What Is Chiropractic Anyway?
This blog is no longer in use. Please refer to www.spinewave.co.nz
September 06, 2007
WICA (30) Special Issue: My First Five Years
Healing comes from you, not to you. As I look back over my first five years in chiropractic and the quintessential thoughts that gave rise to the writings which distilled to the surface, I recall the simplicity of it all. The elegant simplicity of the idea this profession was founded on.
I sat in my first "health care class" all those years ago, presented by the same chiropractors who still check me today. With all the knowledge we acquire, with the entire physiologic and philosophical ramble that enhances and enriches us to the point of total saturation, the elegant simplicity of thought that a nerve system without interference has the power to heal is timeless. And with the nerve system being the ultimate tool of thought and creation; love, emotion and desire; the interface between you and the world around you, the philosophy extends far beyond the objective here and now. This healing art can be a gateway to understanding all subjective experience in this life - depending how far down the rabbit hole one wants to go.
I was reminded recently about what I said that evening of the health care class. Having no prior experience with chiropractic, but being marginally well educated, I thought I knew something about the way of the world. Yet, allegedly, it was reported I exclaimed after the class, "This is brilliant! Why isn't this room full?"
So therein also lies a lesson for the doctor: No matter how few you're presenting to, not only could you be creating a lifetime patient, but another doctor of chiropractic with vision beyond sight. In that instant, it all made sense to me. Compounded quickly by years of frustration as to why I hadn't seen it like this before. In that instant, plans were actioned promptly to do what needed to be done. I had no idea I was living a short drive from one of the best colleges in the world. I had no idea how much it would cost. I had no idea how I would be accredited. I had no idea how long it would take. So making a life altering decision in a moment like that was irony defined for someone who occasionally takes fifteen minutes to choose a pair of pants in the morning.
Something as simple as a thought placed in the centre of one's life can be the source of all contempt or the source of all life.
I had travelled halfway round the world to find new beginnings and, boy, did I find them. The work and toil to get through college is inconsequential to the gift of understanding that I have acquired over the last five years about my place in the universe. The fact that there is no "me" to start with and that I'm only a witness to these writings makes me laugh already. That the human physiology is part of the cosmic physiology and every rhythm of the universe naturally has an effect on the individual and vice versa, in the words of Maharishi Yogi. That I can give up my positionalities on genetic determinism and false healing pretenses. That I can give up my positionalities on biomedical paradigms. That I can give up the pay-offs for making excuses about things I don't feel I am worthy of, nor deserve, nor can achieve for lack of stoic self concept. That I know my ego can now relinquish all these things through the understanding of chiropractic teachings, I am eternally grateful. That I have found a new zest for spiritual awareness where once before I only trundled amongst man-made constructs, and that I can connect to the Divine without the middle man any time I choose, I am also grateful.
Healing comes from you, not to you. A very sickly man was once in need of help where no help could be offered by any conventional means. He was told to seek out the saintliest of healers on the highest of mountain peaks. For days the man walked to find him. And when he did, he came upon the healer kneeling by a creek, praying. The man knelt down next to him, but in that moment, the healer thrust the man's head into the water. Believing this was a test, the man did not struggle initially. But the seconds wore on and his lungs were beginning to burn. He began to writhe, thinking now the healer was surely going to murder him for disturbing his state of placid meditation. The healer then jerked his head clear of the water and the man gasped like he had forgotten what it was ever like to breathe. "Are you trying to kill me?!" he panted in exhaustion. The reply came, "When you truly want healing, it will come as easily as that first breath."
I sat in my first "health care class" all those years ago, presented by the same chiropractors who still check me today. With all the knowledge we acquire, with the entire physiologic and philosophical ramble that enhances and enriches us to the point of total saturation, the elegant simplicity of thought that a nerve system without interference has the power to heal is timeless. And with the nerve system being the ultimate tool of thought and creation; love, emotion and desire; the interface between you and the world around you, the philosophy extends far beyond the objective here and now. This healing art can be a gateway to understanding all subjective experience in this life - depending how far down the rabbit hole one wants to go.
I was reminded recently about what I said that evening of the health care class. Having no prior experience with chiropractic, but being marginally well educated, I thought I knew something about the way of the world. Yet, allegedly, it was reported I exclaimed after the class, "This is brilliant! Why isn't this room full?"
So therein also lies a lesson for the doctor: No matter how few you're presenting to, not only could you be creating a lifetime patient, but another doctor of chiropractic with vision beyond sight. In that instant, it all made sense to me. Compounded quickly by years of frustration as to why I hadn't seen it like this before. In that instant, plans were actioned promptly to do what needed to be done. I had no idea I was living a short drive from one of the best colleges in the world. I had no idea how much it would cost. I had no idea how I would be accredited. I had no idea how long it would take. So making a life altering decision in a moment like that was irony defined for someone who occasionally takes fifteen minutes to choose a pair of pants in the morning.
Something as simple as a thought placed in the centre of one's life can be the source of all contempt or the source of all life.
I had travelled halfway round the world to find new beginnings and, boy, did I find them. The work and toil to get through college is inconsequential to the gift of understanding that I have acquired over the last five years about my place in the universe. The fact that there is no "me" to start with and that I'm only a witness to these writings makes me laugh already. That the human physiology is part of the cosmic physiology and every rhythm of the universe naturally has an effect on the individual and vice versa, in the words of Maharishi Yogi. That I can give up my positionalities on genetic determinism and false healing pretenses. That I can give up my positionalities on biomedical paradigms. That I can give up the pay-offs for making excuses about things I don't feel I am worthy of, nor deserve, nor can achieve for lack of stoic self concept. That I know my ego can now relinquish all these things through the understanding of chiropractic teachings, I am eternally grateful. That I have found a new zest for spiritual awareness where once before I only trundled amongst man-made constructs, and that I can connect to the Divine without the middle man any time I choose, I am also grateful.
Healing comes from you, not to you. A very sickly man was once in need of help where no help could be offered by any conventional means. He was told to seek out the saintliest of healers on the highest of mountain peaks. For days the man walked to find him. And when he did, he came upon the healer kneeling by a creek, praying. The man knelt down next to him, but in that moment, the healer thrust the man's head into the water. Believing this was a test, the man did not struggle initially. But the seconds wore on and his lungs were beginning to burn. He began to writhe, thinking now the healer was surely going to murder him for disturbing his state of placid meditation. The healer then jerked his head clear of the water and the man gasped like he had forgotten what it was ever like to breathe. "Are you trying to kill me?!" he panted in exhaustion. The reply came, "When you truly want healing, it will come as easily as that first breath."
To my family, healers and teachers: I am forever thankful.
In our lives the miraculous is ongoing and continuous.
In our lives the miraculous is ongoing and continuous.
© Neil R. Bossenger 2007
New Zealand
Notes.
- Past issues are now available at the WICA homepage.
- If you received this letter as a forward and would like to be added to the mailing list directly, please send an e-mail to neil.nzchiro@gmail.com with 'add me' in the subject line.
August 04, 2007
WICA (29) Potentiality
The methods of philosophers are not those of empirical science, since their methods are a priori rather than a posteriori, and this means that philosophers evaluate information that is independent of experience, not that which they have already observed. The aim of philosophers is therefore to state analytical truths. And the truth or falsity of an analytical proposition is subject to its meaning: What does it mean? In the other camp of thought, if a proposition is not empirical, i.e. it cannot be understood by observation of the observable world, then it is said to be meaningless. But, as free thinking children of God, to be self righteous in the stance that something is not true by empirical understanding alone, and to call it meaningless, would be a naive absurdity and I would have to take you into a separate room for a quiet word.
Meaning, therefore, is a very subjective experience. It is the fabric of an attempt to answer the questions, what are we doing here and what's the point? The experience becomes a life-long process. And one's life cannot be disassociated into separate parts to explain how you've become the person you are today. It's a collective experience of thousands of contributions and thousands of decisions. Without the process, you would not be... you. It is this process of the collective experience of all things which has evolved your state of being in the world. The process has imbued your mind and body with the potentiality to affect not only your own life, but the lives of everyone around you. It is a sense of vitality that puts out a field to change the world around you. This is non duality right here, friends. You, and the world around you, are not independent. Who you've become, your sense of vitality, and how you choose to participate in the world as choices are presented to you, creates its own field that affects everyone and everything.
The essence of vitality is that we are more than just the sum of our parts. In growth as human beings we wish to experience life in all its fullness and this requires vitality. Vitality is an idea that the processes of life are not explicable by the laws of physics and chemistry alone. Vitality is a subjective experience. It is the domain of spiritual awareness, consciousness, life and existence itself. If you were to ask someone what the three most valuable things in their life are, generally it boils down to: Faith, family, and business. But without true vitality, one cannot fully experience any of these and they become meaningless. Without meaning, there is no power.
Meaning can be derived through better expression of man the spiritual. D.D. Palmer once wrote that physicians deal with the physical while chiropractors deal with both man the physical and man the spiritual. Often people think that they're being driven by their past decisions, when really they're pulled into their future. This is potentiality becoming actuality. For instance, if one were to plant a sunflower seed and watch it grow day by day. No matter how much you bay and bawl at the small plant, raising clenched fists to the heavens, commanding God to create a tomato plant, a sunflower will still become the actuality. However, what the sunflower needs to achieve its potential are the right conditions: a little sunshine and a bit of water, and the sunflower is perfect in its own right. Reconnecting man the physical and man the spiritual requires the right conditions and extends beyond the empirical understanding of the world around you because you are not independent of it. The universe is non linear, it is only one's perception of sequential events that makes one think it's linear - a this causing a that. Your thoughts don't have any meaning either, only the meaning of that which you give them. Therefore it comes down to spiritual choices, pulling you into the future to which you were destined to become. And in the abundance of our universe, we are only limited to that which we choose to give, or not give meaning.
