Decoding The RH Bill

The RH Bill, officially named AN ACT PROVIDING FOR A COMPREHENSIVE POLICY ON RESPONSIBLE PARENTHOOD, REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH, AND POPULATION AND DEVELOPMENT, AND FOR OTHER PURPOSES, took the headlines as one of the most hotly debated topics in the local scene. This topic was relegated to the background by the recent monsoon floods and the tragic death of former DILG Secretary Jesse Robredo. But for sure, the RH Bill issue is just lurking below the surface, ready for any spark to re-ignite public debates.

As with any issue, there are those in favor and those opposed to the RH Bill. Unfortunately, while there have been reasonable arguments raised by both sides, these arguments have often been superseded by hysterical outbursts from the parties involved. It also didn't help that the public's attention was further diverted towards Sen. Tito Sotto's plagiarism-ridden speech. The emotionally charged atmosphere and name-calling under which the RH Bill is being discussed makes it difficult to make an informed opinion about this issue.

For the most part, I have been neutral precisely because of the difficulty in analyzing the information that is coming out of the media. Media can be biased in their reporting, and can often get their facts wrong. However, I discovered something in my readings that leads me to raise some concerns about the RH Bill.  The previous statement is the last thing that pro-RH Bill people would want to hear, but it's important to explain why I have reservations about the bill.

For the record, I disagree with the CBCP's tactics as well as the logic and statements they are coming out with in order to oppose the RH Bill. Senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago says it best when she decried the threats the CBCP made against schools and professors as not only a violation of academic freedom but also as acts reminiscent of Church abuse of authority during the Middle Ages. But despite the clumsy public relations antics of the Church, there really are some issues that need to be clarified about the RH Bill.

It all started when I read an article by Jose C. Sison in The Philippine Star. Mr. Sison is a lawyer who writes an opinion article called A Law Each Day (Keeps Trouble Away) where he features different legal case studies in order to highlight certain aspects of the law. While the concept sounds boring, I occasionally read his articles and find them quite informative. He writes well enough that he gets his point across without peppering the reader with too much legalspeak.

In the particular article in question, Mr. Sison alleges that the RH Bill is being lobbied for and sponsored by foreign agencies such as the UN Fund for Population Development and Assistance (UNFPA), the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (incidentally, according to Sison the latter two organizations are global pro-abortion proponents).

Unfortunately, there is only sparse information about the existence of foreign lobbying for the RH Bill so unless the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism does its homework and tries to uncover any records of foreign sponsorship for the RH Bill, this particular subject will remain a matter of speculation. Something like the Freedom of Information Act of the U.S. would help in uncovering any transactions and communications from foreign lobbyists as they are not likely to want traces of their participation to be so obvious to (or easily traced by) anyone, but unfortunately the FOI Bill is nowhere near to being signed into law.

However, the idea of foreign sponsorship for population control measures is not just a product of idle fancy. The following quote from a Wikipedia article about the RH Bill may serve to shed some light on this matter:

According to the Senate Policy Brief titled Promoting Reproductive Health, the history of reproductive health in the Philippines dates back to 1967 when leaders of 12 countries including the Philippines' Ferdinand Marcos signed the Declaration on Population. The Philippines agreed that the population problem be considered as the principal element for long-term economic development. Thus, the Population Commission was created to push for a lower family size norm and provide information and services to lower fertility rates.

Starting 1967, the USAID started shouldering 80% of the total family planning commodities (contraceptives) of the country, which amounted to US$ 3 Million annually. In 1975, the United States adopted as its policy the National Security Study Memorandum 200: Implications of Worldwide Population Growth for U.S. Security and Overseas Interests (NSSM200). The policy gives "paramount importance" to population control measures and the promotion of contraception among 13 populous countries, including the Philippines to control rapid population growth which they deem to be inimical to the socio-political and economic growth of these countries and to the national interests of the United States, since the "U.S. economy will require large and increasing amounts of minerals from abroad", and these countries can produce destabilizing opposition forces against the United States. It recommends the US leadership to "influence national leaders" and that "improved world-wide support for population-related efforts should be sought through increased emphasis on mass media and other population education and motivation programs by the U.N., USIA, and USAID.

In 2000, the Philippines signed the Millennium Declaration and committed to attain the MDG goals by 2015, including promoting gender equality and health. In 2003, USAID started its phase out of a 33-year-old program by which free contraceptives were given to the country. Aid recipients such as the Philippines faced the challenge to fund its own contraception program. In 2004, the Department of Health introduced the Philippines Contraceptive Self-Reliance Strategy, arranging for the replacement of these donations with domestically provided contraceptives.

