article for The Medical Post about my journey back to health. I was mad as hell and wanted everybody to know about this. It has been a matter of profound satisfaction to me that, as a result of my articles on my own experience, I have helped a great many myasthenics get out of their zombie states, identify the causes of their illness (usually mercury “silver” amalgams were chief amongst them), and get back to life.
Soon I found myself listening to the stories of people with many other illnesses, all of which were supposedly of unknown cause, and I also began to hear stories about the suppression of the of treatments that work, such as chelation for cardiovascular disease and diabetic neuropathy, or cancer treatments without chemotherapy, radiation and surgery. I often wondered if I was caught in a nightmare and hoped to awake as soon as possible. All of this is a nightmare all right, but we are living in it wide awake. (p. 3)
I had entered a world I had not known existed: the dark side of medicine where ego and greed and power rule, and where ignorance is supported by ideology. (p. 4)
In this book, Ferrie brings us a wealth of information on environmental, ecological and health issues that are starting to be addressed by the complementary/ alternative therapies and ecology conscious communities. Ferrie’s discussions are generously supported by references from medical research and the media. Chapter Topics include food, poisons, cancer, children (and reproductive health), the public interest, perversion of science, horrors of medical oversight or mismanagement, and suggestions for reforms. (Most were previously published as columns in Toronto’s Vitality Magazine, which creates a bit of repetitiveness in some discussions.)
While Ferrie’s style is confronting and at times inflammatory, this is probably necessary if we are to waken people from their frog-like torpor in the pot that is our slowly heating planet.
An emperor who went crazy started World War I. World War II was the project of a democratically elected chancellor who also went crazy and proclaimed himself Fuhrer. Both took the world on a ride to hell. Now we are in the midst of World War III, and this time the Fuhrers of biotechnology, with their mad scientists and greedy CEOs, are in the grip of so grand a megalomania, it makes Hitler look merely frightening and Emperor Wilhelm II look like a bully in a carnival suit.
Again the basic human right to chose one’s fate is at stake, but unlike those previous conventional wars, this war centers on Life itself and who shall own and control it, who shall unilaterally decide the quality of the future. The genetic code of plants, animals and ourselves is what’s at stake-and how much poisonous pesticides, herbicides and artificial fertilizer the world’s population can be forced to accept. The poison gas of World War I was confined to the battlefield. Its solid form is on your dinner plate today and you are no war hero when you succumb to cancer, but a mere statistic. What must be defended today, are the peaceful-looking supermarkets and pastoral scenes of the world’s food-growing fields which have become the theatre of war and life. (p. 27)
I was particularly horrified by Ferrie’s discussion on genetically engineered foods, and the dangers of modified genes from one species potentially being absorbed by other organisms, including humans, with resultant unexpected modifications in the secondary species that could be disastrously unpredictable.
Other items of interest:
The Health Canada website has a great deal of information on pesticide reduction and the scientific support for such needed change. Of special importance is their information on the new standards for toxicology. In the past the idea was “the dose makes the poison”, now we know that synthetic chemicals are harmful to certain groups at certain specially vulnerable times and that –across the board- repeated exposure to small amounts (each exposure being below the old toxic threshold) causes the serious damage, i.e. cancer and neurological developmental diseases. (p. 62)
56% of the industry’s total sales profits are derived from just lawn care products. Lawn care products are sold at a higher margin of profit than agricultural pesticides. (p. 65)
It is within your power [in Canada] to pass a by-law that prohibits the cosmetic use of pesticides and herbicides. The Hudson Decision specifically allows you to do so. It only takes a phone call or a quick search on the website for the City of Toronto or the Province of Quebec and you can down-load the tests of their anti-pesticide ordinances. Furthermore, you are supported, apparently by a great many people in Orangeville in such an action, if Canadian Tire is any indication! Their lawn care department informed us that they have been selling non-toxic alternative products for two years, they are all cheaper than the chemical toxic ones, and they sell better than the traditional ones! President’s Choice no longer sells any synthetic lawn products as of December 2003. (p. 66)
Hair dyes are to be avoided, especially the dark ones, as some have been implicated in causing cancers. toxic to blood cells, kidneys and liver. Used in pregnancy, they increase the children’s likelihood of getting cancer by a factor of ten. Deodorants often include dichlorobenzene, that can cause birth defects and may injure your lungs and mucous membranes. When makeup is used often during pregnancy there is a sixty percent increase in likelihood of childhood brain tumors. As far back as 1987, Germany outlawed these dangerous chemicals in cosmetics.