© Neil R. Bossenger 2007
New Zealand
Notes.
- For those who are aware of the research I've been doing on heart rate variability since July 2006, I'm proud to announce that a research grant of NZ$7,000 has been approved by the Hamblin Trust Fund. As a result, and with the tempo of the final months of chiropractic college picking up, WICA is being reduced to a monthly issue.
- I am also pleased to announce that as of July 23, 2007, after swearing allegiance to Elizabeth, I am now proudly Kiwi and can move through customs without being bitten by the Green Mamba.
- Past issues are now available at the WICA homepage.
- If you received this letter as a forward and would like to be added to the mailing list directly, please send an e-mail to neil.nzchiro@gmail.com with 'add me' in the subject line.
July 08, 2007
WICA (28) Chiropractic Market Revisited
Like war is not the opposite of peace, vitality is not the opposite of disease. One glance at the Ego of any young soldier in the Middle East today clearly demonstrates that it is not dedicated to peace. It's fuelled by the desire for, and dedication to war itself. It is a stance of duality. The realm of the Ego sets up the perception of opposites, which turns the wheels of mentation onto a presumed self-existent "objective" universe, independent of the observer. It presumes that there is an "out there" independent of an "in here". Stating this objectively is already a subjective statement. All information, knowledge and the totality of all experience is the product of subjectivity, which is an absolute requirement intrinsic to life, existence, awareness and thought. War is simply the absence of peace, not it's opposite. A peace that is always present and readily available.
One might say that one of chiropractic's biggest competitors in the market today may be the ignorance of the market itself. Though this may be true to a certain extent, we are moving into an age where integrity is valued above success. The cars, the houses, the money... it doesn't mean a thing if one feels the individual lacks integrity, and we are moving into an age where health consumers are becoming more self aware. Artemus Ward said that "it ain't so much the things we don't know that get us into trouble, it's the things we do know that just ain't so." Meaning that the market already understands that the human being has the capacity to self heal and self create, it has just not been provided with accurate information and the tools to appropriately embrace these tenets so therefore chooses to ignore other possibilities. Yet at the same time, the market of serious health consumers is already starting to question current models of mainstream health care. Water can only flow where the canal is built, and this week in my personal quest for the future, I have begun to mix the mortar.
The consumer is becoming more self aware and cognisant of integrity these days because, for the most part, the serious health care consumer is smarter than he or she has ever been in the history of the world. They can see through people like a sheet of cellophane and if the health care provider isn't seriously concerned with the individual's well being, he or she will pick it up instantly. They don't need to think about it. They know immediately whether the provider is concerned about him or herself, or whether the provider is concerned with the individual's best interests.
So now the new challenge is laid forth in putting knowledge into action by providing the market with appropriate information that can explain chiropractic and its tenets across every model of chiropractic that is currently employed with a single voice. Vitality is always present, like a continuum from cold to hot. Hot is not the opposite of cold. Coldness is merely the absence of heat. When vitality is not present, one is found at a lower end of the continuum toward disease, but largely this is a subjective experience: Invisible and immeasurable, however all that is really meaningful and significant in human life. Subjectivity and vitality is the domain of spirituality, life, consciousness, awareness and existence itself. The quality of experience in this life is determined by the spiritual choices one makes from moment to moment, so one would think that they ought to be good ones.
The consumer is becoming more self aware and cognisant of integrity these days because, for the most part, the serious health care consumer is smarter than he or she has ever been in the history of the world. They can see through people like a sheet of cellophane and if the health care provider isn't seriously concerned with the individual's well being, he or she will pick it up instantly. They don't need to think about it. They know immediately whether the provider is concerned about him or herself, or whether the provider is concerned with the individual's best interests.
So now the new challenge is laid forth in putting knowledge into action by providing the market with appropriate information that can explain chiropractic and its tenets across every model of chiropractic that is currently employed with a single voice. Vitality is always present, like a continuum from cold to hot. Hot is not the opposite of cold. Coldness is merely the absence of heat. When vitality is not present, one is found at a lower end of the continuum toward disease, but largely this is a subjective experience: Invisible and immeasurable, however all that is really meaningful and significant in human life. Subjectivity and vitality is the domain of spirituality, life, consciousness, awareness and existence itself. The quality of experience in this life is determined by the spiritual choices one makes from moment to moment, so one would think that they ought to be good ones.
© Neil R. Bossenger 2007
New Zealand
Notes.
- Past issues are now available at the WICA homepage.
- If you received this letter as a forward and would like to be added to the mailing list directly, please send an e-mail to neil.nzchiro@gmail.com with 'add me' in the subject line.
June 12, 2007
WICA (27) The Mustard Seed
Certain levels of consciousness exist within ourselves, society and throughout the world. Levels of shame, guilt and apathy to levels of reason, love, joy, peace and enlightenment. Largely society exists within the realm of reason. That is the world of the school; the professor; the university; where life is directed by reason and education. Society stresses education above all else. Education is the road for determining one's career, one's income and one's social status. Levels above reason are beyond Newtonian understanding for if something cannot be weighed or measured then it doesn't exist in that context, but we all know that's a naïve absurdity because the universe doesn't come to a crashing halt with our inability to process complex data. According to David Hawkins, only 4% of the population ever transcends the level of reason [1].
Man's destiny is shaped by seemingly small events. A phone call that wasn't made or a flight that was missed. The course is altered rapidly with chaotic, exponential effects in a direction completely different to what one might have intended. In fact, chaos is defined as exactly that: A small variation in initial conditions producing wildly different results. This is an interruption to a pattern due to minuscule change, and new results are only ever achieved by interrupting patterns.
I hardly ever plan these articles, least of all intentionally attempt to script passages from the bible into my work, but the words 'mustard seed' came immediately to the fore when I was considering this topic and I have no idea why. Given that I understood the universe is governed by an organizing intelligence and we all exist as one pervasive consciousness from an early age, I never even listened in bible school. Yet somehow, because there is no such thing as causality, because everything is the result of everything else in its totality, the parable was on my frequency at this moment:
Another story by way of comparison He set forth before them, saying, The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed which a man took and sowed in his field. Of all the seeds it is the smallest, but when it has grown it is the largest of the garden herbs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and find shelter in its branches [2].
The sages of our world's history that operated within the levels of peace and enlightenment were the Great Teachers and, like Jesus, taught through parables. From the onset they were open to interpretation because if the Teachers weren't, then they would merely be telling people what to think, do and believe. One is encouraged to seek what they sought.
The adjustment is what happens after the hands leave the body. And therein is the moment of change. Chiropractic affects change at a subconscious level and neurological associations are altered without one being aware. The interruption of old patterns provides a small window of opportunity to be still. For just a moment. The mustard seed was generally the smallest amongst seeds sown in the garden, but the parable was interpreted to mean that great things start from seemingly small seeds of information or a suggestion.
D.D. Palmer defined the mental impulse as "an incitement of the mind by innate or spirit in the form of an abrupt and vivid suggestion, prompting some unpremeditated action or leading to unforeseen knowledge" [3]. The body uses the suggestive information in a process of self creation. Self creation means moving forward, not moving backward to a status before one's visit to the chiropractor. To evolve. To be more creative in one's life. The kingdom is the here and now, readily accessible and deserved by everyone.
The concept of mental impulse is highly debated within the chiropractic fraternity and since society functions primarily at the level of reason, it is refuted because it cannot be measured. D.D.'s son, B.J. Palmer, suggested that the innate intelligence of the body is the "sum total of individualistic mental impulses, each of which is composed of multitudes of intellectual immaterial units of energy, after they have been received at the brain and transformed for the needs of the body" [4]. Quite simply, intention shapes the matrix of this intelligence and you ultimately become what you think.
The overwhelming evidence that supports dramatic improvement in quality of life through chiropractic care [5-9] oftentimes cannot be explained by reason and, like religious dogma, is condemned to Hades because it is too much for the intellect to compute. The irony is though that the less one thinks about it, the easier it becomes to understand.
© Neil R. Bossenger 2007
New Zealand
Notes
- Hawkins, D., The consciousness level of America, in The Highest Level of Enlightenment, Nightingale Conant: USA.
- Matthew 13: 31-32., The Amplified Bible. 1983, USA: Zondervan Publishing House.
- Palmer, D.D., The Chiropractor's Adjustor. 1910, Portland: Portland Printing House Company.
- Senzon, S., A history of the mental impulse: Theoretical construct or scientific reality? Chiropractic History, 2001. 21(2): p. 64.
- Blanks, R.H.I. and T.L. Schuster, A retrospective assessment of network care using a survey of self-rated health, wellness and quality of life. Journal of Vertebral Subluxation Research, 1997. 1(4): p. 1.
- Boone, W.R., et al., Physical, physiological, and immune status changes, coupled with self-perceptions of health and quality of life, in subjects receiving chiropractic care: A pilot study. Journal of Vertebral Subluxation Research, 2006. July 5: p. 1-6.
- Hannon, S.M., Objective Physiologic Changes and Associated Health Benefits of Chiropractic Adjustments in Asymptomatic Subjects: A Review of the Literature. Journal of Vertebral Subluxation Research, 2004. April 26: p. 1-9.
- Kirk, R., et al., Quality of Life Changes in a Disadvantaged, Underserved Chiropractic Patient Population: A Retrospective Case Series Report. Journal of Vertebral Subluxation Research, 2005. April 15: p. 1-3.
- Marino, M.J. and M.L. Phillippa, A longitudinal assessment of chiropractic care using a survey of self-rated health wellness & quality of life: a preliminary study. Journal of Vertebral Subluxation Research, 1999. 3(2): p. 1-9.
