Voice for the Minority
13-year-old Talia Joy Castellano’s six-year battle with cancer ended Tuesday as her body finally succumbed to a disease too relentless for it to overcome. “Tiny” and “frail” may be words to describe the condition of Talia’s physicality from outward appearances, but they definitely are not words anyone would use to describe the ferocious spirit of this young Lover of Life.
“Castellano, who was diagnosed with stage-four neuroblastoma when she was just 7 years old, started using makeup ‘as a wig’ shortly after she found out she was sick. In July 2011, she began filming makeup tutorials in her bedroom — short, how-to videos for the glam, colorful looks she invented. Within months, she had hundreds of thousands of subscribers and millions of views on her more than 150 YouTube clips,” US Magazine.
Talia became an honorary “Cover Girl” with the help of her friend Ellen DeGeneres. But one of the biggest gifts Talia has given to humanity is her Bucket List. Five days before she died, Talia jotted down 76 items she wanted to cross off her Bucket List and posted them on her Facebook page. And while she actually got to experience a few of her young heart’s desires, Talia’s request to the world was that we, you and I, go out to all the wonderful places that she had so far only dreamt of and live out those special moments in each of our lives, just in case she did not have a chance to in hers.
You see, Talia, even in her most vulnerable and weakened physical condition, understood on a very deep level that her life was not about her. It was about those whose lives she touched. And even after her passing, she is gifting to us all an opportunity to experience Who We Really Are through the expression of Who She Really Is. Her life is a bright light of hope. Her message is one of love and peace. Her Soul is a spiritual activist, continuing to do the healing work it came here to do in a world which weeps to know and experience itself as one without pain, even though, ironically, she endured extraordinary physical pain and suffering for the largest portion of her physical life here on earth.
Perhaps today, or maybe sometime in this upcoming week, we can each find a moment or two to cross off one or two things on this colorful and playful list. After all, how could we turn away such an extraordinary gift? And as we do, maybe we can find a quiet space in the center of each of our hearts to send a prayer of gratitude and appreciation to Talia, a beautiful young girl who most of us have never physically met, for giving us the opportunity to remember once again who we truly are and to experience why we are truly here.
Here is a photo of Talia Joy Castellano’s Bucket List:
If you want to share photos of you completing any of Talia’s Bucket List items, you can post them on her Facebook page Angels For Talia.
(Lisa McCormack is the Managing Editor & Administrator of The Global Conversation. She is also a member of the Spiritual Helper team at www.ChangingChange.net, a website offering emotional and spiritual support. To connect with Lisa, please e-mail her at Lisa@TheGlobalConversation.com.)
Contrary to the way in which the media is portraying it, Central Florida actually has problems much larger than the recent “not guilty” verdict in the George Zimmerman case. And one of the most significant and glaring dilemmas is the rising number of human beings who have no place to live and very little, if any, food to eat. In other words, a growing number of individuals who are what we have collectively classified as “homeless.”
While overly ambitious newscasters clamoring for ratings continue to spoon-feed the drama of this high-profile Zimmerman murder trial to an audience all too willing to devote their free time and undivided attention to their television sets, an estimated 35,000 to 40,000 people in the state of Florida are spending their days and nights on the streets, probably much more concerned, I presume, with where their next meal is coming from than the status of George Zimmerman’s criminal case.
I find it shocking that one criminal case can cause thousands of people across the United States to leave their homes and stand in solidarity to protest what they believe to be an injustice, but the fact that last year 633,782 people in the United States alone were without a place to call home does not even create a tiny ripple.
Where is everybody?
How are we choosing what is important to us…and what is not?
Is it that we assuming that someone else is taking care of this?
In the City of Orlando specifically, efforts by local activist groups to organize food offerings for our community’s homeless population in downtown parks have been strategically and legally blocked by local government at every angle over the past several years. The city has designated blue boxes painted on the sidewalks where homeless individuals are permitted to ask for and receive money. If they do so outside the blue lines, they are promptly arrested.
We can’t feed the hungry – except where it has been deemed legally acceptable.
We can’t offer financial assistance to the poorest of poor – except where it has been deemed legally acceptable.
And these people have nowhere to go – except where it has been deemed legally acceptable for them to go.
Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe we should and do live in a world where it truly is each man or woman for him or herself. Maybe those men and women standing on the street corner with signs pleading for money don’t deserve the extra dollar or two I have tucked in the drink holder of my car and I should just continue to act as though I do not even see them. Perhaps that seemingly able-bodied man IS perfectly capable of getting a job and I shouldn’t enable his obvious choice not to work by throwing him a few bucks. Perhaps I should question why those souls who have come to share a portion of life’s journey with me have not experienced their own abundance in the way that I have. After all, they must have done something wrong to get to this point and this place, right? And finally, maybe it is entirely possible that the George Zimmerman trial is way more important than any of this, and that is where I should be focusing my thoughts and energy, as thousands of others are choosing to do.
I don’t think so.
I have never been homeless. But I have had times in my own life where stretching $20 in the grocery store for a week’s worth of meals for my family was a stark reality. And it is not difficult for me to recall many turning points in my life which pivoted upon a compassionate helping hand from someone else. So I’m just noticing. I’m just taking a closer look at what we as a society appear to be fixated on, what issues cause us take a stand, which events in life we choose to outwardly define ourselves by…and which ones we do not. I’m just noticing and wondering how we got here, why we are here, and asking: What will it take to change it?
“When someone enters your life unexpectedly,
look for the gift that person has come to receive from you…
I HAVE SENT YOU NOTHING BUT ANGELS.”
“Conversations with God” – Book 2
(Lisa McCormack is the Managing Editor & Administrator of The Global Conversation. She is also a member of the Spiritual Helper team at www.ChangingChange.net, a website offering emotional and spiritual support. To connect with Lisa, please e-mail her at Lisa@TheGlobalConversation.com.)
How many of us are holding back in our relationships? Who among us is restricting their growth potential or avoiding a change in their career? Let’s see a show of hands from those of us who in some way, shape, or form are limiting ourselves in some aspect of our lives because we are afraid. Yes, I have to admit that my hand has slowly crept up, too.
Afraid of rejection?
Afraid of being hurt?
Afraid of being hurt again?
Afraid of being hurt even again?
Afraid of not being good enough or pretty enough or smart enough or sexy enough?
There seems to me to be a curious double standard when it comes to fear. Human beings have clearly demonstrated time and time again that we actually are not afraid of fear. In so many ways, we are fear-seekers. Just ask the rollercoaster-riders, the bungee-jumpers, the race car drivers, the tight-rope walkers, the lion-tamers, the deep-sea divers, the skyscraper window cleaners, and those who have left the boundaries of earth’s atmosphere to explore what exists beyond this planet we call home. Heck, even I welcomed fear into my life with open arms recently when I zip-lined five stories over a swampy pond filled with giant alligators.
It would appear that in those specific instances, fear actually propels us into our greatness, thrusting us into our highest potential. We desire the rush of danger. We crave the surge of vulnerability. We embrace the feelings of uncertainty. We know there are no guarantees…and we do it anyway.
So why do we not apply that same powerful field of energy when it comes to matters of the heart and soul? Why do we suddenly “need” the guarantee? Why do we suddenly “require” the certainty of a sure thing? Why do we only clear the pathway to our heart when we feel convinced that it is “safe” to do so?
In the meantime, while we are waiting for those assurances, we are not only denying ourselves the gift of those around us, we are denying those around us the gift of us. Fear-based thinking causes us to live small and live prudent, shrinking into an existence of believing we can shield ourselves from our imagined fears by cocooning ourselves in layers of imagined protection.
Imagine if Martin Luther King, Jr., thought, “I have a dream, but I am simply too scared to share it with the people of the world.”
Imagine if Rosa Parks thought, “I do not want to give up my seat on this bus because of the color of my skin, but I am too afraid not to.”
Imagine if Neale Donald Walsch thought, “I had an extraordinary conversation with God, but I’m too afraid to share it with the world for fear of how it or I will be received.”
If any one of those people had listened to and acted upon that voice of fear, we wouldn’t be having this conversation right here, right now. But these are the risk-takers. These are the people who looked fear squarely and confidently and gently in the eye, blessed its presence in their lives, and did it anyway.
And what exactly is the difference between these three individuals and us? What do they have that perhaps you or I do not?
Nothing, except a deep-seated understanding that no matter what happens, no matter how the chips may fall or in which direction the events of our lives take us, we have nothing to lose. The guarantee that life gives to us is that we simply cannot fail. The only “loss” we can experience is the one we personally create in our individual reality when we do not place ourselves fully in the game, the type of loss that prevents us from not only knowing who we really are, but actually experiencing who we are.
“Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.”