In August 2010, the government announced a collaborative work with the USAID in implementing a comprehensive marketing and communications strategy in favor of family planning called "May Plano Ako"

The USAID is not just an ordinary aid organization but is frequently a front for CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) operations in underdeveloped countries. As you can see from the above quote, while foreign participation in advocating population control may not be widely publicized, historically speaking it has always been there behind the scenes. But sovereignty issues aside, so what if there's foreign lobbying for population control measures such as the RH Bill?

I've read the text of the RH Bill and one thing I've noticed is how vague and general several of its provisions are. Because of this vagueness, how the bill's provisions will be implemented are quite open to interpretation. For example, Section 20 (Ideal Family Size) states that:

The State shall assist couples, parents and individuals to achieve their desired family size within the context of responsible parenthood for sustainable development and encourage them to have two children as the ideal family size. Attaining the ideal family size is neither mandatory nor compulsory. No punitive action shall be imposed on parents having more than two children.

One of the questions pertinent to the above section is: how exactly is the State to assist couples, parents and individuals? By what standards are "responsible parenthood" and "sustainable development" measured, and which agency is supposed to certify whether a couple, parent or individual is meeting these standards or not? If achievement of ideal family size is not compulsory nor mandatory, what is the point of measuring "responsible parenthood" and "sustainable development" in planning families?

A possible factor to consider when trying to decide if we should the adopt the RH Bill in its current form is the role of pharmaceutical companies. Should the RH Bill be passed into law, it will create a potentially big windfall for those pharmaceutical companies that produce artificial contraceptives. Of course, the letter of the RH Bill states that both natural and other modes of family planning will be promoted. However, there is a loophole here that can be exploited.

Section 24 (Right to Reproductive Health Care Information) of the RH Bill states that:

The DOH and the Philippine Information Agency (PIA) shall initiate and sustain a heightened and nationwide multimedia campaign to raise the level of public awareness of the protection and promotion of reproductive health and rights including family planning and population and development.

If you will refer again to the quote from Wikipedia, Section 24 of the RH Bill is consistent with the agreement with the USAID to "implement a comprehensive marketing and communications strategy in favor of family planning."

The RH Bill however does not specifically limit the promotion of reproductive health to the DOH or PIA alone. This means that pharmaceutical companies can heavily advertise their contraceptive products and still claim that they are giving their support to the government's campaign to raise awareness about reproductive health (just imagine the advertising byline "So-and-so Company, in cooperation with the DOH, supports responsible family planning and reproductive health"), even if the result of heavy advertising may skew public awareness towards the use of artificial contraceptives.

In the United States, there is an advertising practice among pharmaceutical companies called Direct-to-Consumer drug advertising or DTC. The objective of this strategy is to get consumers so convinced of the drug's efficacy that patients themselves will ask their doctors to prescribe the drug in question. Ever since pharma companies adopted this strategy, drug sales skyrocketed, with a 2008 study estimating that every US$1,000 spent in DTC advertising produces 24 new patients who want to take the drug.

Of course, such "in your face" advertising is not allowed here (that I know of) but the reason I used the United States as an example is because U.S. consumers are supposed to be well-educated and critical yet they are so well taken in by these advertising campaigns. So you can just imagine how easy it would be to advertise to the Filipino masses. If you throw in a showbiz superstar or two to highlight contraceptive marketing campaigns, it's more than likely that the Filipino masses can be convinced that artificial contraceptives should be the preferred way to go.

Generally speaking, pharmaceutical companies spend about a fourth of their income - measured in billions of US Dollars - on advertising and other promotions, so they should be able to come up with many creative ways to make the most of any opening they have to promote their products here in the country. Another market opening can be seen in Section 10 of the RH Bill (Family Planning Supplies as Essential Medicine):

Products and supplies for modern family planning methods shall be part of the National Drug Formulary and the same shall be included in the regular purchase of essential medicines and supplies of all national and local hospitals and other government health units.

The passage of the RH Bill will potentially give a huge opportunity to open up a big market and demand for contraceptives, so it's really a great business opportunity if you happen to produce or sell contraceptives. The government will be required to stock up on contraceptives, and at the same time you can convince people (through advertising) to give preference to contraceptive medicines for family planning.

