When we look at the root of the drug and alcohol problems in the affluent Western nations, frustration and misery always rise to the surface. Yet, most people in the world find that hard to believe.
After all, the people in the Western countries are so much wealthier and have such full facility to enjoy themselves that it seems implausible that they would be entrenched in an even bigger drug problem than the poor countries.
The problem is that most people are in the illusion that material wealth alone is sufficient to make a person happy. They are equating happiness and/or satisfaction with material sense enjoyment and that if the person is “enjoying” the bodily senses they will be satisfied.
The lesson to be learned is that if a person could be happy simply by enjoying the senses, there would never be problems associated with frustration and unhappiness.
People in the Western world are very affluent, have full facility for sense enjoyment, have money, have time, have, or could have, good health, and yet are not happy.
Seeing this reality, an intelligent person would ask, WHY?
The answer is simple: sense enjoyment is not enough to satisfy the person.
Yet, according to modern chemicalist philosophy, a person is nothing more than a combination of material chemicals. As such, if one makes the body’s senses happy that should eliminate frustration.
In real life, we see that people have full facility for bodily sense enjoyment but they are still not happy.
So, to understand the problem of alcoholism and drugs one has to go deeper into the subject of frustration and dissatisfaction.
Going deeper shows that despite experiencing sense gratification to the fullest there is still something still not addressed – spiritual starvation.
Alcoholism and the drug problem are merely symptoms of the disease. A disease that many people are reluctant to face.
While unknowingly suffering from this disease, there are people in various stages or degrees of this spiritual starvation.
There are so many that are so unhappy with their lives yet they still carry on with their duties and normal activities but turn to drugs and alcohol to help them forget their purposelessness. And by some weird quirk of fate this drug problem somehow becomes a drug solution.
Let’s say that, for example, a middle-aged man has spent most of his life working to be able to get all the facilities for their sense enjoyment as well as their family’s and has succeeded in doing so.
Then one day he sees that his kids are not satisfied despite all they have been provided with and he realizes that he will have to die one day and leave everything he has accumulated.
What happens is that the feeling of having wasted many years of his life manifests? He worked his whole life to provide those things he thought would make his family happy and it did not. Now what?
Now the kids see that their parents are unhappy despite having wealth and they experience similar frustrations even though they never had to work for anything.
The vast majority of young people in America have facility for unlimited sense enjoyment that most people in other parts of the world can only dream about.
Being born into affluence means that you can get everything money can buy. Despite this, the kid is still unsatisfied.
Some time ago I wrote about the hippies in the late sixties and early seventies, when millions of young Americans, Europeans, Australians, etc., left their affluent homes and all its comforts, the vast majority of which took just the clothes on their backs and wandered around, living in cramped quarters with other young people, trying to find a deeper meaning of existence.
Unfortunately, most of them did not find a deeper meaning of existence and instead, succumbed to drugs. Why? Because they were trying to forget the meaninglessness of their existence.
Yes, the hippie movement is over, but the massive use of drugs for the purpose of forgetting the meaninglessness of our existence is one of the main effects that the hippie movement had on the greater American and Western society as a whole.
To put is another way: a life, which has as its central purpose nothing more than material sense enjoyment, leads to annihilationism.
The idea that I am merely the material body, that I am matter, just chemicals, leads to hedonism or a life centered around the sole purpose of sense gratification. This leads to frustration, which ultimately leads to thoughts of the desire to cease existing.
There are two ways to try to get rid of pain. One is to try to get rid of the pain; the other is to try to get rid of the person experiencing the pain.
So whether someone is pushing drugs, alcohol, annihilationism, or voidism, they are no different than the doctor who “cures” his patients by killing them.
So all these methods are attempts to decrease one’s awareness of his own existence. And since awareness or consciousness is the characteristic of life itself, the attempt to decrease such awareness is the symptom of the desire to die. This desire to become free from suffering by ending one’s existence is called mukti, or the liberation from suffering.
So, ultimately, the life of endless sense gratification, called bhukti, leads to frustration and misery, which leads to drugs or alcohol in the hopes of achieving mukti or liberation.
This is called the bhukti-mukti syndrome. First, the desire for sense gratification –bhukti –and then the desire for liberation from the purposeless and misery – mukti.
The solution to the bhukti-mukti syndrome is coming to the realization of your actual identity. The realization that we are not the material body but rather the life force within the material body. The body is material matter and temporary and the life force is spiritual and eternal.