Conversations with God
(Lisa McCormack is the Managing Editor & Administrator of The Global Conversation. She is also a member of the Spiritual Helper team at www.ChangingChange.net, a website offering emotional and spiritual support. To connect with Lisa, please e-mail her at Lisa@TheGlobalConversation.com.)
Some people are quite surprised, and many gasp with disbelief, when they hear the story of how my husband and I both completely forgot our one-year anniversary. I know, it sounds semi-plausible that perhaps one of us might overlook such an important milestone in our relationship, but both of us forgetting altogether seems rather comical, a nearly an impossible idea to believe.
This unusual blunder does not stem from a lack of caring, nor does it reflect some level of mutual apathy towards our partnership. You see, it truly is, rather, that our relationship has not demonstrated itself as yearning to be measured or defined within the parameters of time. Measuring or gauging our relationship in terms of days or months or years, while it does hold sentimental enjoyment for us to reflect upon, has never been the focus or intent of our partnership.
Neither is the expectation of our relationship to be in a constant state of blissful agreement. We understand deeply, although we sometimes forget, that at times our Souls will yearn for different experiences, and that the richness of our partnership is not determined by only those moments in which we see eye to eye. And even on those occasions when life has called upon us to experience contrast, or when we have stepped off the path of remembrance, forgetting who we are, the sanctity of our holy union has always been held in the palm of tenderness, compassion, and understanding.
Sure, we disagree about some of the day-to-day tasks in life — taking out the trash and cleaning the kitchen, which television program to watch in the evening, selecting the appropriate temperature setting in our home, dirty socks on the floor, etc. And at times we find ourselves on opposite sides of issues which carry much more importance in our lives, and the lives of others. But the one thing that we do not waiver on, ever, is our understanding of and commitment to the partnership of our souls and the mutual desire and devotion to each other’s experience of and communion with God.
And the experience of communion with God is not something forever lost in days gone by, nor is it something that we can only hope and wish for in the moments of tomorrow. It is for us to experience right here, right now. It doesn’t magically happen at a 1-year anniversary or a 10-year anniversary or a 50-year anniversary, nor does it happen with only one person. It happens the moment you choose for it happen. It happens as often as you desire for it to happen. And it happens with whomever you choose for it to happen with. Because, quite simply, it is always happening. Sometimes we just have to peel back the layers of what we think we see to be able to experience what is really there.
Perhaps now more than ever before, relationships are stretched and challenged by the push and pull of the demands of a fast-paced world. It seems to me that so many of us are forgetting, rather than remembering, the purpose for which we exist in each other’s lives. Maybe these very words will cause one or two or three people to pause and think about what that reason might be, maybe even for the very first time. It is never too late. You are never too old, too poor, too sick, too busy, too tired, or too anything to make a change in your relationships and create your life anew.
(Lisa McCormack is the Managing Editor & Administrator of The Global Conversation. She is also a member of the Spiritual Helper team at www.ChangingChange.net, a website offering emotional and spiritual support. To connect with Lisa, please e-mail her at Lisa@TheGlobalConversation.com.)
I have two good friends who, on the night they got married a few years back, placed a large custom sticker on the back of the window of their car which boldly and playfully exclaimed “Love Explosion.” I have always thought it to be so wonderfully fitting to describe their relationship as a “love explosion” and still find myself smiling, even today, many years later, at the mere mention of it.
At this moment, I can’t think of a more appropriate phrase than a “love explosion” to describe what has happened in our country today, June 26, 2013, as the Supreme Court of the United States of America overturned the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), a federal law passed on September 21, 1996, which allowed states to refuse to recognize same-sex marriages performed under the laws of other states, effectively barring same-sex married couples from receiving federal marriage benefits. The victory means the federal government must recognize the marriages of gay and lesbian couples married in the 12 states that allow same-sex marriage, plus the District of Columbia, and give them the same benefits that they had been previously denied under the DOMA.
This landmark decision is cause for celebration not only among those in the gay community, but for anyone who counts themselves among those who yearn for the day when all human beings on our planet will be able to freely express and experience love, absent judgment, absent restrictions, a day when everyone will be afforded equal opportunities in every aspect of their lives. And this historic ruling today by the United States Supreme Court is a very good indicator that we are indeed headed in that direction. Perhaps not as swiftly or speedily as many of us would truly desire, but, yes, the shift is definitely happening.