People may say, so what if some companies make a big buck out of it? Pharmaceutical drugs are rigorously tested before being released into the market, so they're safe for consumption anyway. However, there is an expose by a former U.S. FDA (Food and Drug Administration) insider who stated that the U.S. FDA frequently ignored regulations in approving drugs for sale to the general public even before said drugs have been conclusively proven to be safe for human consumption. This is how prescription drugs result in over 125,000 deaths per year in the U.S. alone even when taken correctly as prescribed. You cannot even rely on mainstream media to inform you about incidents involving faulty drugs, such as in this specific case of the Wall Street Journal burying the story of the lawsuit against Merck accusing the pharma company of fraud and lying about the true efficacy of its mumps vaccine.

Such shocking practices as described above are not limited to the U.S. FDA alone. Monsanto, the GMO giant, also has strong lobbying power in Washington so much so that the USDA (U.S. Department of Agriculture) is starting to look like the rubber stamping approval agency of the company. So if you still think that heavy corporate lobbying in government is harmless, think again.

My point is that the above are cases that have happened and are happening in the U.S. If U.S. Federal Agencies could be influenced by big corporate interests, then what more local Philippine agencies?

One may argue that this is all starting to sound like such a big conspiracy theory about corporate greed and sinister motives. Can corporate greed, particularly in the medical industry, really go so far? In order to answer this question, we need to learn how medical doctors keep abreast of the latest developments in terms of medical technologies and new drugs on the market.

Doctors rely on the reports of medical journals to find out if there are new drugs for a specific illness or if there are any new developments on threshold markers that identify one as healthy or not. For example, a blood pressure reading of 120 over 80 is considered normal. But if medical journals suddenly come out and say that based on the most recent studies, a BP reading of 120 over 80 is actually considered hypertensive (high blood), then doctors will use this as basis to start prescribing hypertension medication. That's how much medical doctors rely on these journals. But what if the medical journals themselves were somehow co-opted? This article seems to think that this is the case, and here is the specific quote:

Few doctors are experts in the chemistry and biological impacts of particular medicines, so they rely on honest studies and tests (as reported in credible medical journals) to give them an un-hyped, non-sales-rep picture of the pluses and minuses of the drugs they choose to prescribe to you and me. Unfortunately, this process, too, has been corrupted--drugmakers have regularly paid doctors and researchers to conduct studies and publish results without revealing their financial ties. Pfizer, however, sank this sales-over-science approach to new lows when it launched its antidepressant, Zoloft, in the 1990s. It hired an advertising firm to fabricate "studies," write them up as salutary reports about the drug, pay some big-name psychiatrists a couple of thousand bucks each to put their names on the reports, and convince major journals (read by thousands of doctors) to publish the ghostwritten "findings." About half of the medical articles about Zoloft at that time were ad agency fakes. Journal editors, embarrassed by being scammed, have since imposed safeguards, but many doctors and observers say that up to 20 percent of major journal articles are still being ghosted. 

A specific example of how the above trends have impacted medical practice can be found in the following quote from Dr. Mercola's article regarding the truth about high cholesterol:

Who Decided What Cholesterol Levels are Healthy or Harmful?

In 2004, the U.S. government's National Cholesterol Education Program panel advised those at risk for heart disease to attempt to reduce their LDL cholesterol to specific, very low, levels.

Before 2004, a 130-milligram LDL cholesterol level was considered healthy. The updated guidelines, however, recommended levels of less than 100, or even less than 70 for patients at very high risk.

Keep in mind that these extremely low targets often require multiple cholesterol-lowering drugs to achieve.

Fortunately, in 2006 a review in the Annals of Internal Medicine found that there is insufficient evidence to support the target numbers outlined by the panel. The authors of the review were unable to find research providing evidence that achieving a specific LDL target level was important in and of itself, and found that the studies attempting to do so suffered from major flaws.

Several of the scientists who helped develop the guidelines even admitted that the scientific evidence supporting the less-than-70 recommendation was not very strong.

So how did these excessively low cholesterol guidelines come about?

Eight of the nine doctors on the panel that developed the new cholesterol guidelines had been making money from the drug companies that manufacture statin cholesterol-lowering drugs.

The same drugs that the new guidelines suddenly created a huge new market for in the United States.

Coincidence? I think not.

Now, despite the finding that there is absolutely NO evidence to show that lowering your LDL cholesterol to 100 or below is good for you, what do you think the American Heart Association STILL recommends?

Lowering your LDL cholesterol levels to less than 100.

