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YOUR HEALTH AND THE RETURN TO COMMON SENSE
Common sense is a highly underestimated natural instinct that simply does not get the kind of press it deserves in terms of its value to you. It’s hardly as glamorous as intuition – that’s for sure. And common sense is certainly not marketable like intuition is – I mean, no one would ever pay another person for a “common sense” reading. I can only imagine what that would be like:
“I’m here for a reading,” says the woman to the “reader,” who replies, “I know that already.”
“You must be psychic!!”
“Nonsense,” she responds. “Why else would you be here? I give common sense readings and it would seem to be a matter of common sense that if you’re here to see me, you want a common sense reading.”
Common sense – and in particular, the absence of it – is a significant factor in the health equation, a fact that is all the more potent given the bizarre options for healing that are available in the marketplace these days. The absence of common sense has led people to lose touch with their own highly attuned intuitive system that inherently directs them to discern legitimate from outrageous healing options offered in the marketplace. Furthermore, and even more harmful, you can come to the place where you completely distrust your own gut instincts.
During the years I’ve been on the road, I’ve had many opportunities to cruise through all sorts of “new age” and alternative health conventions, where gizmos and gadgets of the most outrageous kind (like dangling crystals from “very special caves” and semi-precious stones that “hold energy”) are sold in the same manner as one would sell purses on the street corner in New York. As if that weren’t preposterous enough, pieces of jewelry are identified by the specific types of energy that they radiate. For example, certain bracelets are for recovering from a divorce while others are for attracting love. I just had to ask the saleswoman, “So like, what if I wore one of each? Or what would happen if I wore the one for recovering from a divorce if I hadn’t had a divorce? It’s just that I like that bracelet the most?” She looked dumbfounded and then that expression quickly shifted to one of total irritation as she realized she was looking at someone – namely me – who was on to the fact that she was essentially just selling jewelry. But it’s the conversations I love the most. One time I found a guy selling crystal skulls, among other crystal objects, at a conference. I asked, “What is this?”
SHIFTING TO HEALTH
The instinct of common sense, like all other instincts in the human design, is survival- focused. When most people think of survival, the word generally inspires images of the great outdoors and solo nights in the wild. Survival, however, applies to every part of your life and if you think about it, the majority of people in Western culture are not crushed under the weight of physical survival. Instead, their greatest obstacles are now in the realm of emotional, psychological, psychic, rational, and intellectual survival, often motivated by the fears associated with physical survival. Common sense should, therefore, be thought of as an instinct that is aligned to your survival and, thus, your health and well being.
COMMON SENSE AND ACTS OF SELF-BETRAYAL
One of the main reasons for the on-going trauma of relentless personal suffering is self-betrayal. Betrayal is one of life’s unavoidable experiences. As soon as you gossip about a friend, you’ve betrayed that individual. Self-betrayal, unlike acts of betrayal that are initiated by others, are often equally if not more painful, because in the end you have to confront the truth that you ignored your own warning signals — that is, your own common sense. Just the other day, I flipped on the television, heading for the news, but as I scrolled from one channel to the next, I stopped for a second on one of the most absurd programs I have yet to see – and let’s face it, television programs, like reality shows, are getting worse by the day.
This reality show (and if this is reality, I’ll take a mystical experience any day of the week), featured the wedding engagement of a female prison guard to a vile criminal with a rap sheet a mile long. I couldn’t believe what I was watching. During the interview with her, she said, “I’m sure many people are wondering why I would marry this guy (that would be a yes), but I see potential in him (like for rape? armed robbery?). Maybe I will regret it one day (duh), but he’s my guy right now.”
SO WHAT EXACTLY IS COMMON SENSE?