Events like this in our human experience help us to understand more clearly just how vast and limitless and immeasurable Love is. How silly for us human beings to think for one nanosecond that we could contain Love inside any kind of container, and somehow then attempt to keep it there by sternly guarding it with our narrow rules and stiff laws. How naive of some people on this planet to believe that we could place boundaries on that which is boundless and eternal. How peculiar that so many people thought they could define in human terms that which has demonstrated itself time and time again to exist outside the limited parameters of our language.
Love.
Love is all there is.
There is nothing but Love.
And try as we might to control, manipulate, restrict, quell, morph, or ignore the ways in which Love is choosing to be expressed in our lives, Love will pour forth, Love will radiate from the heartbeat of the universe, and Love will explode from the purest place of peace and joy. It will not differentiate between a man and a woman or a man and a man or a woman and a woman. It will not subdue or enhance its presence based on differing skin colors or countries of origin or religious preferences. It simply cannot. We can imagine that it can. We can believe that it can. And if we do not stop the insanity of thinking we get to choose who is allowed or who is denied Love, then our experience of Love will be one that reflects those narrow choices.
Thankfully, on this day, these revolutionary words were authored by United States Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, reflecting the New Tomorrow that we here at “The Global Conversation” are honored and overjoyed to stand witness to and share:
“DOMA undermines both the public and private significance of state-sanctioned same-sex marriages; for it tells those couples, and all the world, that their otherwise valid marriages are unworthy of federal recognition. This places same-sex couples in an unstable position of being in a second-tier marriage. The differentiation demeans the couple, whose moral and sexual choices the Constitution protects, see Lawrence, 539 U. S. 558, and whose relationship the State has sought to dignify. And it humiliates tens of thousands of children now being raised by same-sex couples. The law in question makes it even more difficult for the children to understand the integrity and closeness of their own family and its concord with other families in their community and in their daily lives.”
(Lisa McCormack is the Managing Editor & Administrator of The Global Conversation. She is also a member of the Spiritual Helper team at www.ChangingChange.net, a website offering emotional and spiritual support. To connect with Lisa, please e-mail her at Lisa@TheGlobalConversation.com.)
There have been moments in my life when I have entertained unkind thoughts. I have also said things in my life that I do not feel proud of. And I can remember times when I have acted in ways that contradicted my best intentions. I suppose each and every one of us can remember at least one time in our lives when our thoughts, words, and actions were not in alignment with our Highest Self, instances when we functioned from a place of fear and not from a place of love, moments when we knew at a very deep and certain level that we had stepped off the path of clarity.
However, fortunately for most of us, our mishaps, intentional or otherwise, were not instantaneously broadcast on national television, shared feverishly across thousands, if not millions, of internet websites, blogs, Facebook and Twitter pages, or published in countless newspaper and magazine publications around the world simultaneously, as they have been in recent days for Paula Deen.
Ms. Deen is being sued by a former manager at her restaurants, Lisa T. Jackson, in Savannah, Georgia, for sexual and racial harassment. Jackson’s lawsuit alleges that Deen and her brother, Bubba Hier, committed numerous acts of violence, discrimination, and racism that resulted in the end of her five-year employment with Deen.
During a deposition in the legal proceedings, Paula Deen admitted to using racial epithets, such as the “N” word, tolerating racist jokes, and condoning pornography in the workplace, candid forthcomings that have landed her smack dab in the middle of a firestorm of sharp criticism and vilification from both the media and the public at large. Ms. Deen’s candor ultimately led to the swift decision by The Food Network to cancel her cooking show on their television station only one hour after she publicly offered her heartfelt apologies and begged for forgiveness from all those who have been affected by her choices and actions.
I would like to be clear that I am not here to judge what Paula Deen did, or did not do, as being good or bad, right or wrong, defensible or indefensible. What I am interested in having a conversation about is: What happens now? How do we, individually and collectively, show up now in relation to this event and this experience? Do we attempt to drain and deplete Paula Deen of every ounce of goodness and joy that she has given to our world as a trade-off for the moments in which she forgot who she was? Do we punish her? Do we support her? Do we forgive her?
Is forgiveness even necessary?
In the book The Only Thing That Matters, we are offered the invitation to consider a radical new way of thinking: Forgiveness Forgone, a concept which says that forgiveness is not necessary when it is replaced, rather, with the more powerful energy of Understanding. If this concept is held as true, then the question becomes: What are we being asked to understand here? Are we willing to see through the thick layers of distortion – anger, fear, judgment – to understand that anything Paula Deen has said or done is truly an expression of love? Do we need to see to it that Paula Deen “loses everything” in order for us to feel as though we are “made whole”? Is that how it all works in this game of life?
