Canary to Phoenix
Environmental Illness and Non-duality
The Big Picture
“Whether you can observe a thing or not depends on the theory you use. It is the theory that decides what can be observed.” — Albert Einstein
First, it is important to remember that none of this is personal. Although it feels personal because it is affecting you and your family, a huge process is unfolding that no one person has control over. The trajectory of human history is still only in its adolescence, in many ways. When we can’t perceive the whole picture, we must learn the hard way. So that’s what’s happening. We are feeling the effects of the unanticipated impacts of modern civilization.
The current systems of human civilization are devastating the macro and micro ecosystems on the planet and it’s not slowing down. The moment for action to avoid crisis is happening now. We are at the tipping point. We are watching it pass.
The status quo in America is that you are profitable to someone when you are sick. There are structures in place that profit from introducing the 80,000 chemicals into our environment and then there are structures in place that profit from your engagement in our for-profit medical system, whether or not you get better.
The big picture is that you will need to become mentally aligned to a New Paradigm before real healing is available to you. Humans die from “mental sclerosis” all the time– that’s an inability to update our thinking in time to grasp the nature of the problem and therefore the solutions. Are 400 failures of Alzheimers drug trials enough to open your mind?
- A new medical paradigm is emerging. Perhaps you have had personal experiences with conventional medicine failing to help you or someone you love, while “integrative medicine” helped. Perhaps this concept of a single drug fixing your body makes no sense to you since it is clear that how you eat literally creates your body. It is clear to you that your body is not separate from the web of life that contains it, it is a reflection of it. Functional Medicine is systems analysis of the etiology of symptoms– not just treating symptoms, but discovering the root causes. The root causes of cancer are not likely to be a lack of chemotherapy.
“Your fish is sick.
Germ theory: isolate the fish.
Terrain theory: clean the tank.”
- Even greater than the shift in medical paradigm is the shift in scientific paradigm. The current power structures on the planet are still operating from an outdated conceptual framework that says that the planet can indefinitely absorb and dilute the metabolites of profit and comfort. It is based on a misunderstanding that we are separate from nature and that microbes are bad. Medical Science is now transcending this misunderstanding.
Almost 60 years ago, biologist Rachel Carson published the NY Times best seller called Silent Spring, which focused on the impact that DDT and other biocides have on the environment. She was attacked by the chemical industry “as an alarmist and was accused of trying to reverse scientific progress.” Rachel Carson was right. However, truth is always hard to see when one’s livelihood depends on blindness. - Even greater than the shift in scientific paradigm is the shift in human consciousness. After several millennia of human progress, the planet manifested a “second brain” with the internet– just in time for tens of millions of people to lose their memory. The internet elucidates and amplifies the human mind with its search for truth, but also all its hubris and ignorance.
The momentum of “Earth’s mental crescendo” is still building, but offers each of us the increased contrast within the human experience of the activities of the mind versus the present moment awareness within which all of those activities arise. The silent now emerges as the contrast to the mind. The “post-crescendo” consciousness is quite aware of this difference and gravitates toward the sanity of the present moment, and therefore solutions that are in alignment, not in conflict, with natural systems.
Moments of existential crisis are basically growth spurts. When your existence and/or your paradigm is challenged, you are forced to develop tools you never needed before. When you develop those tools, you become an asset to the whole system. It’s as though the whole system is challenging you to come into alignment for its own benefit.
Having this “Big Picture Perspective” can be helpful when the path of healing becomes challenging.
Canary to Phoenix 