Ferrie’s book is highly recommended to anyone interested in details of environmental health. By being informed, we can influence our elected representatives and make informed choices in purchases that will influence those who are producing many of these horrors in our world.
. GENETIC ENGINEERING AND THE MAN-MADE DESTRUCTION OF THE EVOLUTIONARY WISDOM OF THE AGES
Jeffrey M. Smith. Seeds of Deception: Exposing Industry and Government Lies About the Safety of the Genetically Engineered Foods You’re Eating, Fairfield IO: Yes! Books 2003.
Denise Caruso. Intervention: Confronting the Real Risks of Genetic Engineering and Life on a Biotech Planet, San Francisco: The Hybrid Vigor Press 2006.
Jeffrey M. Smith. Genetic Roulette: The Documented Health Risks of Genetically Engineered Foods, Fairfield IO: Yes! Books 2007.
When the structure of DNA was discovered and the existence of genes established, a group of adult children pounced on this discovery as a whole new game of Leggo. Genes code for proteins, and it was assumed that one gene = one protein = one trait or result, and so if you switched genes early enough in the development of an embryo, you’d get a new kind of organism with different traits. Better traits, of course, as human intellect so clearly can improve over the development of organisms that simply evolved through the natural order.
Immediately, the new technology was brought to bear on the food industry. The advantage of the food industry as a testing ground for genetic engineering of foods is that its products are consumed by all human beings, that supplies need to be replenished regularly, and that once a product is consumed one would have great difficulty proving what happened as a result of its ingestion. Under the guise of solving world hunger, the biotechnology industry set out to change the genes of the food supply. Interestingly, the first thing they did was not to make sure certain foods grew more abundantly to help feed people; no, the first thing was the development of a strain of soybeans that would not die when sprayed with Monsanto’s herbicide “Roundup.” This strain of soybeans is called “Roundup Ready,” and it means it could be sprayed morning, noon and night with herbicides and it wouldn’t die, while all plants around the soybeans (weeds, the lot) would wither and disappear.
In Europe, the new technology did not go over so well. Farmers and consumers rebelled; there were riots and the genetically modified (GMO) plants were ripped out of the ground. In the US, which once had been called “A Nation of Sheep,” (Lederer, 1962) nothing much happened except for the few who complained and were labeled as health nuts and ignored by the media. Fortunately, the official Organic Standards preclude the use of GMO foods in products labeled “organic,” so for those of us who don’t want them, there is still a way to find GMO-free foods. Otherwise, one is not allowed to say anything is “GMO-free” because the position of the authorities is that GMO foods are substantially equivalent to non-GMO, which is patently untrue.
There are lots of politics, chicanery, money-motives, and falsehoods in the biotech industry. To really get a good view of its machinations, I recommend Jeffrey M. Smith’s first book, Seeds of Deception. This book is an extensively researched and exhaustive review of the way the public has been misled by the government, the biotech corporations, (among which Monsanto is the undisputed commander general), and the various regulatory agencies that are entrusted with keeping the food supply safe. Read it and weep.
What is most astonishing is that genetically modified plants are patented! They are treated like software. If you want to plant them in your garden you need to pay a license fee. And this fee is to be paid every year! This means that small farms worldwide need to buy new seeds every year, instead of saving seeds from one season for the next. And this is supposed to ameliorate world hunger!