And to make matters worse, the standard recommendation to get to that level almost always includes one or more cholesterol-lowering drugs.

In the same article above, two experts, Sally Fallon (the president of the Weston A. Price Foundation) and Mary Enig, Ph.D (an expert in lipid biochemistry) have been quoted as saying that high cholesterol is an "invented disease." Sounds shocking? Read the full article to get all the gory details.

The point I'm trying to raise is this: as far as corporate interests are concerned, anything goes when the objective is to earn huge amounts of profits.

Some questions that need to be asked (and answered) include: Have any of the sponsors of the RH Bill attended galas or affairs hosted by pharmaceutical companies or USAID? Are any of the principal sponsors of the bill affiliated in any way (either now or in the past) with organizations who may benefit financially by having the RH Bill passed (this includes being a Board of Trustees member, or honorary memberships, etc.)? In the budget allocation breakdown, were any of the funds sourced from contributions by the UNFPA, IPPF or USAID? What is the market impact, in millions or billions of pesos, should the widespread sale and distribution of contraceptives be permitted?

I'm not sure how much of the above information can be gathered without the Freedom of Information Bill, but someone should at least try.

How you achieve a certain ideal is just as important as the ideal itself (just look at communism, great in theory, but epic fail in implementation). We all want the ideal of responsible parenthood and family planning. However, it's easy to take advantage of peoples' desires for a good thing in order to push forward a hidden agenda, primarily by playing on fear and shame. For example, how often have you seen a variation of this slogan: If you do (or don't do) this, so-and-so number of people will die; prevent more people from dying! Vote yes (or no)! This slogan makes it sound like anyone that disagrees with the slogan is an uncultured, immoral brute. This is why accurate perception is always needed so that we don't get easily taken in by propaganda and mass blind beliefs.

I'm not saying that the above scenarios I presented are the actual forces behind the RH Bill. And I'm not saying we should junk the RH Bill. What I am saying is that we should all take a cold, hard and critical look at the effect the bill may have not only on the population but what it means for big business. And blindly jumping on the bandwagon (whether pro or anti) is not the answer. This issue is more than just about labeling pro-RH people as "immoral anti-life ogres" or anti-RH people as "brain-dead Church clones from the Middle Ages." Whether one chooses to be for or against the RH Bill, everyone owes it to themselves to know what they are standing for (or against) and, just as importantly, why.

Only if these concerns are thoroughly addressed can we be reassured that we are not merely passing a law that gives vested interests carte blanche to make billions of pesos worth of profits at the expense of the Filipino people. To be fair, some news reports say that the sponsors of the RH Bill are planning to introduce amendments to address the concerns raised by opponents of the bill, but again such amendments must be carefully scrutinized to make sure that they are not merely cosmetic changes. Any identified loopholes must be addressed effectively.

I've seen a newspaper ad in movie theatres that claims they "Answer the Questions and Question the Answers" but so far I'm not seeing that type of investigative reporting on the RH Bill issue. To quote from Sun Tzu's Art of War, on the subject of Laying Plans:

It is a matter of life and death, a road either to safety or to ruin. Hence it is a subject of inquiry which can on no account be neglected.

For the sake of our families and for the sake of our health, someone sure as heck should start on those hard questions.

The Meaning of Fear

The dictionary definition of fear describes it as: a distressing emotion aroused by impending danger, evil, pain, etc., whether the threat is real or imagined; the feeling or condition of being afraid. In light of the current trend of awakening and empowerment that is sweeping across the world, fear is getting quite a bad rap. We've all heard that it's fear that keeps us down. Fear is what keeps us separate from other people. And so on.

All the above assertions are correct, but just like with anything in God's creation, there must be a reason why fear has its place in the universe. For this reason, I would like to use this article to try to gain more of an understanding of this phenomenon called fear.

If we sat down and thought about it, fear is part of what keeps us alive. It's what makes us look before crossing the street, and it's also what stops us from grabbing a high voltage wire. If we had no fear of death or injury at all, our instinct for self-preservation would be so low that a lot more of us wouldn't have made it past our teenage years.

From here, we can identify some important characteristics of fear:

1. Fear induces self-control (to stop us from doing anything that would cause pain or injury).
2. Self-control through fear is only effective in the presence of external stimuli.
3. External stimuli will trigger a re-action; you act again (re-act) in the previously programmed response that was induced by fear.