We also must learn that we are not God but dominated parts and parcels of God. The realization of these two things will enable one to understand that the purpose of life is not to serve the senses but to somehow be engaged in loving service to God.
You see, we try to find happiness by playing God. In doing so we ultimately become frustrated and spiritually starved.
This can be compared to a finger on the body that is trying to enjoy independently. Imagine your finger sitting in a bowl of food, it’s right in the middle of the food but it can’t quite take the food in.
Seeing this I might tell my finger that to get energy from that food I need to get it to the mouth. From there it goes to the stomach and from the stomach the food is digested and ultimately delivered to me. But, the finger protests and wonders why it has to give it to someone else (the mouth) when all it wants to do is enjoy it directly.
The answer is that it is just not the natural position and function of the finger. That’s the arrangement and there is nothing anyone can do about it.
The only way the finger can get energy is for it to work in coordination with the entire body and help get the food to the stomach.
The same thing applies to the living entity. The living entity is part and parcel of God. We are all parts of Him. If we try to enjoy independently or separately from His concern, then we will not actually experience true satisfaction of joy.
People in the Western world do not understand this. We are sitting in the midst of incredible wealth, just like the finger sitting in the middle of the food.
But so many people are spiritually starving to death because they do not know their actual identity or their relation to God or the purpose of the human form of life.
We wrongly identify ourselves as our bodies. We see ourselves as being the dominator and consider that our natural position is to be master or enjoyer. So we set out on a path of exploitation in life, believing that we can have happiness independently from God.
People need to be spiritually educated as to who and what they are and what their relationship with God is.
Until that happens, we will continue to be bound by selfish interests and endure the bhukti-mukti syndrome endlessly.
The economic development of the West has been built almost entirely upon the desire for their own sense gratification. In other words, for a person to have sense gratification they must secure themselves economically. This is the motivating force. The belief that this sense gratification will make us happy is no longer as strong or convincing in the people as a whole.
There are millions of young people who feel no motivation to make economic advancement. They feel completely without reason to live. They were originally taught that the goal of life is sense gratification and the way to achieve it is to work hard for economic development.
From their own experiences that sense gratification is not enough to satisfy them they no longer have motivation to work and feel hopeless.
So, how do we resolve the conflict? It all starts in your heart where two beings reside: the soul and the Super Soul, aka God. Since God resides in the heart of ALL living beings, He knows your thoughts and desires. If you sincerely want to know Him, He will work it out. All it takes on your part is the sincere desire.
If you understand that God is in your heart does it not stand to reason that your body is truly a temple? As such, why do we continually defile it? Question: would you go into a church/temple/ synagogue/mosque or another place of worship and literally pee or take a dump on the floor? It’s probably the last thing you would do.
So, why then do you continually do it to your body?
You fill your temple with rotting carcasses, with heavy pesticides and drugs, both medicinal and recreational, smoke and alcohol, artificial sweeteners and flavors, GMOs and other chemically produced foods, and so many other pollutants and atrocities, and yet wonder why what is happening to you is happening to you.
See your body for the temple that it is and respect the Inhabitant and His part and parcel and maybe, just maybe, one day you will get the surprise of your life by finding out there is a God.
Aloha!
About Hesh:
I have been doing a radio show in Honolulu since 1981 called “Health Talk”. To listen to the show please go to www.kwai1080am.com on your computer at 8am Hawaii time. FYI, 8am Hawaii time is 11am on the West coast and 2pm on the East coast. See you on the radio! To call in, the number is (808) 524-1080.
In 2007, I was “forced” to get a masters degree in Nutrition to stop all the doctors from calling in asking what my credentials were. Besides that, they never liked it when I asked them what their credentials were that would enable them to treat an illness without drugs or surgery.
If you go to www.healthtalkhawaii.com and click on Podcasts, there are years of shows there as well as hundreds of health related articles.
I am an activist. I am vehemently opposed to GMOs, vaccines, processed foods, MSG, aspartame, fluoridation, and everything else that the “pimps” (big pHarma, Monsanto, and the large food companies), and the “hookers” (the doctors, the government agencies, the Public Health officials, and the mainstream media) thrust upon us, the “tricks”.