- Past issues are now available at the WICA homepage.
- If you received this letter as a forward and would like to be added to the mailing list directly, please send an e-mail to neil.nzchiro@gmail.com with 'add me' in the subject line.
May 13, 2007
WICA (26) Caveat Emptor
The typical mid life crisis usually requires only slight modifications to lifestyle and behaviour, such as trading in the old car for a new car. Or if one is inclined to peaking early, a quarter life crisis may mean dropping out of university and packing the bags for a foreign destination. Slight modifications to behaviour are continuous, i.e. you're still driving a car, it's just new, or you're still confused as to what to do with your life, you're just in a different country now. A discontinuous behaviour means adapting lifestyle and behaviour to a completely new modal of thinking. Adopting a behaviour that has not existed in one's life before. Only a small percentage usually has the courage to take on the challenge of new thought and behaviour; to change their lives for the better. While the group behind them does likewise purely because it seems like a good idea, however not done of their own volition. And then there are the traditionalists who will never change for love nor money.
The question is often raised: If my body, and each cell therein, is completely renewed every year, then how is it that I still experience the same conditions over and over again? It's because behaviour never changes. And behaviour is an energy pattern - the lines along which cellular reconstruction takes place. Thoughts become actions through habitual patterns and as a traditionalist these will never change. A new energy pattern requires a quantum leap of new thought. "Men ought to know that from the brain, and from the brain only, arise our pleasures, joys, laughter and jests, as well as our sorrows, pains, griefs and tears. Through it, in particular, we think, see, hear, and distinguish the ugly from the beautiful, the bad from the good, and the pleasant from the unpleasant. It is the same thing which makes us mad or delirious, inspires us with dread and fear, whether by night or by day, brings sleeplessness, inopportune mistakes, aimless anxieties, absent-mindedness, and acts that are contrary to habit" [1].
The spine is not covered under warranty and the consumer must take responsibility for the service he or she purchases: caveat emptor (Latin. "Let the buyer beware"). The irony is that it's not the traditionalist who seeks chiropractic for front line health care, but it's the traditionalist they meet. Herzog [2] wrote that reflex changes in the nervous system which accompany a high-velocity, low amplitude thrust are not dependent on the audible "pop", nor are they dependent on the magnitude of the force applied [3]. A paper by Bakker and Miller [4] states that possibly the greatest therapeutic benefit of the audible release may not be physiological in nature but rather psychological. The joint crack may have a powerful placebo effect on both the patient and practitioner. Both patient and doctor have come to expect an audible release and when the expectations, especially of the patient, are not fulfilled, this may have a negative affect on the clinical outcome. If an audible release is achieved, especially with reinforcement from the practitioner, then a powerful placebo effect may be expected.
The audible pop of a joint is usually hailed as the hallmark of a successful adjustment, even though the desired reflex changes are not dependent on them, and the accuracy of where an adjustment is aimed, and where the "cavitation" actually occurs, is only fifty percent true [5]. So state your purpose then, because adjusting a joint again after it has cavitated without an audible release can be damaging [4]. Shifting from this mindset of what supposed clinical success is may present the mid life or - in the student's case - quarter life crisis. Making the quantum leap in understanding the autonomic nervous system's subtle control of the body may pose an issue for the traditionalist transfixed on simply buying a new car, instead of considering a different vehicle of consciousness altogether. The second irony is: That for the traditional reader of these concepts, not a single behaviour will change. And neither will the position of chiropractic in today's health care market.
© Neil Bossenger 2007
New Zealand
Notes
- Hippocrates, 5th century B.C.
- Herzog, W., On sounds and reflexes. JMPT, 1996. 19(3): p. 216-218.
- Cooperstein, R., Sacroiliac Function and the Gait Mechanism. Dynamic Chiropractic, 1998. 16(19).
- Bakker, M. and J. Miller, Does an audible release improve the outcome of a chiropractic adjustment? J Can Chiropr Assoc, 2004. 48(3).
- Ross, J.K., D.E. Berznick, and S.M. McGill, Determining cavitation location during lumbar and thoracic spinal manipulation. Spine, 2004. 29(13): p. 1452-1457.
- Past issues are now available at the WICA homepage.
- If you received this letter as a forward and would like to be added to the mailing list directly, please send an e-mail to neil.nzchiro@gmail.com with 'add me' in the subject line.
April 21, 2007
WICA (25) Form Follows Function
The human body is made up of over a trillion cells. Each cell, on average, undergoes about 100,000 chemical reactions per second [1]. An exquisite feat considering the innumerable functions throughout each system the body must co-ordinate simultaneously for perfect homoeostasis, and further, autopoeisis, which is continual self creation. It has to be understood that in order for this to occur, even at a simplistic level, quantum theories have to be applied to the human being. A mechanical, spinal model of understanding in chiropractic is no longer feasible. It almost falls under Era I of Larry Dossey's three major periods in the history of medicine [2]. This was when drugs and surgery were the modal of choice in the 1850s, opposed to a twenty-first century Era III, which embraces that within the matrix of consciousness, we have the ability to reach out beyond ourselves and heal others.
Health is a state of perfect subatomic communication and ill health is a state of communication break down. Ill health can also be viewed as the body responding inappropriately. For appropriate communication and subsequent function, the organism needs to be completely self aware at all times, and then perfect form follows perfect function. Current research - which to relay would be beyond the scope of this prose - illustrates that communication is local and non local. The body is a sea of energy. If two sticks were placed in the sand at the edge of this sea, and a wave washed in, both would fall at the same time. If the observer wasn't aware of the wave, it would appear one stick affected the other non locally. This is the field of cellular communication because each cell emits a field - it is how magnetic resonance images are able to be captured. When energy reaches a certain threshold, molecules vibrate in unison, create coherence and exhibit quantum qualities, affecting each other non locally. Practically, this implies that addressing one area of the body will have quantum effects in other regions, warranting re-investigation and not owning what was found on first examination. The body's communication systems are akin to the internet: Logging on connects one everywhere, simultaneously.
Further, cells are known to emit light. There is abundant historical reference to our spiritual nature being associated with light, and there are physiological structures and functions in the brain that could organise endogenous light (light from within) into resonant interference patterns [3]. Since interference patterns can themselves interfere with one another, endogenous light in the brain may interact with a broader substrate of interfering light in its own frame of reference (God) to produce consciousness. A hologram of sorts. And consciousness is a state of awareness the body requires for self preservation and self creation.
Albert Einstein, Time's "person of the century" [4], stated that the only reality is the field. So it is time now, as emerging chiropractors of the next generation in health care provision, to bridge the explanatory gap: That which fails to explain consciousness in terms of present neuroanatomical and neurophysiologic knowledge. However, it is at least here that we must begin our journey in changing the face of chiropractic and shifting public perception of the profession. If not; if chiropractic retains its façade of mechanistic manipulations for conditions that have little relevance to the objectives so many practitioners claim to serve, then the profession will never be able to reclaim its long-lost heritage because the race for higher levels of consciousness in health care will be swallowed by the mediocrity of services that are suddenly emerging, basing what they have to offer on the current research chiropractors do not read. The more we learn, the easier it is for others to follow in our footsteps.
Health is a state of perfect subatomic communication and ill health is a state of communication break down. Ill health can also be viewed as the body responding inappropriately. For appropriate communication and subsequent function, the organism needs to be completely self aware at all times, and then perfect form follows perfect function. Current research - which to relay would be beyond the scope of this prose - illustrates that communication is local and non local. The body is a sea of energy. If two sticks were placed in the sand at the edge of this sea, and a wave washed in, both would fall at the same time. If the observer wasn't aware of the wave, it would appear one stick affected the other non locally. This is the field of cellular communication because each cell emits a field - it is how magnetic resonance images are able to be captured. When energy reaches a certain threshold, molecules vibrate in unison, create coherence and exhibit quantum qualities, affecting each other non locally. Practically, this implies that addressing one area of the body will have quantum effects in other regions, warranting re-investigation and not owning what was found on first examination. The body's communication systems are akin to the internet: Logging on connects one everywhere, simultaneously.
Further, cells are known to emit light. There is abundant historical reference to our spiritual nature being associated with light, and there are physiological structures and functions in the brain that could organise endogenous light (light from within) into resonant interference patterns [3]. Since interference patterns can themselves interfere with one another, endogenous light in the brain may interact with a broader substrate of interfering light in its own frame of reference (God) to produce consciousness. A hologram of sorts. And consciousness is a state of awareness the body requires for self preservation and self creation.
Albert Einstein, Time's "person of the century" [4], stated that the only reality is the field. So it is time now, as emerging chiropractors of the next generation in health care provision, to bridge the explanatory gap: That which fails to explain consciousness in terms of present neuroanatomical and neurophysiologic knowledge. However, it is at least here that we must begin our journey in changing the face of chiropractic and shifting public perception of the profession. If not; if chiropractic retains its façade of mechanistic manipulations for conditions that have little relevance to the objectives so many practitioners claim to serve, then the profession will never be able to reclaim its long-lost heritage because the race for higher levels of consciousness in health care will be swallowed by the mediocrity of services that are suddenly emerging, basing what they have to offer on the current research chiropractors do not read. The more we learn, the easier it is for others to follow in our footsteps.
© Neil Bossenger 2007
New Zealand
Notes and references
- McTaggart, L., The Field. 2001, UK: HarperCollins Publishers.
- Dossey, L., Reinventing Medicine. 1999, USA: HarperSanFrancisco.
- Simanonok, K., Endogenous light nexus theory of consciousness, in Tucson 2000: Toward a Science of Consciousness. 2000, Center for Consciousness Studies: Arizona.
- Golden, F. Person of the Century: Albert Einstein. Time 2000 [cited 12 April 2007]; Available from: www.time.com.