The above statements may come as a surprise, since you would think that in this day and age, self control comes from the exercise of our will resulting from logical and rational conclusions combined with a recognition about what is best for us. But society is hardly an example of self control. Why else are there people who get fat and sick as a result of uncontrollable appetites, and why else would we need the presence of police to make sure people keep within the bounds of the law?

There are people who say that fear is just an illusion, and they're right. Fear is an illusion in the sense that it's not permanent, or at least it's not supposed to be. Fear is supposed to be a starting point. It calls your attention about what is harmful to you or to the people around you when your mind is unable to recognize it or unable to control what you are doing. A related aspect of fear is that it teaches you to respect any power or force that can be harmful or dangerous if treated carelessly.

What, then, should come after fear? As said earlier, fear induces self control. However, this self control only comes from the presence of an external factor. For example, the watchful eye of a policeman would prevent a pickpocket from plying his trade, whereas the absence of a policeman would embolden the criminal.

However, external factors come and go, so the amount of self control they may induce in you is also transitory. In order to make self control permanent, you must first face the fear and find out why you experienced pain or injury in the first place. When you study the situation dispassionately this way, you are now dealing with the situation on the mental rather than astral (emotional) level. Then the situation that caused the pain (and evoked the fear response) becomes a lesson learned, and so your exercise of self control becomes more permanent, because self control is now exercised through the conscious use of your own will. You are now acting, instead of reacting.

The problem, as most life coaches and psychotherapists would point out, is that people get stuck in the fear. In more extreme cases, fears can turn into phobias that are buried deep within the psyche. Without examining and confronting the source of the fear, the person is unable to move on.

We now can see that fear is simply a process we go through in the act of learning. This is why psychotherapy has been helpful in removing phobias or changing negative behavior when people recognize the causes of their fears. Needless to say, self-honesty is needed if any progress is to be made. The first step is to recognize that there is a situation that needs to be addressed. Second is to find out what caused the situation. Third is to take steps to resolve the situation. You can see how easy it is in any of the steps to delude oneself that there's no problem, or that it's the fault of someone else, or that there's nothing to be done about it.

Up to this point, I've been discussing fear based on my own observations. But how do my observations stack up when compared to the teachings of an esoteric spiritual system? Interestingly, we can find something similar in Kabbalah. In order to take a closer look at this topic, we need to use the Kabbalistic Tree of Life as a reference.

If you refer to the image of the Tree of Life below, notice how each of the sefira (the spheres with names on them) are connected by lines. Now on the left side of the tree, take note of the three sefira of Tiferet-Gevurah-Hod. In Kabbalah, these three sefira are called the Triad of Pain. The opposite triad, composed of Tiferet-Hesed-Netzah is called the Triad of Pleasure.

The book Total Kabbalah by Maggy Whitehouse describes the relationship of the two opposite triads as follows:

The left-hand triad is focused on the need to hold back to limit suffering and the right-hand side on the urge to grow, improve, and perfect the Self. The left-hand triad keeps us safe in times of danger but can also cause paralysis that prevents us from developing. The right-hand triad is our wish to grow but can lead to carelessness over one's responsibilities. 

As with anything dealing with the spiritual and esoteric, the opposing triads must work in harmony in order to have a balanced life.

The Hebrew term for courage, justice and judgement is "Gevurah." It is expressed as self-control because the characteristic of Gevurah is limitation. In pranic healing, the chakra correspondence of Gevurah is the solar plexus chakra, the seat of lower emotions. In its positive aspect, the solar plexus chakra expresses itself as courage and the drive to succeed. In its negative aspect, the solar plexus is the seat of greed, vindictiveness, and fear. This is why some people, when they get nervous, experience a hollow feeling in the pit of their stomach. It's their solar plexus chakra reacting.

The polar opposite of Gevurah is Hesed, which is the center of love, generosity and compassion. When Gevurah and Hesed work in harmony, there is expansion, inclusion and love tempered by good judgement and the setting of proper boundaries.

In the eyes of Kabbalah, fear is part of the Triad of Pain. Through the proper interaction with the urge to improve (Triad of Pleasure), we go beyond the fear to transform it into good judgement, the proper Gevuric expression of self-control.

If you would like a relatively complete and overall look at Kabbalah, I really recommend the book Total Kabbalah by Maggy Whitehouse. The topics are introductory yet are still explained well and it's amazing how the author has managed to include the many different concepts in Kabbalah in an easy-to-read book for the price of a good paperback novel. You can use the book as a launching pad for deeper study into specific Kabbalistic topics while remaining aware of how the topic fits into the whole picture. It's the most complete book on Kabbalah that I've read so far. I've seen this book available in most branches of National Bookstore, so you'll find it easy to purchase.