Common sense is an archetype that refers to a collectively recognized “earth wisdom” that serves as “knowledge from the ground.” You can’t go to school to learn common sense. It’s a part of you that develops as you grow up learning the basic survival skills of life. I always hear people speak about their love of gardening or being in nature. In fact, I am one of those people. I love gardening and I love working around my house. I find it soothing and as I think of it, I have many fond memories of growing up apprenticing with my mom, who taught me how to keep house, how to handle a kitchen, how to manage the laundry, how to, in short, take care of a household. But built into all of those tasks was her abundance of common sense that was transferred in the learning of every task.
Meals were prepared this way or that for specific reasons, for example. And laundry was done this way, because cotton needs hot water and this other fabric doesn’t. Mothers teach their daughters how to care for children, thus preparing them for motherhood, so that they will have that precious “mother’s instinct” – or mother’s common sense – when they became mothers themselves. Fathers teach their sons how to use tools around the house for repairs or to fix the car or how to use snow blowers – and yes, they can teach their daughters all the same things. But in general, it’s been my experience that when it comes to working with automobiles or machinery, as a rule, it’s a father-son type of thing. It has also been my experience, for example, that when AAA comes to the rescue because my car has broken down, it’s a man that fixes my tire. Common sense, in short, is learned through one’s elders, through experience, through putting your hands in the earth, through apprenticing with masters. It is your survival sense that requires five-sensory involvement, learning through doing, in the arena of life in order to mature – and books just can’t educate your five senses. Only life can do that.
A MENTAL HEALTH DISORDER VERSUS LACK OF COMMON SENSE
We are very prone in our culture to organize a set of characteristics and then name a syndrome after them. There is even an attempt right now, for example, to suggest that a child who is too shy is in some way disabled and, typical of our culture, in need of drugs to cope. Perhaps we find comfort in believing that if it’s an illness, we or our children or whoever were just meant to be the way they turned out. The absence of common sense, however, is not a disease any more than being ungrounded is a disease or a syndrome. These are not the characteristics, for example, of Asperger’s syndrome, as the absence of common sense does not cause the social behavioral problems typical of that syndrome.
Lacking common sense is, however, a very real psychic state that exists for various reasons, not the least of which is that children must be taught survival skills during their formative years. Like the natural impulse to discover a personal identity as puberty hits, the impulse to develop the inherent survival instinct of common sense is the first to awaken in a child, and thus the first that requires mentoring. We are born knowing and wanting to survive – that is a primal instinct. Therefore, we are born knowing that something is amiss when we are not given the skills necessary to feel that we can make it in this world.
AND NOW YOU
How highly functioning is your common sense? This interior voice is one of your best defenses against illness, both physical and emotional, as well as a conduit to continuing to refine your spiritual health. We live in a highly active psychic, emotional culture in which much of our life is conducted through the Internet and via energetic communication. Maintaining your energetic well-being is as critical to your health as are your physical habits, which means that paying attention and following the instructions of your interior voice is vital. You cannot tell yourself that an organic diet compensates for acts of personal emotional betrayal – that’s preposterous reasoning. Nor can you possibly assume that should you fall into dysfunction because you continually dismiss your inner signals – such as “exercise,” “eat less,” “change your stress level,” “why do you keep doing what makes you ill?” – then shifting your diet will help you. It won’t. Common sense should tell you that nutrition is not the solution for emotional misery.
So here’s your check list:
1. What is your immediate response to a “great idea”? Do you talk about it with friends? Write it down? Research it? Keep it to yourself? If you listen, your common sense will always instruct you to proceed with caution and silence when you are given an inspiration. The reason is that you will speak away your enthusiasm instead of using the grace of enthusiasm to invest in the act of creation. More people “speak away” their creative grace than actually utilize it, never realizing that they have “lived” the act of creation only in the energetic world. They wonder why they remain unable to bring ideas to fruition in the physical realm, and one of the main reasons is that they “speak away” their creative grace.