Perhaps the notoriety of situations like these offers us an opportunity to peer into our own personal relationships and notice where we are holding on to grudges or allowing tightly held resentment to dominate our choices. Is there anything in life that is unforgivable? Is there a “point of no return”?
Perhaps the woes and sorrows of another famous face are unimportant to us as we move through the day-to-day affairs of our own lives. As with everything in life, we all get to decide for ourselves what it means. But for me, I can’t help but notice the many way in which these types of defining moments continue to appear, calling me, beckoning me, and inviting me to once again choose, declare, and ultimately experience who I really am.
Who will you choose to be?
(Lisa McCormack is the Managing Editor & Administrator of The Global Conversation. She is also a member of the Spiritual Helper team at www.ChangingChange.net, a website offering emotional and spiritual support. To connect with Lisa, please e-mail her at Lisa@TheGlobalConversation.com.)
It wasn’t my original intention to have a two-part or continuing series in my column about this particular topic, but after last week’s piece about the controversy surrounding the Cheerios commercial and the racially driven outbursts which took place as a result of its portrayal of a bi-racial couple who are parents to a mixed-race daughter, it appears as though another opportunity has presented itself for us to enter into a thoughtful conversation around belief systems which thrive on and promote ideas of separatism and which attempt to control and dictate other human beings based upon nationality, physicality, skin color, age, sexual orientation, etc.
Sebastien De La Cruz, 11 years old, a former contestant on the popular television program “America’s Got Talent,” was invited by the NBA to sing the National Anthem at the opening of Game 3 during the finals in San Antonio, Texas. This adorable and wonderfully talented young man stepped courageously out onto the basketball court in front of thousands of onlookers and performed a rendition of the National Anthem that brought people to their feet, cheering with appreciation.
However, unfortunately, Sebastien De La Cruz was also confronted with the same backlash as General Mills experienced in response to their Cheerios commercial by people who verbally attacked young Sebastien, slinging racial barbs at him on the internet, questioning whether his Mexican heritage deemed him “worthy” of singing the National Anthem, and harshly criticizing the fact that he wore a mariachi outfit during his performance.
The comments that are being circulated are so offensive that I have chosen not to reprint any of them here. And they most certainly aren’t instrumental in our ability to have a discussion around why and how a young boy — who happens to be an American citizen, by the way — can find himself on the receiving end of such seething hostility and distorted thinking. What in the world could cause anyone to think and then actually rise to the level of expressing such oppressive and hurtful words to an 11-year-old child?
Will there be a time when we eventually stop defining ourselves by “this” or “that,” “here” or “there,” “have” or “have not,” “better than” or “less than”?
In response to the commotion, Sebastien De La Cruz has demonstrated himself to be a powerful force of wisdom and clarity. “For those that said something bad about me, I understand it’s your opinion,” said Sebastien to CNN. “I’m a proud American and live in a free country. It’s not hurting me. It’s just your opinion. Please do not pay attention to the negative people. I am an American living the American Dream. This is part of the American life.” Sebastien said today was like any other day, but he’s always grateful to wake up to yet another day able to sing. He said he owes his positive outlook to his parents, family and everyone in San Antonio.
Contrary to the negative energy swirling around this story, there has also been an overwhelming show of appreciation and support for Sebastien. So much so that the San Antonio Spurs invited him back for an encore performance for Game 4. Sebastien also received encouragement in the form of a Tweet from a very special fan:
“Barack Obama: Don’t miss @selcharrodeoro’s encore performance of the national anthem at the #NBAFinals in San Antonio tonight.”
In closing, I share with you this from Conversations With God, Book 3: “The level of a society’s advancement is reflected, inevitably, in the degree of its duality thinking. Social evolution is demonstrated by movement towards unity, not separatism.”
And the question I proffer to you is: Which one are we moving towards?
Please enjoy this video of Sebastien De La Cruz’s performance:
(Lisa McCormack is the Managing Editor & Administrator of The Global Conversation. She is also a member of the Spiritual Helper team at www.ChangingChange.net, a website offering emotional and spiritual support. To connect with Lisa, please e-mail her at Lisa@TheGlobalConversation.com.)