Since we're on the topic of fear, some of you may have wondered how the "fear of God" fits into the picture. Within the context of respecting an incomprehensible and overwhelming force, the "fear" of God makes some sense. I'm sure you would "fear" a black hole or a neutron star especially if you were sent near one, so what more God, who is infinitely more massive and powerful than a black hole or neutron star?

But actually, some Hebrew words in the Bible may have been translated into English as "fear" when they could also have meant something else. For example, the Hebrew word yirah could mean fear but can also mean awe, reverence, respect and devotion. Same with the word yare, which can be translated as fearful but also means to stand in awe, reverence or honor. Another Hebrew word, mowra, was translated into the word fear but also means reverence, object of reverence, or an awe inspiring spectacle or deed. The mentioned Hebrew words are consistent though in expressing the awe, reverence and respect that one would expect when face to face with an all powerful force like I mentioned earlier.

In the end, there are many more facets to fear than we first thought. But however we choose to look at fear, one thing remains the same, and it's that fear should be faced and then overcome. Fear is what indeed holds us down, but it is a burden borne by ignorance and dishonesty to oneself. From what we have seen it seems that in the overcoming of fear, the old adage still holds: The truth shall set you free.

Did Nature Just Weep?

What are we supposed to make of the recent flooding and devastation across Metro Manila and adjacent provinces that occurred this past week? God's retribution or human mismanagement?

On one level, the causes of the flooding are quite straightforward, and both the citizenry and the government played a role. For the government, poor urban planning and lack of political will to implement large-scale infrastructure development (e.g. the Sucat spillway that has been proposed since 1975) to address the causes of flooding have left us at the mercy of Mother Nature. Among the citizenry, careless disregard for the disposal of waste, building houses beside creeks and other environmentally unfriendly practices have helped magnify the effects of poor government planning and management.

Some people would describe the crazy weather as "apocalyptic" but actually, almost 40 years ago there was even worse rainfall in what was called the Great Flood of 1972 when for more than 2 weeks in September non-stop torrential rains submerged most of central Luzon and caused hundreds of deaths. In the absence of hard data such as level of rainfall then compared to now it's hard to make an assessment, but based merely on description it seemed the level of rainfall in 1972 was worse than it was the past week. However, it didn't seem to cause the same level of destruction and disruption that we see now. I'm sure the events of Ondoy will be forever etched into my memory, so it's remarkable that my parents hardly remember the great flood of 1972. But it probably helped that Metro Manila and a lot of Luzon was not as urbanized then, so the scale of destruction and impact on people was not as big as the recent flooding. So you could say that the recent flooding was more an "apocalypse" of our own making.

How would an esoteric scholar look at these recent events and, the way 2012 has been hyped up, the promise of more of the same to come?

An esoteric law states that "As above, so below; as below, so above." Meaning, everything is interconnected, so that what we may experience is merely a reflection of what is inside and vice versa. As described earlier, some of what we've experienced are pretty straightforward cause and effect scenarios. Throw trash in the waterways, expect flooding. However, there are other esoteric views about this.

In the book The 72 Names of God, there is interesting description for the 29th Name :

All destruction - including even natural disasters - occurs for one reason: humanity's hatred toward our fellow beings.

Kabbalah teaches that tornadoes, floods, earthquakes, and disease are born from the collective hatred that burns in our hearts. In truth, there is no such thing as a natural disaster, despite what our insurance policies say. Human behavior and the human heart are the sole determining factors as to what occurs in our environment and what transpires between nations.

Here's what the ancient Kabbalists had to say on this matter: If a person witnesses any form of hatred - on his own street or anywhere in the world - it means this person still has some measure of hatred lingering in his own soul.

If we harbor even the slightest bit of hatred or animosity for another person - for any reason whatsoever, valid or invalid, whether we're aware of it or whether we're in self-denial - we still bring destruction to the world.

By cleansing the hatred in our own hearts, we can remedy all the world's problems at once at the level of their root cause.

The passage above reminds me of what Yoda said in Star Wars I: The Phantom Menance: "Fear is the path to the Dark Side. Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate; hate leads to suffering." For all that we may smile at this movie quote, it still has a ring of truth to it.