- Past issues are now available at the WICA homepage.
- If you received this letter as a forward and would like to be added to the mailing list directly, please send an e-mail to neil.nzchiro@gmail.com with 'add me' in the subject line.
March 29, 2007
WICA (24) Drive
This issue is dedicated to Dr Phil McMaster for his endeavours in philosophy at the
WICA (24) Drive
Any inferences made about conscious revolution should always be broached with caution. For one, people look at you as though you've finally dropped your last marble and are blindly padding around on hands and knees for it because that's not what we were taught! That's not how things are! That's not how life works! Oh, neo-Darwinists, bless them. And for two, it would bode well in one's favour to be armed to the teeth with a list as long as one's arm of well-respected references.
And I can’t help but ask myself how much I'll let the fear take the wheel and steer
Where did it all go wrong? Why do I always have to defend what I do so tenaciously in society today when there is so much evidence to support every premise chiropractic embraces? Danah Zohar observed in The Quantum Self that "
It's driven me before; it seems to have a vague haunting mass appeal
Changing the biocultural mindset to embrace an energy framework would require either a giant leap of faith at this point, or a-whole-nother twelve years of schooling, undoing everything that's been done, rewriting text books and returning the focus of belief systems to the pervasive intelligence of the universe. An intelligence that collectively desires to express itself in the best manner possible within all things and, within man, to continually express itself intellectually and physically higher in the scale of evolution. Some have called this life force flowing through the universe 'collective consciousness', while theologians have termed it, the Holy Spirit.
Lately I'm beginning to find that I should be the one behind the wheel
Why science of the twentieth century didn't do chiropractic any favours is because the principles of that time couldn't support what our forefathers understood intuitively. They taught that the ultimate goal of chiropractic was the perfection of the human spirit, because the spirit is eternal and the body is not, and that it tends always to express itself fully, not only through the nervous system, but through the entire organism as a communicative whole. Intuition, innate intelligence and instinct are all inherent products of collective consciousness, and therein lies the practical way forward to embrace the true source of power: Biological decision making.
It's driven me before; it seems to be the way that everyone else gets around
Field + Matter = Structure. The power derived from the field, the source, the spirit, the universal intelligence, integrated with the physical matter of the body, derives structure and function. This is the science of today. And the Palmer science of yesteryear was such that "the chiropractor looks upon the body as more than a machine, a union of consciousness and unconsciousness, Innate's ability to transfer impulses to all parts of the body - the co-ordination of sensation and volition: A personified immaterial spirit and body linked together by the soul - a life directed by intelligence uniting the immaterial with the material". So if a stage of consciousness can be loosely defined as a level of awareness in the world, the science of chiropractic's forefathers was so ahead of its time that it should raise deep, concerning questions within every individual of the profession as to where chiropractic should be right now and why it isn't there.
Lately, I'm beginning to find that when I drive myself, my light is found
The practical way forward is biological decision making. This is learning to understand the communication the body holds with one's own consciousness everyday. For example, one has no conscious control over diarrhoea. If it's time to go, it's time. The body communicates with consciousness. Walking into a room of friends, one might feel uplifted. Being down at work is a communication that something needs to be explored or altered. Your body talks to you. Spirit communicates through matter. But are you listening? Do you mask the signs? Do you ignore them? The brain has the most outstanding ability to funnel stress from the field that it cannot deal with, from the senses, down into the body. There it resides, weakening the audibility of communication from body to consciousness. Over time the signals become so weak they're not even heard any more. A stage of consciousness is a sustainable mode of being in the world, i.e. a worldview. The more that an individual contacts higher states, the more the experiences from those states inform one's everyday level of awareness [3]. Let chiropractic be your vehicle of consciousness.
Hold the wheel and drive [4].
© Neil Bossenger 2007
Notes and references
- Zohar, D., The Quantum Self. 1991,
- McTaggart, L., The Field. 2001,
- Senzon, S., The secret history of chiropractic. 2005,
- Lyrics by Incubus., Drive. 1999,
- Past issues are now available at the WICA homepage.
- If you received this letter as a forward and would like to be added to the mailing list directly, please send an e-mail to neil.nzchiro@gmail.com with 'add me' in the subject line.
March 14, 2007
WICA (23) Quack
Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it's worth [1]. But so far, the best advice I could ever give to a young person is to read: To read in, around and beyond the scope of whatever one's focus is. Any line drawn becomes more accurate the more points of reference one has, and connecting the dots becomes simple. And one of the frequent accompaniments of a sudden enlightening realisation is laughter: The cosmic joke being the side by side comparison of illusion with reality [2].
It's beyond comprehension why practitioners need to place all their eggs in the basket of well, chiropractic just works, okay? when the evidence for why it works is overwhelming, and bearing the burden of quack is needless. But then perhaps it's not the young people who are not doing their reading homework these days?
Hippocrates said to look to the spine for the cause of disease, so enter the chicken from the medical journal, Spine [3]. Laying on its side, the four week old pecker is anaesthetised. It has the side of its lower neck cut open, exposing a small ligament that runs between two vertebrae. The scientist tugs on it repeatedly with a tiny weight and then tracks the production of Fos-positive particles within the nervous system by fluorescing them. Fos production in nerve cells is a response to the activation of c-Fos; c-Fos being a highly regulated gene in the nuclei of neurons whose transcription is elevated for a short time after mechanical stimulation. In other words: Tugging on the ligament changed gene expression - gene expression being a signal. This signal affected both sides of the spinal cord, went all the way up it, altered gene expression within the brainstem, changed signals in the cerebellum, and then went on to higher brain centres. The entire central nervous system was a Christmas tree of light with gene expression changing everywhere. The results of the study showed that the stretching of a spinal ligament resulted in a massive and widespread input of neurologic information from several levels of the spinal cord [3].
In 1897 the founder of chiropractic, D.D. Palmer, was almost killed in a train accident. Fearing chiropractic would be lost to history if he died, he decided he must teach his new discovery as quickly as possible. He taught that tone is the basic principle, the one from which all other principles that compose the science have sprung. He went on to say that he believes the universe consists of intelligence and matter. This intelligence is known to the Christian world as God. As a spiritual intelligence, it finds its expression through creation. In all animated nature this intelligence is expressed through the nervous system, which is communication to and from individualized spirit, and that the condition known as tone is the tension, firmness and elasticity of tissue in a state of healthy, normal existence; that the mental and physical condition known as disease is a disordered state because of an unusual amount of tension above or below that of tone [4].
Man is a sensorial organism, which means he operates by virtue of all the information and signals he receives from his environment on a moment to moment basis. The reactions within the body to this information are subtle. Man is not an android - he is a highly sensitive being made up of trillions of cells, all operating on a score of different levels, singly and in unison. Man and spirit, as an entire organism, has an oscillatory tone which reflects the state of the nervous system. This is dynamic and changes continually. Sometimes one can feel how it changes depending how attune one is, highlighting the point of subtle information exchange, subtle signals, subtle stress, and subtle gene expression from tip to toe. The trick is being attune though. A state many never reach because only after six-point-five insurance reimbursed adjustments, chiropractic doesn't work for me.
Understanding function and the ubiquity of the nervous system brings about the cosmic joke of illusion and reality. When the measured effects of an adjustment begin to blur the differentiation between sympathetic and parasympathetic innervation and slowly we start to realise that possibly everything is connected, ego fuelled debates over technique and rationale for chiropractic care present themselves as futile and unintellectual.
It's beyond comprehension why practitioners need to place all their eggs in the basket of well, chiropractic just works, okay? when the evidence for why it works is overwhelming, and bearing the burden of quack is needless. But then perhaps it's not the young people who are not doing their reading homework these days?
Hippocrates said to look to the spine for the cause of disease, so enter the chicken from the medical journal, Spine [3]. Laying on its side, the four week old pecker is anaesthetised. It has the side of its lower neck cut open, exposing a small ligament that runs between two vertebrae. The scientist tugs on it repeatedly with a tiny weight and then tracks the production of Fos-positive particles within the nervous system by fluorescing them. Fos production in nerve cells is a response to the activation of c-Fos; c-Fos being a highly regulated gene in the nuclei of neurons whose transcription is elevated for a short time after mechanical stimulation. In other words: Tugging on the ligament changed gene expression - gene expression being a signal. This signal affected both sides of the spinal cord, went all the way up it, altered gene expression within the brainstem, changed signals in the cerebellum, and then went on to higher brain centres. The entire central nervous system was a Christmas tree of light with gene expression changing everywhere. The results of the study showed that the stretching of a spinal ligament resulted in a massive and widespread input of neurologic information from several levels of the spinal cord [3].
In 1897 the founder of chiropractic, D.D. Palmer, was almost killed in a train accident. Fearing chiropractic would be lost to history if he died, he decided he must teach his new discovery as quickly as possible. He taught that tone is the basic principle, the one from which all other principles that compose the science have sprung. He went on to say that he believes the universe consists of intelligence and matter. This intelligence is known to the Christian world as God. As a spiritual intelligence, it finds its expression through creation. In all animated nature this intelligence is expressed through the nervous system, which is communication to and from individualized spirit, and that the condition known as tone is the tension, firmness and elasticity of tissue in a state of healthy, normal existence; that the mental and physical condition known as disease is a disordered state because of an unusual amount of tension above or below that of tone [4].
Man is a sensorial organism, which means he operates by virtue of all the information and signals he receives from his environment on a moment to moment basis. The reactions within the body to this information are subtle. Man is not an android - he is a highly sensitive being made up of trillions of cells, all operating on a score of different levels, singly and in unison. Man and spirit, as an entire organism, has an oscillatory tone which reflects the state of the nervous system. This is dynamic and changes continually. Sometimes one can feel how it changes depending how attune one is, highlighting the point of subtle information exchange, subtle signals, subtle stress, and subtle gene expression from tip to toe. The trick is being attune though. A state many never reach because only after six-point-five insurance reimbursed adjustments, chiropractic doesn't work for me.