I invite you to watch a short video clip. It is only 31 seconds long. And after you have finished watching this particular video clip, which happens to be an advertisement for the well-known breakfast cereal Cheerios, I then invite you to explore your initial feelings and observations in relationship to what you just watched.
This ad has created some surprising controversy, and I would like to give our readers here at The Global Conversation an opportunity to weigh in on your thoughts and opinions surrounding this advertising campaign.
What do you think?
What do you feel?
Does anything strike you as odd or offensive?
I heard about “the controversial Cheerios commercial,” and I have to tell you, before reading the story behind the firestorm, I watched this video clip two or three times and STILL could not figure out what the commotion was all about. When I went on to read an article about the negative reaction this video prompted from a segment of our world’s population, I felt as though I stepped back in some peculiar and unforgiving time machine.
Cheerios’ portrayal of a bi-racial couple, an African-American father and a Caucasian mother, both parents to a young mixed-race daughter, received so many negative and racist comments on YouTube — references to ‘Nazis’ and ‘troglodytes’ and ‘racial genocide’ – General Mills, the parent company of Cheerios, elected to disable the “comments” section underneath the video.
With as much progress and forward movement we have made as a society, how is it possible that there are still so many people who haven’t progressed and who haven’t moved forward? Maybe I am naive, but I continue to be transported to a place of disbelief, oftentimes simply having no words to express, when I hear of or stand witness to human beings who not only judge but actually interfere in the well-being of another based on what they look like, how they talk, how old or young they are, how fat or skinny they are, who they love, how they wear their hair and like to dress, what kind of house they live in, how much money they have, who they like to have sex with, what color their skin is, etc.
When you watched this video, did you feel anything but affection and sweetness? Contentment and warmness? And maybe a sudden hunger for a bowl of Cheerios?
Actor Charles Malik Whitfield, the man who plays the African-American father in the ad, supports the Cheerios ad wholeheartedly and recently spoke about it.
“As an actor who happens to be African-American, I am very proud to be part of the forward-thinking Cheerios commercial produced by General Mills. I believe it represents what America stands for – regardless of race, creed or sexual preference. To all of the wonderful people who have supported this heart-warming and very adorable commercial, I applaud you all,” Whitfield said.
In a statement to ABC News, Camille Gibson, the VP of Marketing for Cheerios said, “Consumers have responded positively to our new Cheerios ad. At Cheerios, we know there are many kinds of families and we celebrate them all.”
Well, today, I celebrate you, General Mills, for being at the forefront of a New Cultural Story in our world. Not only does it make me want to buy Cheerios, it makes me just simply want to be more loving, more compassionate, more accepting, and more aware than I have already declared myself to be.
(Lisa McCormack is the Managing Editor & Administrator of The Global Conversation. She is also a member of the Spiritual Helper team at www.ChangingChange.net, a website offering emotional and spiritual support. To connect with Lisa, please e-mail her at Lisa@TheGlobalConversation.com.)
Angelina Jolie, 37, recently underwent a preventive double mastectomy after finding out she carries a mutation of the BRCA1 gene, which significantly increases her risk of developing breast cancer and ovarian cancer, a disease her own mother died of at the age of 59. “My doctors estimated that I had an 87 percent risk of breast cancer and a 50 percent risk of ovarian cancer, although the risk is different in the case of each woman,” Jolie wrote. “Once I knew that this was my reality, I decided to be proactive and to minimize the risk as much I could. I made a decision to have a preventive double mastectomy. I can tell my children that they don’t need to fear they will lose me to breast cancer.”
There are many people who are applauding the proactive choice Angelina is making to minimize her chances of getting cancer. But her radical decision has also been met with some controversy and her actions are being challenged by members of the holistic and natural health community.
Dr. Lissa Rankin, M.D., a former OB/GYN for eight years and author of Mind Over Medicine, Scientific Proof That You Can Heal Yourself, says on her website, “By labeling a patient with a negative prognosis and robbing a patient of the hope that cure might be possible, we may ultimately prove the poor prognosis we have bestowed upon our patient correct. Wouldn’t we be better off offering hope and triggering the mind to release health-inducing chemicals intended to aid the body’s self-repair mechanisms? Is it really healthy for any of us to know that we might have an 87% risk of any illness? Do we really want to poison our minds with such fear-based thoughts that then force us to make decisions about whether or not we will electively cut off perfectly healthy body parts? When we live in fear, we predispose ourselves to illness. To live in fear of what might happen only triggers stress responses in the body.”