But really, a lot of us have become familiar with the Law of Attraction which states that thought combined with desire results in manifestation. Of course no one consciously wishes for the destruction of the world, although a lot may wish for the destruction of their fellow men. But that seed thought combined with the destructive emotion of hate and anger has psychic weight. We exert a force upon our environment. Unexpressed this force may be for most of us, but we still scatter that unseen force around us, just waiting for the chance to explode. It's like throwing gasoline into a forest, an inferno just waiting for a joker with a carelessly thrown cigarette butt to start a wildfire.

Be that as it may, we are living at a time when all previous choices are coming to confront us. Naturally, the question is what we can do about it aside from the usual "take better care of Mother Nature." This brings me to a quote attributed to Master Choa Kok Sui from the All Gratitude page. The title of the article is The Secret of Real Survival, which I will share here (with some emphasis added) because it is very relevant for us:

I have been asked, in my lecture tours two main questions: "What is happening with the world?" I answered this one simply: "Many bad things are happening and they are beyond the control of men, beyond the manipulation of human mind and human hands."

The second is more personal: "How do I survive?" This is a very good question and I would like to give you a little note that I have from the Teachings of the Teacher.

Our life is a world of impermanence. We cling to impermanent things: wealth, money, gold, power and human recognition, desires of many forms. They all come and go.

The Inner World of the Higher Beings is filled with Permanence: Fruits of the Spirit, Unconditional Love, the Permanence of Spiritual Joy and Blissful Existence, Immortality of Human Consciousness, the Infinity of the Love of God to humanity, the unrelenting Service of the Avatars and the Higher Souls to mankind.

So the answer to our real survival is in the search of the Permanence; for in finding that, we become deathless for there is a thing called Immortality of Consciousness.

All things that are impermanent have to go. This is the Law of Nature. Inescapable. Immutable. Relentless.

The Permanent will live and life will go on for Nature will sustain the Beings, Consciousness and Vehicles of the Permanent.

How do we apply these Principles in relation to our personal survival?

a) Develop the higher consciousness of the Spirit for such will show the future reality of things and forthcoming events, for higher realization is partly seeing and sensing the inner world and includes skillful handling of situations in the world of men.

b) Work on developing the Higher Bodies for Nature will spare the rare and useful for its higher evolution. Men kill the rare and the useful but Nature sustains and gathers the best in its forms: Survival of the best and the fittest.

c) Etherically speaking: Develop the Golden Body, for a golden man is rare and is spiritually useful. We have to go one step higher than the chakras for all men have chakras but rare is the one who has the Golden Body.

I think Master Choa's words are quite clear on what type of changes we need to institute so I will just end by saying that after all is said and done, our ultimate fate is not determined by the government, other people, or even by the exemplars that we look up to. The key is always within us, because it's what we choose that matters. Somehow, someway, our choices will weave themselves into the effects that we will see reflected in our outside perceptions.

In that sense, Nature didn't weep. We did. But there is always hope, for what is important are the choices we make from this moment on. It may seem to be the most simplistic answer in the world, but if you follow it through it is also the most empowering one.

Vegetarianism Explained

The other month I wrote an article where I discussed the pivotal role nutrition plays in our life. Towards the end of the article, I touched upon the Nutritional Typing Method that Dr. Joseph Mercola advises people to follow. To summarize, Nutritional Typing posits that people metabolize their food differently. Because of this, what may be an excellent diet for one may lead to all types of illnesses for another. To use engines as a rough analogy, some people are diesel engines while others are gas engines, so what is fuel for one can lead to engine breakdown for the other. As the great Hippocrates (from whom the Hippocratic Oath originated) said: Let food be thy medicine and let thy medicine be food.

According to Dr. Mercola, he and his team have achieved phenomenal results by treating patients using Nutritional Typing. In Nutritional Typing, there are three types of people: Protein Types, Carbohydrate Types and Mixed Types. Protein Types need more protein and a greater percentage of healthy fats in their diet. Carbohydrate Types need more carbohydrates in their diet and do not metabolize fat so well, although they still need a certain amount of fat in the diet. Mixed Types are a combination of the two, the best of both worlds in a way, but with some of the limitations of both so this nutritional type is also the most challenging to manage.

Your Nutritional Type will determine what you need to eat and in what order. There is a free online test to determine your Nutritional Type and you can try it out by following this link. I myself have been following the general recommendations for my Nutritional Type and have verified some of the benefits mentioned. Of course, I haven't been able to follow the whole nutrition plan 100% because of limitations of what type of food is practical or available locally. Take note that aside from discovering your Nutritional Type, you should still avoid other nutritional disasters such as foods rich in refined sugars, artificial preservatives and trans fats.