Understanding function and the ubiquity of the nervous system brings about the cosmic joke of illusion and reality. When the measured effects of an adjustment begin to blur the differentiation between sympathetic and parasympathetic innervation and slowly we start to realise that possibly everything is connected, ego fuelled debates over technique and rationale for chiropractic care present themselves as futile and unintellectual.
© Neil Bossenger 2007
New Zealand
Notes and references
- Lurhman, B. 1999, "Everybody's Free To Wear Sunscreen".
- Hawkins, D. R., Power vs. Force. 1995, USA: Veritas Publishing.
- Jiang, H., et al., Identification of the location, extent, and pathway of sensory neurologic feedback after mechanical stimulation of a lateral spinal ligament in chickens. Spine, 1997. 22(1): p. 17-25.
- Senzon, S., The secret history of chiropractic. 2005, USA: Instant Publisher.
- Past issues are now available at the WICA homepage.
- If you received this letter as a forward and would like to be added to the mailing list directly, please send an e-mail to neil.nzchiro@gmail.com with 'add me' in the subject line.
February 24, 2007
WICA (22) The Unmanifest
Chaos Theory, popularized by James Gleick's 1987 best seller [1], is a theory of non linear functions such that small input of the function can result in large and unpredictable differences in the output. In other words: In a linear system, the variables produce an output response. But in a non linear system, the variables merely contribute to the output response. A linear system can be broken down into its separate parts, whereas in a non linear system, the parts interfere, cooperate, or compete with each other [2].
It's a natural tendency for one to look on in deduction and attempt to draw linear conclusions as to why things happen. A this causes a that - but nothing is mono causal. Nothing is causing anything else. Everything is self existent and its appearance is dependent on everything else in the universe, and the point of view from which it is observed [3]. The example I often like to use is that of a heated argument. Two points of view are being hurled vigorously across the living room. Resolution would come from understanding and attempting to construct a similar perspective on the issue before storming off to bed. Yet understanding could only arise from establishing why the argument is occurring in the first place, and this is where Chaos Theory comes in. Each person delivers their debate based upon every factor that's ever influenced them in their life: Parenting, religion, schooling, culture, society, and how they feel at that exact moment. The list is endless: The myriad reasons the opposite individual has no understanding of except for the simple Newtonian this-causes-that observation of the event before them, and then their own understanding of it based on the exact same reasons. Arguing from two separate and distinct histories - it's chaos!
It's a natural tendency for one to look on in deduction and attempt to draw linear conclusions as to why things happen. A this causes a that - but nothing is mono causal. Nothing is causing anything else. Everything is self existent and its appearance is dependent on everything else in the universe, and the point of view from which it is observed [3]. The example I often like to use is that of a heated argument. Two points of view are being hurled vigorously across the living room. Resolution would come from understanding and attempting to construct a similar perspective on the issue before storming off to bed. Yet understanding could only arise from establishing why the argument is occurring in the first place, and this is where Chaos Theory comes in. Each person delivers their debate based upon every factor that's ever influenced them in their life: Parenting, religion, schooling, culture, society, and how they feel at that exact moment. The list is endless: The myriad reasons the opposite individual has no understanding of except for the simple Newtonian this-causes-that observation of the event before them, and then their own understanding of it based on the exact same reasons. Arguing from two separate and distinct histories - it's chaos!
"Because they are Heaven itself, the people of Heaven do not understand that they are in Heaven."
Morihei Ueshiba O Sensei.
Morihei Ueshiba O Sensei.
The lessons of every great spiritual teacher have always had a common thread, in that we are all part of one consciousness and it is only with this understanding that true peace could ever be achieved. With the dawn of science and the quest to understand the laws that govern the universe, it seems at some point we have gone wayward in looking after ourselves and others. Things must have been so much simpler when local and global consciousness wasn't tainted by television and mass media manipulation.
Morihei Ueshiba was the founder of aikido and one of history's greatest martial artists. He was a man that detested fighting and his message was one of peace. Ai-ki-do, meaning the art of peace or the way of harmony. The first principle taught by O Sensei was that aikido is the path which joins all paths of the universe throughout eternity; it is the universal mind which contains all things and unifies all things [4]. Not unlike the major premise of chiropractic, outlined by its founders, that a universal intelligence is in all matter and continually gives to it all its properties and actions, thus maintaining it in existence. Great spiritual teachers appreciated chaos as it presented in their time and understood that all which manifests, arises directly out of the unmanifest by the process of creation. It does not arise as an effect of something else, and that there is a this causing a that in what appears to be separate events. O Sensei, a warrior versed in many arts, wrote that the scientific approach to technique is unifying the spirit, mind and physical body, living through the "echo of the body" and making it one with the echo of the universe such that the two mutually interact. "This then brings forth the technique of innumerable and uncountable variations" [4]. He continued to say that it is scientific because it is based on the technical content of the foundation of the correct moral governance of human life.
The first point that arises from this is that the great teachers were formless, seeing that there was no form - no technique - but just that which emerges autonomously out of the unmanifest. Applying linear systems of evaluation and health care to human complexity is a paradigm not congruent with how it actually functions. What you think you're doing is not actually what you're doing. Chaos Theory defined that small input led to large and unpredictable outputs. But we've been doing it for 112 years now, so as traditionalists, please continue to check and adjust the "nerve system" as you do according to the rules, even though differentiation between parasympathetic and sympathetic activity may never be possible due to the ubiquitous nature of the autonomic nervous system [5].
The second point might be perceived as audacious these days, but fortune favours the bold. Why chiropractic will become the leading form of health care is because, with time and shifting of public perception, it can be appreciated once again as a vehicle for consciousness. Gaucher, a chiropractic historian, wrote that in the nineteenth century, one of chiropractic's achievements was that it was able to to contribute, albeit tentatively, to the establishment of a scientific basis for the concept of coenthesis, which means "body sense". A concept of awareness of oneself via the neuroskeleton [6]. Back care? Neck care? Oh how the mighty have fallen. If subluxation distorts your perception of the world around you, and compromises your ability to respond to it, then it is the profession itself that is clearly subluxated. Because in terms of altering global consciousness, not only are we so far from the mark, but the internal perception of chiropractic is so distorted that it cannot possibly respond to the needs of the world around it.
Morihei Ueshiba was the founder of aikido and one of history's greatest martial artists. He was a man that detested fighting and his message was one of peace. Ai-ki-do, meaning the art of peace or the way of harmony. The first principle taught by O Sensei was that aikido is the path which joins all paths of the universe throughout eternity; it is the universal mind which contains all things and unifies all things [4]. Not unlike the major premise of chiropractic, outlined by its founders, that a universal intelligence is in all matter and continually gives to it all its properties and actions, thus maintaining it in existence. Great spiritual teachers appreciated chaos as it presented in their time and understood that all which manifests, arises directly out of the unmanifest by the process of creation. It does not arise as an effect of something else, and that there is a this causing a that in what appears to be separate events. O Sensei, a warrior versed in many arts, wrote that the scientific approach to technique is unifying the spirit, mind and physical body, living through the "echo of the body" and making it one with the echo of the universe such that the two mutually interact. "This then brings forth the technique of innumerable and uncountable variations" [4]. He continued to say that it is scientific because it is based on the technical content of the foundation of the correct moral governance of human life.
The first point that arises from this is that the great teachers were formless, seeing that there was no form - no technique - but just that which emerges autonomously out of the unmanifest. Applying linear systems of evaluation and health care to human complexity is a paradigm not congruent with how it actually functions. What you think you're doing is not actually what you're doing. Chaos Theory defined that small input led to large and unpredictable outputs. But we've been doing it for 112 years now, so as traditionalists, please continue to check and adjust the "nerve system" as you do according to the rules, even though differentiation between parasympathetic and sympathetic activity may never be possible due to the ubiquitous nature of the autonomic nervous system [5].
The second point might be perceived as audacious these days, but fortune favours the bold. Why chiropractic will become the leading form of health care is because, with time and shifting of public perception, it can be appreciated once again as a vehicle for consciousness. Gaucher, a chiropractic historian, wrote that in the nineteenth century, one of chiropractic's achievements was that it was able to to contribute, albeit tentatively, to the establishment of a scientific basis for the concept of coenthesis, which means "body sense". A concept of awareness of oneself via the neuroskeleton [6]. Back care? Neck care? Oh how the mighty have fallen. If subluxation distorts your perception of the world around you, and compromises your ability to respond to it, then it is the profession itself that is clearly subluxated. Because in terms of altering global consciousness, not only are we so far from the mark, but the internal perception of chiropractic is so distorted that it cannot possibly respond to the needs of the world around it.
© Neil Bossenger 2007
New Zealand
Notes and references
- Gleick, J. (1987) Chaos. Making a new science. New York: Penguin.
- Strogatz, S. H. (1994) Nonlinear dynamics and chaos. With applications to physics, biology, chemistry and engineering. Reading (MA): Addison-Wesley.
- Hawkins, D. R. (2001) The Eye of the I. USA: Veritas Publishing.
- Memoirs of Morihei Usehiba O Sensei.
- Schumacher, A. (2004) Linear and nonlinear approaches to the anaylsis of R-R interval variability. Biological research for nursing. 5(3): p. 211-219.
- Gaucher-Pelsherbe, P. L. (1994) Chiropractic: Early concepts in their historical setting.
- Past issues are now available at the WICA homepage.
- If you received this letter as a forward and would like to be added to the mailing list directly, please send an e-mail to neil.nzchiro@gmail.com with 'add me' in the subject line.