And so we find ourselves as a society continually and more increasingly faced with a difficult choice of what is behind Door Number 1, the marvels of modern medicine, and Door Number 2, the miraculous power of our body’s own ability to organically heal and sustain. And as Dr. Rankin is suggesting, how much do our thoughts come into play in actually creating — and healing — so many of the illnesses we see in our world today?
Conversations With God, Book 1, offered this to us: “You never do die. Life is eternal. You are immortal. You never do die. You simply change form. You didn’t even have to do that. You decided to do that, I didn’t. I made you bodies that would last forever. Do you really think the best God could do, the best I could come up with, was a body that could make it 60, 70, maybe 80 years before falling apart? Is that, do you imagine, the limit of My ability?”
And so with all of the information we have placed before us, upon what do we base our decisions? Is there a space where science and spirituality harmoniously intersect and work in conjunction to benefit humanity? Is Dr. Rankin correct in the idea that our fear-based thoughts are actually creating our illnesses and preventing our body’s natural ability to heal? Or are the medical doctors correct that we are predisposed to certain types of illnesses – cancer, diabetes, high blood pressure, etc., — and we are best served to surgically or medicinally prevent and/or cure these diseases? Or could it a combination of both?
What are your thoughts?
(Lisa McCormack is the Managing Editor & Administrator of The Global Conversation. She is also a member of the Spiritual Helper team at www.ChangingChange.net, a website offering emotional and spiritual support. To connect with Lisa, please e-mail her at Lisa@TheGlobalConversation.com.)
A couple days ago, in my daily course of business, I found myself walking behind a lovely couple on a busy sidewalk. The gentleman was having a good time, laughing, dancing, immersed in his own personal space and thoughts, oblivious to the bustling world around him – in what many people call “the zone.” I was quietly enjoying being in the moment of witnessing his free-spiritedness. It was then when his companion said, “Honey, this lady behind us is trying to get by us,” to which he replied bluntly, “I don’t care.”
His words, at first blush, were coarse and stinging. And they lingered in my thoughts for quite a while as I contemplated the feelings and energy behind this abrupt declaration: I don’t care. And as with all the events in my life, it served as an opportunity for me to really think and reflect upon what this meant to me. And what I kept circling around in my thoughts was, do people actually ever truly not care? Is it possible for us to not care? And if we really do care, why do we say we don’t?
Maybe it has become easier to simply not care – or at least pretend we don’t — to bury our heads in the sand and willingly go where the winds of change happen to take us. Kind of like we do when our car pulls up to the red traffic light right next to the man or woman holding up a sign that says “Please help. Anything is appreciated.” Do we really not care when we look the other way in an effort to avoid eye contact? Do we really not care when we choose to not give him or her a buck or two?
We seem to care when tragedy strikes, like the tornado in Oklahoma, the explosions in Boston, Hurricane Sandy, or the Newtown shootings. Facebook walls fill up with posts of inspiration and hope, and the masses rally together to bring aide to those in need. In these types of situations, the level of care being expressed is tangibly felt. But what happens to us the rest of the time? What happens to Humanity in the day-to-day of our lives in the way we interact with each other, the way we listen to each other, the way we honor each other?
Do we only care when what is happening is “about us”?
What makes us care?
What would make us not care?
Money?
Competition?
Recognition?
Worthiness?
Pain?
Suffering?
Love?
I realize in my own life how often on a daily basis I say “I don’t care.” Sure, it might be as benign as “What would you like to have for dinner?” I don’t care. “What movie would you like to see?” I don’t care. Or perhaps it carries with it a heavier negative energy like “Honey, this lady behind us is trying to get by us.” I don’t care.
Might we be well-served to consider abandoning this three-word statement altogether as part of our announcement to the universe that, yes, we do actually care? And not only do we care, but that we are consciously demonstrating a level of care that reflects our highest truth, even when our truth may differ from that of another. When we are no longer afraid to express our own truth, we will no longer desire to hide behind the mask of not caring. And when we no longer hide behind the removable mask of “not caring,” we will see the illusion, we will understand it, and we will then experience our own Divinity.
(Lisa McCormack is the Managing Editor & Administrator of The Global Conversation. She is also a member of the Spiritual Helper team at www.ChangingChange.net, a website offering emotional and spiritual support. To connect with Lisa, please e-mail her at Lisa@TheGlobalConversation.com.)