At 75, I am in 3 softball leagues, racewalk, do stand-up paddling, hike, swim, do weights and cardio, and teach women’s self-defense classes based upon 20 years of Wing Chun training. I have been a vegetarian since 1975 and a vegan since 1990, have no illnesses and take no meds.
After being vaccinated with the DTP vaccine as a child, I developed asthma, which plagued me until 2008 when I learned about and started taking the organic sulfur crystals. My asthma was reversed in 3 days and has not come back.
So far, 22 cases of autism that we know about have been reversed, as has cancer, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, asthma, osteoarthritis, joint pain, gingivitis, and erectile dysfunction. The sulfur has increased sexual activity, eliminated toxins, heavy metals, radiation, and parasites. It speeds up athletic recovery time, increases blood circulation, reduces inflammation, increases resistance to the “flu”, reduces wrinkles, allergies, PMS, monthly period pain, migraines, nausea, and way more, because the oxygen that the sulfur releases floods and heals the cells in the body.
The sulfur, as proven by the University of Southampton in England, enables the body to produce vitamin B12 and the essential amino acids.
You can find out more about this on my website under Products.
My book, “A Sane Diet For An Insane World”, which has been published, can be viewed and purchased at www.asanediet.com. The book clearly explains why what you eat, for the most part, is designed to keep you in a state of declining health.
I have recently discovered an amazing super food – Zeal – that contains 42 amazing probiotics, anti-oxidents and more, all designed to build and strengthen the immune system. For more info about this please email me.
Hesh Goldstein, MSNutri
“Health Talk” Moderator, K-108 Radio
POB 240783, Honolulu, Hi 96824
(808) 258-1177
www.healthtalkhawaii.com
www.asanediet.com
[email protected]
Just to put things in perspective, after I graduated from Weequahic High School and before going to Seton Hall University, I had a part-time job working for a butcher. I was the delivery guy and occasionally had to go to the slaughterhouse to pick up products for the store. Needless to say, I had no consciousness nor awareness, as change never came then despite the horrors I witnessed on an almost daily basis.
After graduating with a degree in accounting from Seton Hall, I eventually got married and moved to a town called Livingston. Livingston was basically a yuppie community where everyone was judged by the neighborhood they lived in and their income. To say it was a "plastic" community would be an understatement.
Livingston and the shallowness finally got to me. I told my wife I was fed up and wanted to move. She made it clear she had to be near her friends and New York City. I finally got my act together and split for Colorado.
I was living with a lady in Aspen at the end of 1974, when one day she said, " let's become vegetarians". I have no idea what possessed me to say it, but I said, "okay"! At that point I went to the freezer and took out about $100 worth of frozen, dead body parts and gave them to a welfare mother who lived behind us. Well, everything was great for about a week or so, and then the chick split with another guy.
So here I was, a vegetarian for a couple weeks, not really knowing what to do, how to cook, or basically how to prepare anything. For about a month, I was getting by on carrot sticks, celery sticks, and yogurt. Fortunately, when I went vegan in 1990, it was a simple and natural progression. Anyway, as I walked around Aspen town, I noticed a little vegetarian restaurant called, "The Little Kitchen".
Let me back up just a little bit. It was April of 1975, the snow was melting and the runoff of Ajax Mountain filled the streets full of knee-deep mud. Now, Aspen was great to ski in, but was a bummer to walk in when the snow was melting.
I was ready to call it quits and I needed a warmer place. I'll elaborate on that in a minute.
But right now, back to "The Little Kitchen". Knowing that I was going to leave Aspen and basically a new vegetarian, I needed help. So, I cruised into the restaurant and told them my plight and asked them if they would teach me how to cook. I told them in return I would wash dishes and empty their trash. They then asked me what I did for a living and I told them I was an accountant.
The owner said to me, "Let's make a deal. You do our tax return and we'll feed you as well". So for the next couple of weeks I was doing their tax return, washing their dishes, emptying the trash, and learning as much as I could.
But, like I said, the mud was getting to me. So I picked up a travel book written by a guy named Foder. The name of the book was, "Hawaii". Looking through the book I noticed that in Lahaina, on Maui, there was a little vegetarian restaurant called," Mr. Natural's". I decided right then and there that I would go to Lahaina and work at "Mr. Natural's." To make a long story short, that's exactly what happened.
So, I'm working at "Mr. Natural's" and learning everything I can about my new dietary lifestyle - it was great. Every afternoon we would close for lunch at about 1 PM and go to the Sheraton Hotel in Ka'anapali and play volleyball, while somebody stayed behind to prepare dinner.