February 11, 2007
WICA (21) Shift Happens
"Another habit of the mind that creates temporary obstacles is the frequent use of the hypothetical as a source for argument and doubt. It is always possible for the intellect to construct an imaginary set of concepts in such a way to refute anything."
David R. Hawkins, M.D., PhD.
David R. Hawkins, M.D., PhD.
The world is broken and we're fixing it the wrong way. Put your hand up and be proud to be a part of the sixth major extinction. The Earth is losing about three species per hour, which equates to around 30,000 species per annum [1]. Put your hand up and order another Sports Utility Vehicle to help tweak the mean global temperature up another balmy five degrees to drown every major coastal metropolitan city by 2050, even though only 5% of you will ever take that SUV off road [2]. Rationalism doesn't override aesthetics when explaining that an SUV, being top heavy, is three times more likely to roll than smaller car, which can usually seat the same number of passengers, and six times more likely to cause a fatality when chasing the amber.
Bolide: Fire from the sky. A brilliant meteoric fireball collides with Earth 245 million years ago and extinguishes 90% of the world's species. 65 million years ago it happens again and finishes up the dinosaurs for good. Consensus has emerged in the past decade that the fifth major extinction was actually caused by multiple bogies, probably even cometary. And here I was only a few weeks ago, gazing at a quaint shooting star dazzle past my doorway, sighing a quiet wish for peace over Nazareth and Santa to bring me a big, shiny, fuel efficient truck.
Of course the problem is always outside in. With the mentality that Earth can be saved by sending an interstellar war machine to intercept a potentially cataclysmic meteor, it's little wonder our generation is so sick, diseased, depressed and genetically challenged, since wars are being launched against everything. Every micro organism we come in contact with; the war on obesity; the war on attention deficiency; the war on ugliness. Hail to the Fourth Reich of perfectly engineered homo sapiens. War begets war - and nobody's getting any better. Our landscape changes. Species are exploited. The world is polluted. The population expands and doesn't meet its own needs appropriately as the cost of health exceeds the rate of sickness. Was life meant to be this difficult?
Well, sir, the results have come back from the lab and it turns out you have rheumatoid arthritis. Oh thank God for that. Um, let's leave God out of this for a minute, we've got enough hypothetical constructs to deal with. So now you know. Now that you've attached a medical term to the condition we can all carry on with our day and everyone you meet can learn how "rheumatoid arthritis" limits your quality of life. It's what you have and there's nothing you can do because you were genetically predisposed, right? The doctor said so, and Lord knows we all need something to talk about round the water cooler. It must have come from somewhere and thus the mind externalises the entity and consequentially searches for the external fix.
Health from the inside out is a completely contrary paradigm, requiring a major shift to look at a different picture through a new frame of mind. Often this shift demands too much energy to dismantle one's belief system about health and how it is achieved, so it's discarded and nothing changes. For instance, if one believes the body has the ability to heal itself through a tempered balance of nervous system and environment, why take decongestants when feeling congested? Even though it makes sense to rational intelligence, our actions are limited by the hypothetical constructs the mind creates to refute a different approach to becoming healthy. One cannot expect a different result by constantly performing the same action. So the next step is motivation. What is the motivation needed to deconstruct belief and assume responsibility for one's health?
If things don't change, they stay the same.
Bolide: Fire from the sky. A brilliant meteoric fireball collides with Earth 245 million years ago and extinguishes 90% of the world's species. 65 million years ago it happens again and finishes up the dinosaurs for good. Consensus has emerged in the past decade that the fifth major extinction was actually caused by multiple bogies, probably even cometary. And here I was only a few weeks ago, gazing at a quaint shooting star dazzle past my doorway, sighing a quiet wish for peace over Nazareth and Santa to bring me a big, shiny, fuel efficient truck.
Of course the problem is always outside in. With the mentality that Earth can be saved by sending an interstellar war machine to intercept a potentially cataclysmic meteor, it's little wonder our generation is so sick, diseased, depressed and genetically challenged, since wars are being launched against everything. Every micro organism we come in contact with; the war on obesity; the war on attention deficiency; the war on ugliness. Hail to the Fourth Reich of perfectly engineered homo sapiens. War begets war - and nobody's getting any better. Our landscape changes. Species are exploited. The world is polluted. The population expands and doesn't meet its own needs appropriately as the cost of health exceeds the rate of sickness. Was life meant to be this difficult?
Well, sir, the results have come back from the lab and it turns out you have rheumatoid arthritis. Oh thank God for that. Um, let's leave God out of this for a minute, we've got enough hypothetical constructs to deal with. So now you know. Now that you've attached a medical term to the condition we can all carry on with our day and everyone you meet can learn how "rheumatoid arthritis" limits your quality of life. It's what you have and there's nothing you can do because you were genetically predisposed, right? The doctor said so, and Lord knows we all need something to talk about round the water cooler. It must have come from somewhere and thus the mind externalises the entity and consequentially searches for the external fix.
Health from the inside out is a completely contrary paradigm, requiring a major shift to look at a different picture through a new frame of mind. Often this shift demands too much energy to dismantle one's belief system about health and how it is achieved, so it's discarded and nothing changes. For instance, if one believes the body has the ability to heal itself through a tempered balance of nervous system and environment, why take decongestants when feeling congested? Even though it makes sense to rational intelligence, our actions are limited by the hypothetical constructs the mind creates to refute a different approach to becoming healthy. One cannot expect a different result by constantly performing the same action. So the next step is motivation. What is the motivation needed to deconstruct belief and assume responsibility for one's health?
If things don't change, they stay the same.
© Neil Bossenger 2007
New Zealand
Notes and references
- Eldredge, N. The Sixth Extinction. 2001, USA: American Institute of Biological Sciences.
- Naughton, K. The Unstoppable SUV. 2001, USA: Newsweek.
- Congratulations to all the graduands of NZCC 2006!
- Past issues are now available at the WICA homepage.
- If you received this letter as a 'forward' and would like to be added to the mailing list directly, please send an e-mail to neil.nzchiro@gmail.com with 'add me' in the subject line.
January 27, 2007
WICA (20) Streaming Audio
In our macroscopic view of the world, we only ever see the goldfish. We become fixated on the goldfish. Deep states of meditation should unequivocally lend one's bowl to an absence of the goldfish: A thought that tinkers back and forth in the humdrum of the mind. If the goldfish is a thought, then the water is consciousness itself. Consciousness includes all possibilities and realities in their totality, and it is the very space and matrix in which awareness progresses to its ultimate potentiality. A potentiality of absolute self awareness.
Becoming more self aware leads to the realisation that there's not only one goldfish, but hundreds; thousands even. All streaming to and fro. Your eye darts from one to the next attempting to capture its image in entirety - but what if they all look the same? Every goldfish has the same languid, vacuous look upon its face, burping bubbles past drooping eyelids. Then you discover everybody else's bowls are filled with the same fish. Barring why some fish in certain bowls end up doing backstroke while others complete tumble turns and evolve society, imagine the fish can transcend and cross from bowl to bowl like radio waves. Are we connected? Was that goldfish truly yours to begin with? Ego in its self righteous quest to create its own identity as separate and distinct, tries to claim each goldfish as its own. Ego attempts to claim ownership of every thought. Prefixing a thought as mine becomes tyrannical in a sense, and results in recurrent patterns and distortions of thought because the mind is totally unreliable. It turns into a cauldron of blurred memories that change over time. The stories you tell your friends change every year. Time is like a drug: too much could kill you. A thought dominates, disturbing the matrix of the water which is ever-peaceful.
Goldfish after goldfish: They are all simply choices to respond to from moment to moment. Thoughts are presented as streaming audio. Feelings are choices too, from moment to moment, wending their way behind the glass for us to browse, instead of seeing past them to the infinite energy of the matrix of consciousness... and the potentiality of self awareness. Interpreting thoughts and feelings as mere choice is a powerful tool in times of high-strung drama, when all one need do is choose something else from the menu.
How this becomes relevant is in understanding the power of the conscious and the subconscious mind. The conscious mind is where you feel you are able to possess some form of control over cognition. And the subconscious mind is the autopilot. To contrast the two, if I were to stand at the Sun Gate, like I did in 1998, and look upon Machu Picchu, the only information from the image that my conscious mind would be able to process would be the dot in the image below. 500,000 times more information is conducted via the nervous system to the subconscious mind every second (all the black in the image).
Goldfish after goldfish: They are all simply choices to respond to from moment to moment. Thoughts are presented as streaming audio. Feelings are choices too, from moment to moment, wending their way behind the glass for us to browse, instead of seeing past them to the infinite energy of the matrix of consciousness... and the potentiality of self awareness. Interpreting thoughts and feelings as mere choice is a powerful tool in times of high-strung drama, when all one need do is choose something else from the menu.
How this becomes relevant is in understanding the power of the conscious and the subconscious mind. The conscious mind is where you feel you are able to possess some form of control over cognition. And the subconscious mind is the autopilot. To contrast the two, if I were to stand at the Sun Gate, like I did in 1998, and look upon Machu Picchu, the only information from the image that my conscious mind would be able to process would be the dot in the image below. 500,000 times more information is conducted via the nervous system to the subconscious mind every second (all the black in the image).
The nervous system is streaming millions of bits of information per second. More than we could ever hope to comprehend. Laying claim to any goldfish as one's own seems embarrassingly rudimentary and might be reserved for the Neanderthal, not the developed being we claim to be today. Their bowls were more suited anyway with a brain case that could hold 1.6 litres.