Smith’s latest book, Genetic Roulette, further documents the astonishing glacier of lies, adulterated safety reports, and intimidation that the biotech industry engages in consistently. Genetic engineering has nothing to do with saving the planet, ameliorating hunger, or supporting health. As one Monsanto official said to a new recruit about their company’s real goal, “What (CEO) Robert Shapiro says is one thing. But what we do is something else. We are here to make money. He is the front man who tells a story.” (Smith, p. 1)
The book is divided into several sections describing the effects, now documented, of genetically modified foods on humans and animals. The sections are:
· “Evidence of reactions in animals and humans,” including chickens dying from GM corn, sheep dying from grazing in GM cotton fields, and sudden marked increases in the numbers of soy allergies from GM soy in humans;
· “Gene insertion disrupts the DNA”;
· “The protein produced by the inserted gene may create problems,” including new allergies, kidney damage, and growth retardation;
· “The foreign protein may be different than what is intended,” obvious when one factors in the fact that environment changes DNA, so that it is really not known how DNA expresses itself into proteins;
· “Transfer of genes to gut bacteria, internal organs, or viruses,” which may create internal toxins and wreak havoc with the delicate balance of the immune system;
· “GM crops may increase environmental toxins and accumulate in the food chain,” especially those foods engineered to contain a herbicide or pesticide; and
· “Risks are greater for children and newborns” – so those people in biotech corporations who so blithely play with the earth’s genetic heritage are also endangering their own descendants. This is really bad karma.
And what if all of the theories and practices on which the biotech industry is based are completely wrong?
In a brilliant article, published in the NY Times Sunday Business section on 7/1/07, Denise Caruso shows precisely that. She points out that the principle that gave rise to the biotech industry is known as the Central Dogma of molecular biology, which states that each gene in a living organisms is needed to construct only one protein. She goes on to say,
“In the 1960s, scientists discovered that a gene that produces one type of protein in one organism would produce a remarkably similar protein in another. The similarity between the insulin produced by humans and by pigs is what once made pig insulin a life-saving treatment for diabetics. The scientists who invented recombinant DNA in 1973 built their innovation on this mechanistic, ‘one gene, one protein’ principle.
Because donor genes could be associated with specific functions, with discrete properties and clear boundaries, scientists then believed that a gene from any organism could fit neatly and predictably into a larger design — one that products and companies could be built around, and that could be protected by intellectual-property laws.”
Apparently that does not turn out to be the case. Caruso quotes a large study undertaken by the United States National Human Genome Research Institute and carried out by 35 groups from 80 organizations around the world, published in June 2007, it turns out that “genes appear to operate in a complex network, and interact and overlap with one another and with other components in ways not yet fully understood.” According to the institute, these findings will challenge scientists ‘to rethink some long-held views about what genes are and what they do.’” If it is discovered that there are real dangers in unleashing GMO’s – will it be too late to contain the many GM organisms already let loose in the world, which we have scant hope of controlling?
Of course, the answer is already in: genetically modified foods engage in what is known as “horizontal gene transfer,” the mechanism that bacteria use to become resistant to antibiotics. Horizontal gene transfer is the movement of genetic material between organisms other than by descent in which information travels through the generations as the cell divides.Modified genes appear in plants they were not supposed to be in them to begin with. Money Magazine (2007) reports on similar issues with wheat.
Caruso’s book, Intervention, shows from the outset that scientists really don’t know all the risks associated with the genetic engineering technology. She quotes Craig Ventner, former president of a major biotech company: “My view of biology is, We don’t know sh*t.” The industrialists who are capitalizing on this “science” don’t know the risks either, and they don’t seem to want to know them just in case their business disintegrates. Both Smith and Caruso give numerous examples of scientists who keep warning of the adverse effects and are regularly overridden, prohibited from talking about their findings, stripped of their funding, and have had their conclusions about the dangers censored and ignored.
Genetic engineering is dangerous business. It is based on flawed science, and promoted by willfully uncaring, totally callous and greedy corporations, politicians, and regulators. The earth and our children will suffer from it.
References:
Lederer, William J. A Nation of Sheep New York: W W Norton 1961.
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