Now here comes the ticker. Most spiritual systems advocate vegetarianism to varying degrees of strictness. A Carbohydrate Type would have no problem with being a full vegan as his/her body is built for it. But what happens if the spiritual aspirant finds out he/she is a Protein Type? What does one do?

The reason I'm re-hashing this topic is that earlier in the week, one of my friends referred me to one of the sections in Alice Bailey's Esoteric Psychology I that sheds more light into the role vegetarianism plays and under what conditions it becomes necessary. According to the Master D.K. through Alice Bailey:

It is known esoterically that the vegetable kingdom is the transmitter and the transformer of the vital pranic fluid to the other forms of life on our planet. That is its divine and unique function. This pranic fluid, in its form of the astral light, is the reflector of the divine akasha. The second plane therefore reflects itself in the astral plane. Those who seek to read the akashic records, or who endeavor to work upon the astral plane with impunity, and there to study the reflection of events in the astral light correctly, have perforce and without exception to be strict vegetarians. It is this ancient Atlantean lore which lies behind the vegetarian's insistence upon the necessity for a vegetarian diet, and which gives force and truth to this injunction. It is the failure to conform to this wise rule which has brought about the misinterpretations of the astral and akashic records by many of the psychics of the present time, and has given rise to the wild and incorrect reading of past lives. Only those who have been for ten years strict vegetarians can work thus in what might be called the "record aspect of the astral light." (emphasis mine)

From the above passage, it seems that esoterically speaking there is a very narrow (albeit important) application for vegetarianism. The corollary then is that if one had no intention to become a seer or work with the akashic records directly, then one need not be vegetarian. This is stated in a later passage from the same quote:

But unless the goal of a vegetarian diet is this field of service, the arguments for its following and for that form of diet are usually futile and of no real moment. From the standpoint of the eternal verities, what a man eats or wears are seen in a connotation very different to that of the one-pointed fanatic.

It's interesting because without the above qualifying statements in Esoteric Psychology I, the following passage from Alice Bailey's Esoteric Healing may make little sense:

No set diet could be entirely correct for a group of people on different rays, of different temperaments and equipment, and at various ages. Individuals are every one of them unlike on some points; they require to find out what it is that they, as individuals, need, in what manner their bodily requirements can best be met, and what type of substances can enable them best to serve. Each person must find this out for himself. There is no group diet. No enforced elimination of meat is required, or strict vegetarian diet compulsory.

What Alice Bailey is saying in the above passage essentially supports the notion of Nutritional Typing, and if one is a Protein Type one need not look less at oneself for retaining a meat-based diet unless one intends to work directly with the akashic records. Apparently, the paradox of vegetarianism vis-a-vis spiritual practice has been reconciled. Of course the question is, for a Protein Type would the resulting poor health from following a strictly vegetarian diet be worth the ability to work with the akashic records? It certainly depends on what type of esoteric service or soul mission one is intended to pursue in this incarnation.

One may argue that one needs a healthy body in order to serve properly, and this is for the most part correct. But let me inject a comment made by T. Lobsang Rampa in his books. According to Lobsang Rampa, when the physical body is sick or frail, it is easier to work on the astral and develop one's psychic talents. There seems to be some support for this because we keep hearing accounts of people who had very high fevers, were seriously ill or were on the brink of death who report seeing visions, seeing departed loved ones or having out of body experiences. Perhaps when the physical body is sick, it is closer to death to a certain degree, and so the physical-astral matrix (to use a term from Franz Bardon's teachings) loosens, allowing the astral and mental body to work more freely with less magnetic restriction from the physical shell.

The point of all this is that there are many avenues of service, and there are many ways by which said service may be developed or followed. We all know that each person is unique and the spiritual path does not offer an exception to this rule. But as we strive to live properly, know our soul mission or find the best path to follow in our spiritual quest, the more it becomes important to know thyself.

Let me clarify that by no means is all this the last word on this topic. But it should give you a reference point to build on. The freedom to choose entails the responsibility to know. Know what you are choosing and, more importantly, why you are choosing it. Otherwise, much of our spiritual practice will be for naught since we would end up following dogma and tradition instead of using our God-given mental faculties to make fully informed decisions, decisions that are backed up with an acceptance of the consequences (or benefits) that those decisions may entail.