2. What is your second response? Do you postpone action? If so, how and why? Or do you act on it immediately and if so, what would be your next step in the physical world – the operative word being “physical”? Postponing action is an indication of fear and the need to see the outcome before even beginning to act. It is an impossible position for creation, not unlike demanding to see your child before agreeing to get pregnant. Someone who holds to that position with the forces of creation never creates anything but personal misery and disappointment. At critical choice points exactly like these – when you are given guidance to jump into the unknown – relying on your common sense serves you especially well. It’s your energetic compass on the ground, and, so, the instinct that grounds you through the unknown. It is, for example, common sense not to sign a contract until you read the fine print – and the finer the print, the greater the secrets that someone is trying to hide.
HEALTH GUIDANCE
Listen to yourself. Listen to your instincts. Learn to work with the magnificent intuitive system that you are by divine design. Everything about you is an intuitive system, constantly flooding you with energy data. I am constantly amazed when people think that intuition is primarily a solo ability, and that it is for seeing the future (ugh), or for problem solving and finding past lives and other such escapades. Your entire being is one exquisite intuitive masterpiece, of which common sense is but one voice. Pay attention to that voice. You know you hear it. It is the intuitive voice most strongly aligned to matters of dense physical survival, so respect it.
Hanina Ben Dosa was a 1st-century Jewish scholar, healer, and miracle-worker, a contemporary of Jesus, and the pupil of Johanan ben Zakkai. It is related that when the son of Johanan ben Zakkai was very sick, the father solicited the prayers of Hanina. Hanina readily complied, and the child recovered. The overjoyed father could not refrain from expressing his admiration for his wonderful pupil, stating that he himself might have prayed the whole day without doing any good. His wife, astonished at such self-abasement on the part of her famous husband, inquired, "Is Hanina greater than you?" Johanan replied, "There is this difference between us: he is like the body-servant of a king, having at all times free access to the august presence, without even having to await permission to reach his ears; while I, like a lord before a king, must await an opportune moment."
Similarly, at the solicitation of Gamaliel II, Hanina entreated mercy for that patriarch's son, and at the conclusion of his prayers assured Gamaliel's messengers that the patient's fever had left him. This assurance created doubt in the minds of the messengers, who promptly asked, "Art thou a prophet?" To this he replied, "I am neither a prophet nor the son of a prophet; but experience has taught me that whenever my prayer flows freely it is granted; otherwise, it is rejected." The messengers thereupon noted down Hanina's declaration, and the exact time when it was made; on reaching the patriarch's residence they found that Hanina had spoken truly.
PRAYERS FOR THE GROUP
As always, sharing a group prayer with the CMED prayer group continues to build the healing field of grace. I am always pleased to report that people write in continually to keep me updated on their progress. Recently, a young girl in a car accident who had been in a coma for two weeks with a swollen brain has awakened, and the doctors reported that she is in far better condition than they had anticipated. Three people sent in e-mails noting that their cancerous tumors are now reduced in size. I urge you to continue to keep up at least five minutes per day of channeling grace to all those in need of help and to include on this list the United States, which is going through the worst crisis since it’s Civil War in 1861, along with the Middle East, and the rest of our global village, as without a doubt we are all in this period of transformation together.
Our prayer for inspiration:
By the Sufi poet, Hafiz, from I HEARD GOD LAUGHING by Daniel Ladinsky
SWEDEN / DENMARK
June 2008
Evening Lecture – Copenhagen.
Wednesday, June 25th, 7.00pm - appr. 10.00pm
Location: Sankt Annae Gymnasium, Sjaeloer Boulevard 135, Valby (10 - 15 minutes drive from Copenhagen Central Station).
June 2008
Entering the Castle Lecture - Stockholm.
Entering the Castle – An Inner Path to God and your Soul
Friday 27th of June at 6.30 pm
Location: Oscars Theatre in Stockholm
June 2008
Entering the Castle Workshop - Yasuragi Hasseludden.
28th-29th of June, 10.00am – 4.30pm
Yasuragi Hasseludden
Explore the Mystery of Prayer and Grace while visiting the most sacred and revered holy sites in Israel. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity.
» Into the Holy Land journey and registration information