The subconscious information around us affects the energy matrix of consciousness - the water - without one even being aware. It is always constant, yet always changing. Energy is not static. It is always conserved, illustrated by the first law of thermodynamics, which states that energy is neither created nor destroyed. Within our own physical beings, when the flow of energy is not balanced, it is either being purged or stored in excess. Every system in the body requires energy for perfect function. Streaming information from a stressful environment takes its toll on the body subconsciously. Muscle tension, lethargy, weight gain, weight loss, headaches, sickness and disease may all manifest like a river that has stilled and begins to become stagnant and pungent. Closer and closer we creep toward rigor mortis.
Chiropractic is not a pill. It affects change at a subconscious level because energy is transferred from practitioner to patient, and the body utilises the energy to restore a balance of flow within itself, establishing stronger connections within the nervous system, processed at a subconscious level. The energy alters brain patterns. Outgoing messages are appropriated better to incoming messages, and all the manifestations of muscle tension, lethargy, weight gain, weight loss, headaches, sickness and disease start to reverse... naturally. It's not magic, it's a fundamental law.
The subconscious information around us affects the energy matrix of consciousness - the water - without one even being aware. It is always constant, yet always changing. Energy is not static. It is always conserved, illustrated by the first law of thermodynamics, which states that energy is neither created nor destroyed. Within our own physical beings, when the flow of energy is not balanced, it is either being purged or stored in excess. Every system in the body requires energy for perfect function. Streaming information from a stressful environment takes its toll on the body subconsciously. Muscle tension, lethargy, weight gain, weight loss, headaches, sickness and disease may all manifest like a river that has stilled and begins to become stagnant and pungent. Closer and closer we creep toward rigor mortis.
Chiropractic is not a pill. It affects change at a subconscious level because energy is transferred from practitioner to patient, and the body utilises the energy to restore a balance of flow within itself, establishing stronger connections within the nervous system, processed at a subconscious level. The energy alters brain patterns. Outgoing messages are appropriated better to incoming messages, and all the manifestations of muscle tension, lethargy, weight gain, weight loss, headaches, sickness and disease start to reverse... naturally. It's not magic, it's a fundamental law.
© Neil Bossenger 2007
New Zealand
January 21, 2007
Mark and Neil's NZ Road Trip: Debrief
With two weeks on the road around North Island, we saw much, and did much. A little too much to document in detail, so for the sake of sanity, I'm simply going to cover the highlights of the trip. Or basically just the stuff I can actually remember, and then let the photographs speak for themselves.
Over the past few months the Zuki had been getting slower and slower. I had no idea what was going on. I could barely peak 80kph on light gradients and had little power to overtake anymore. Figuring it was merely signs of an ageing car, I sighed and looked ahead to the days of a regular income and monthly repayments on something fast and sporty instead of owning the Zuki. On day two of the trip, after spending a warm night in surfer's paradise, Raglan, the reason for the Zuki's lethargy became clear.
Over the past few months the Zuki had been getting slower and slower. I had no idea what was going on. I could barely peak 80kph on light gradients and had little power to overtake anymore. Figuring it was merely signs of an ageing car, I sighed and looked ahead to the days of a regular income and monthly repayments on something fast and sporty instead of owning the Zuki. On day two of the trip, after spending a warm night in surfer's paradise, Raglan, the reason for the Zuki's lethargy became clear.
Since this was a road trip, we decided to drive roads less travelled. In hindsight, not an idea one should particularly pursue in an unreliable vehicle. But then students are not meant to have reliable cars now are they? Ninety minutes from a major town, on Giftmas Eve when all workshops were closing, Mark and I were winding merrily through the rolling hills of endless farmland with not a house in sight. My right foot falls flat to floor with no resistance whatsoever. The Zuki roars into acceleration down the hill and nothing is slowing it down. Blaspheming relentlessly I turn the engine off and manage to retain enough impetus to free wheel into some kind of village of four or five houses. The only houses in this entire region.
Day two of a fourteen day trip. I climb out and poke my head down to the pedals. Drawing on the accelerator cable, it slides toward me with ease. I pull a little more, and still some more. It slides all the way out and I'm left holding the tethered end of what used to be the Zuki's accelerator cable. We make our way to a nearby house.
Day two of a fourteen day trip. I climb out and poke my head down to the pedals. Drawing on the accelerator cable, it slides toward me with ease. I pull a little more, and still some more. It slides all the way out and I'm left holding the tethered end of what used to be the Zuki's accelerator cable. We make our way to a nearby house.
A few days later we realised how serendipitous the location of this breakdown was. The husband of the couple we approached tinkered with cars, and knew some numbers to call in nearby towns, but being Giftmas Eve, everything was closed and we were without a vehicle for two weeks. Secondly, the wife's mother was headed back to Auckland that very hour. A hitch to find another car we were most thankful for, even if it meant two metal heads had to painfully endure Shania Twain for two hours. And thirdly, I was able to leave the Zuki under a makeshift canopy at their place for two whole weeks. Unbelievable, really. In countryside where there are no houses, we breakdown near these folk. We gave them a bottle of chutney in gratitude.
Mark and I met in engineering school. He went on to finish after I left for NZ in 2002. Yet here we find ourselves before a pot of geothermal activity next to a walkway in Rotorua, demarcated by nothing more than a bit of orange ticker tape - the lackadaisical approach to volcanic safety that's always amazed me about Rotorua. Why would anyone want to live where steam comes out of the Earth beneath you? I say to the chemical engineer facetiously, "It's steaming, Mark. What temperature is steam normally?" He says he has to prove it. In a whimper of pain and bewilderment, he withdraws his big toe in a flash from the water in the ground. "See? 100 degrees."
Subconsciously I recall seeing the sign that read: HICKS BAY. We were rounding a massive U-turn, marking this corner of NZ very clearly. We had already gone too far because after performing a three-point turn and heading back, the two signs reading HICKS BAY were about 200m apart. That was it.
The East Cape is incredibly beautiful, and State Highway 35 is one of the best scenic drives I have ever done, but it was tainted by feelings of unease when we entered this particular backpacker - or what was supposed to be a backpacker. Joe, the Maori sir attending us seemed to have a dark cloud following him, demanding respect from a long lineage of ancestors, and us. "What are you doing here?" he says to me. Um, I wasn't entirely sure anymore. Since when did one have to supply a reason for coming to a backpacker on holiday anyway?
Subconsciously I recall seeing the sign that read: HICKS BAY. We were rounding a massive U-turn, marking this corner of NZ very clearly. We had already gone too far because after performing a three-point turn and heading back, the two signs reading HICKS BAY were about 200m apart. That was it.
The East Cape is incredibly beautiful, and State Highway 35 is one of the best scenic drives I have ever done, but it was tainted by feelings of unease when we entered this particular backpacker - or what was supposed to be a backpacker. Joe, the Maori sir attending us seemed to have a dark cloud following him, demanding respect from a long lineage of ancestors, and us. "What are you doing here?" he says to me. Um, I wasn't entirely sure anymore. Since when did one have to supply a reason for coming to a backpacker on holiday anyway?
My first error was saying that I was there for the "chalet". Chalet? Look, in panic, it was the first word that came to my mind. Don't blame me for possessing a lexicon that extends beyond the words "room" or "dorm". Ushering us to an immobile, dilapidated caravan with windows that don't open nor shut, and an air about it of people that had sinisterly lost their lives in it, Joe says with a hint of sarcasm, "Well, we don't have a chalet, but I can offer you this." The booking website showed images of the guy's own house! Not where one would actually be sleeping; sleeping and probably never waking. My second error was asking if we could rather camp nearby. "What's wrong with my caravan?" Joe retorts. "Um, nothing. It's lovely. We'll take it."
There were also no shops in this area so dinner consisted of a can of budget baked beans each and a glass of Glen Morangie single malt whiskey. If you can't eat well, you should at least drink well. Only the finest to compliment our chalet in a setting that kisses the sunrise first on planet Earth.
The next leg of the trip I care not to document. Gisborne was a hill billy town if I'd ever seen one. We cut our stay short to one very, very scary night.
We were booked into Sycamore Lodge by a company that had mistakenly double booked us in a place we wanted to stay in. Sycamore Sanitarium I called it. A renovated old age home with white clad walls it most likely used to be. But not just an old age home; like a dog nearing the end of its days which starts to circle the garden, searching for a spot where its spiritless body can lie, this was a place where people went to die.
I hardly ever dream, least of all imagine paranormal material, and this place hit me with both in one night. I was somewhere between sleep and the third dimension, and felt an old haggard wraith of a woman standing over me, hitting my chest with the flat of her hand. It must have been her room before; she must have died in the bed I was sleeping in, considering the relevant emergency numbers on the wall alongside my head! I turned and she hovered out through the closed door. I said to Mark, "We are getting the hell out of this place, man!"
No photographs were taken.
There were also no shops in this area so dinner consisted of a can of budget baked beans each and a glass of Glen Morangie single malt whiskey. If you can't eat well, you should at least drink well. Only the finest to compliment our chalet in a setting that kisses the sunrise first on planet Earth.
The next leg of the trip I care not to document. Gisborne was a hill billy town if I'd ever seen one. We cut our stay short to one very, very scary night.
We were booked into Sycamore Lodge by a company that had mistakenly double booked us in a place we wanted to stay in. Sycamore Sanitarium I called it. A renovated old age home with white clad walls it most likely used to be. But not just an old age home; like a dog nearing the end of its days which starts to circle the garden, searching for a spot where its spiritless body can lie, this was a place where people went to die.
I hardly ever dream, least of all imagine paranormal material, and this place hit me with both in one night. I was somewhere between sleep and the third dimension, and felt an old haggard wraith of a woman standing over me, hitting my chest with the flat of her hand. It must have been her room before; she must have died in the bed I was sleeping in, considering the relevant emergency numbers on the wall alongside my head! I turned and she hovered out through the closed door. I said to Mark, "We are getting the hell out of this place, man!"
No photographs were taken.