Since I was the new guy, and didn't really know how to cook, I never thought that I would be asked to stay behind to cook dinner. Well, one afternoon, that's exactly what happened; it was my turn. That posed a problem for me because I was at the point where I finally knew how to boil water.
I was desperate, clueless and basically up the creek without a paddle. Fortunately, there was a friend of mine sitting in the gazebo at the restaurant and I asked him if he knew how to cook. He said the only thing he knew how to cook was enchiladas. He said that his enchiladas were bean-less and dairy-less. I told him that I had no idea what an enchilada was or what he was talking about, but I needed him to show me because it was my turn to do the evening meal.
Well, the guys came back from playing volleyball and I'm asked what was for dinner. I told them enchiladas; the owner wasn't thrilled. I told him that mine were bean-less and dairy-less. When he tried the enchilada he said it was incredible. Being the humble guy that I was, I smiled and said, "You expected anything less"? It apparently was so good that it was the only item on the menu that we served twice a week. In fact, after about a week, we were selling five dozen every night we had them on the menu and people would walk around Lahaina broadcasting, 'enchilada's at "Natural's" tonight'. I never had to cook anything else.
A year later the restaurant closed, and somehow I gravitated to a little health food store in Wailuku. I never told anyone I was an accountant and basically relegated myself to being the truck driver. The guys who were running the health food store had friends in similar businesses and farms on many of the islands. I told them that if they could organize and form one company they could probably lock in the State. That's when they found out I was an accountant and "Down to Earth" was born. "Down to Earth" became the largest natural food store chain in the islands, and I was their Chief Financial Officer and co-manager of their biggest store for 13 years.
In 1981, I started to do a weekly radio show to try and expose people to a vegetarian diet and get them away from killing innocent creatures. I still do that show today. I pay for my own airtime and have no sponsors to not compromise my honesty. One bit of a hassle was the fact that I was forced to get a Masters Degree in Nutrition to shut up all the MD's that would call in asking for my credentials.
My doing this radio show enabled me, through endless research, to see the corruption that existed within the big food industries, the big pharmaceutical companies, the biotech industries and the government agencies. This information, unconscionable as it is, enabled me to realize how broken our health system is. This will be covered more in depth in the Introduction and throughout the book and when you finish the book you will see this clearly and it will hopefully inspire you to make changes.
I left Down to Earth in 1989, got nationally certified as a sports injury massage therapist and started traveling the world with a bunch of guys that were making a martial arts movie. After doing that for about four years I finally made it back to Honolulu and got a job as a massage therapist at the Honolulu Club, one of Hawaii's premier fitness clubs. It was there I met the love of my life who I have been with since 1998. She made me an offer I couldn't refuse. She said," If you want to be with me you've got to stop working on naked women". So, I went back into accounting and was the Chief Financial Officer of a large construction company for many years.
Going back to my Newark days when I was an infant, I had no idea what a "chicken" or "egg" or "fish" or "pig" or "cow" was. My dietary blueprint was thrust upon me by my parents as theirs was thrust upon them by their parents. It was by the grace of God that I was able to put things in their proper perspective and improve my health and elevate my consciousness.
The road that I started walking down in 1975 has finally led me to the point of writing my book, “A Sane Diet For An Insane World”. Hopefully, the information contained herein will be enlightening, motivating, and inspiring to encourage you to make different choices. Doing what we do out of conditioning is not always the best course to follow. I am hoping that by the grace of the many friends and personalities I have encountered along my path, you will have a better perspective of what road is the best road for you to travel on, not only for your health but your consciousness as well.
Last but not least: after being vaccinated as a kid I developed asthma, which plagued me all of my life. In 2007 I got exposed to the organic sulfur crystals, which got rid of my asthma in 3 days and has not come back in over 10 years. That, being the tip of the iceberg, has helped people reverse stage 4 cancers, autism, joint pain, blood pressure problems, migraine headaches, erectile dysfunction, gingivitis, and more. Also, because of the detoxification effects by the release of oxygen that permeates and heals all the cells in the body, it removes parasites, radiation, fluoride, free radicals, and all the other crap that is thrust upon us in the environment by Big Business.
For more, please view www.healthtalkhawaii.com and www.asanediet.com.
Namaste!