We quickly decided to move on to Napier regardless of the itinerary. It was so lovely we stayed for three days. Lazy days comprised of visiting wineries, tanning in the warm sun, long walks along the boulevard, barbecuing like kings on hot summer evenings and soaking up the atmosphere that is certainly sophisticated Napier. By far a personal highlight and a town I would very much like to return to. Eric Clapton is even playing at Mission Estate Winery on the 27th of January.
Hollywood doesn't hold a candle to the real life action of rural New Zealand. The morning of our drive to Wellington, cars were queued for miles; people from every direction converging on this one point of chaos where a 43-ton milk tanker lost control after the driver allegedly choked on a lollipop, pile driving through the middle of three homes. The first two were empty, but a man - already with a broken ankle - was just chilling in front of his television when the tanker smashed through the lounge wall and hurled him into the next room, fracturing his good leg in two places. The whole scene appeared totally inconceivable.
The Tongariro Crossing in the centre of North Island never lets anybody down visually and is one of the Great Walks of NZ: Contrasting worlds apart between forests, craters, ice and sulphurous lakes. This was the second time I had done it and I think by simply knowing what was coming next, it appeared easier, though the entire hike is totally manageable to most. We completed 17km in five hours.
The Tongariro Crossing in the centre of North Island never lets anybody down visually and is one of the Great Walks of NZ: Contrasting worlds apart between forests, craters, ice and sulphurous lakes. This was the second time I had done it and I think by simply knowing what was coming next, it appeared easier, though the entire hike is totally manageable to most. We completed 17km in five hours.
Something has to be said about South African mentality, because we were the only two fools up that mountain in shorts without a stitch of wet or warm weather gear. I don't know what that something is, but it's probably inappropriate for virgin readers. Even being summer, it's freezing atop the craters. The wind cuts through anything that's not supposed to be there. For more information, go here.
As the trip wound to a close, I paid a visit to a friend from chiropractic school and spent a night with her family in Taupo before heading on to glow worm caving in Waitomo. Unfortunately we don't have imagery from this because it was underground, in dank, dark, watery caves. The experience was phenomenal though: Staring at thousands of fly larvae attached by mucous to cave walls with glowing buttocks is truly a captivating phenomenon. Really.
There's an image here of a camper van we spent the night next to in Waitomo, which had "Buck Fush" painted on its side. I concur after watching a documentary last night entitled "The World According to Bush". It revealed that the man who instigates war on foreign soil, legislating foreign policy, didn't even own a passport when coming into office. A few days later the same camper van crossed me on the Harbour Bridge in Auckland on my way to work.
After circling the northern half of New Zealand for two weeks, I apprehensively returned to the original site of calamity, hoping against hope that my car was still there, intact. South African fears of a burnt, metallic skeleton resting on nothing more than its axles was in mind but the sight of my Zuki again reminded me I was living in New Zealand. And the couple who looked after my car was even there to give it a jump start.
After circling the northern half of New Zealand for two weeks, I apprehensively returned to the original site of calamity, hoping against hope that my car was still there, intact. South African fears of a burnt, metallic skeleton resting on nothing more than its axles was in mind but the sight of my Zuki again reminded me I was living in New Zealand. And the couple who looked after my car was even there to give it a jump start.
Failing to get a new accelerator cable locally, Mark and I reluctantly decided to tow back to Auckland. What is normally a two hour trip took four with a lot of intense concentration, constantly keeping the rope taught and regarding road safety at all times.
We were a little tired: A winter spent and a summer earned. Packing and driving everyday is not always easy going; trying to make decent meals out of often grotty kitchens; and coping with Rustle after Russell in each dormitory, waking you up at the crack of sparrow fart because they have to make their flight to Europe. It all makes for a little exhaustion, but with a best friend at one's side to make a joke out of everything, laugh at the dumbest things and make the most of every situation just means I'd do it again and again. Cheers, brother. This entry is for you.
We were a little tired: A winter spent and a summer earned. Packing and driving everyday is not always easy going; trying to make decent meals out of often grotty kitchens; and coping with Rustle after Russell in each dormitory, waking you up at the crack of sparrow fart because they have to make their flight to Europe. It all makes for a little exhaustion, but with a best friend at one's side to make a joke out of everything, laugh at the dumbest things and make the most of every situation just means I'd do it again and again. Cheers, brother. This entry is for you.
December 12, 2006
WICA (19) Giftmas Edition
A bloke walks up to a Buddhist hot dog vendor and asks, "Can you make me one with everything?". The Buddhist says that he is temporarily out of stock of everything, but hundreds of trained monkeys are hard at work in the Temple. He expects everything to be available within the next day or two. "It'll be $5.95 for postage and handling if you're not able to come back".
"And relish?" the bloke enquires. Swiftly drawing a pen from inside his robe, the monk replies, "You'd have to sign here for relish, sir," sliding a document that had mystically appeared alongside the hotplate. "Section 2.1.3 of Temple Law states that the Temple cannot be held liable for genetically modified perishables in transit. Meats and breads do not fall under this category as they are heat-cured at the Golden Arches branch, West Side, in order to increase the shelf life to 28 weeks in all-weather conditions. Golden Arches have made significant changes to our product line since the corporate takeover of the Temple," the monk explains smiling.
With a quizzical look, the bloke nods politely, feeling rather hungry now as he continues listening.
"Under superior advisement, the Temple decided to subdivide the property and convert the sacred gardens into factory space. Raising the mortgage on Temple land, coupled with the recent rise in market value of Holy Ground due to conflict in the Middle East, the Temple was able to purchase new hot dog equipment on lay-by with only 36% interest per annum. A bargain at this time of year. Golden Arches assured the Temple that labour costs wouldn't be a problem in this part of the world, provided all workers were nocturnal and could feed their families on ten cents an hour."
With mild disinterest, the bloke scanned the hot dog menu again. "Well, can you make me one without everything then?"
The Buddhist is somewhat taken aback. An incomplete hot dog is unheard of. But he ponders the potential bundled in this query, for being a nimble-minded monk, a commercial opportunity awaits at every end and turn; every human relationship a business venture.
For him there was simply no money in attaining enlightenment anymore. Not that there ever was, but this was reflected by the fact that every year the Temple recruited fewer and fewer monks. His days as a teacher were numbered too. No one wanted wisdom anymore - unless it was saleable of course. His teachings used to tell of the implicate order in the universe, but as entropy rose, the state of social decline and degeneration, he found it hard to believe himself. There was only one reason for this: The human ego, which takes 1/10,000th of a second to claim a thought as its own. People's thoughts are never really their own, simply because someone else has always thought of it first, but he guessed it depended on which frequency one is tuned into. Ego fuelled by that which it thinks it knows has blocked the natural free flow of thought and spirit these days. Even the simplest thing as a thought that lacks the power to nourish, placed in the centre of one's life, will lead to contempt: Pain that cannot be remedied commercially for it was not created that way. Yet people still expect a discount on wholesale cures.
It was a tough decision, but he left the teaching gig in the hope that others might pick up where he left off. The monk realised sales and the commercialisation of unsustainable Earthly resources were more his thing. He had a knack for dealing with people. The day after the monk left though, a note was found on his desk to any who might stand in his stead:
"And relish?" the bloke enquires. Swiftly drawing a pen from inside his robe, the monk replies, "You'd have to sign here for relish, sir," sliding a document that had mystically appeared alongside the hotplate. "Section 2.1.3 of Temple Law states that the Temple cannot be held liable for genetically modified perishables in transit. Meats and breads do not fall under this category as they are heat-cured at the Golden Arches branch, West Side, in order to increase the shelf life to 28 weeks in all-weather conditions. Golden Arches have made significant changes to our product line since the corporate takeover of the Temple," the monk explains smiling.
With a quizzical look, the bloke nods politely, feeling rather hungry now as he continues listening.
"Under superior advisement, the Temple decided to subdivide the property and convert the sacred gardens into factory space. Raising the mortgage on Temple land, coupled with the recent rise in market value of Holy Ground due to conflict in the Middle East, the Temple was able to purchase new hot dog equipment on lay-by with only 36% interest per annum. A bargain at this time of year. Golden Arches assured the Temple that labour costs wouldn't be a problem in this part of the world, provided all workers were nocturnal and could feed their families on ten cents an hour."
With mild disinterest, the bloke scanned the hot dog menu again. "Well, can you make me one without everything then?"
The Buddhist is somewhat taken aback. An incomplete hot dog is unheard of. But he ponders the potential bundled in this query, for being a nimble-minded monk, a commercial opportunity awaits at every end and turn; every human relationship a business venture.
For him there was simply no money in attaining enlightenment anymore. Not that there ever was, but this was reflected by the fact that every year the Temple recruited fewer and fewer monks. His days as a teacher were numbered too. No one wanted wisdom anymore - unless it was saleable of course. His teachings used to tell of the implicate order in the universe, but as entropy rose, the state of social decline and degeneration, he found it hard to believe himself. There was only one reason for this: The human ego, which takes 1/10,000th of a second to claim a thought as its own. People's thoughts are never really their own, simply because someone else has always thought of it first, but he guessed it depended on which frequency one is tuned into. Ego fuelled by that which it thinks it knows has blocked the natural free flow of thought and spirit these days. Even the simplest thing as a thought that lacks the power to nourish, placed in the centre of one's life, will lead to contempt: Pain that cannot be remedied commercially for it was not created that way. Yet people still expect a discount on wholesale cures.
It was a tough decision, but he left the teaching gig in the hope that others might pick up where he left off. The monk realised sales and the commercialisation of unsustainable Earthly resources were more his thing. He had a knack for dealing with people. The day after the monk left though, a note was found on his desk to any who might stand in his stead:
| Save the icebergs. They're a warning.