Are you an Educated Consumer or a Programmed Consumer?
We grew up in a society where we were programmed to believe that our doctor knows what’s best for us, the FDA food pyramid is what we should be eating to stay healthy, that we can take a pill and it will heal us, that your dentist was trying to help, that fluoride is good for your teeth, that milk does the body good, that the lifestyle you choose now wouldn’t negatively affect your health and well being or the environment… I can go on and on.
From the time we were born into this society we are being programmed. We have been and are being programmed by our parents, society structure, the media, the government, large corporations to think a certain way, to act a certain way, to live a certain way, to groom and clean ourselves in a certain way, to eat a certain way, to consume a certain way, to die a certain way, to be born or give birth a certain way, to cover up symptoms instead of heal etc….instead of deciding these things for ourselves. You may think you are deciding most of these things for yourself, in the present moment that is true. You are making a choice. You are making a choice of which programming you will live by next, or perhaps you will go against the status quo.
Do you think we would be making the same decisions, if we were not being influenced by all the things that were programming us? Do you think you would make the same decision, if we were more educated about how people were being programmed or what affect it had on society and our life’s? Once we are aware of what’s really going on, we can slow down take a look at the next decision and see if it is a product of this programming. Once we put space in between it, we can see it from a distance, then can make a decision on making our own choice or going with the status quo. It could be the big life decisions like deciding to get married and have children after completing college or delivering a baby in a hospital or not, it could be an everyday decision on what you put 
into your body or how you clean or groom yourself.
I recently posted some very good documentaries on my website on nutrition, the food industry, healing with food. These documentaries are highly recommended for every citizen in the USA. These documentaries are a shocking eye opener to the programming we had been put under and what is occurring with our food supply, our health, our healthcare system, and how we can heal ourselves. The more educated consumers we are, the healthier we will all be if we take action based on that education. If you are not an educated consumer it can mean life or death, healing yourself of illness or staying sick. It could mean having control of your own life or allowing the government or big corporations and the outside world dictate what you can or cannot do, living in illusion of the American dream or living reality to its full potential. Also every time we buy something we are telling manufactures we want them to keep making it. If we want more healthy choices then we need to vote for the healthy choices. The consumer has more power than we think we do. Please check the documentaries they can be found on my website and the full versions of the previews could be found on netflix or youtube. http://theyogapathtransforms.com/HolisticHealthHealingVideos.aspx
Educated into Fear Based Consuming
I am constantly educating myself on health, diet in a holistic whole body way instead of just the parts of the body as mainstream medical community does in the USA. Reading and taking classes about ancient practices of yoga, Indian and Oriental medicine to find the middle path of being and staying healthy. Surrounding myself with people who are like minded spirits and going to vegetarian and raw vegan potlucks and health seminars brought a sense of community and support to staying healthy and to help others do the same. The documentaries I am recommending everyone to watch also helped to open my eyes to what is occurring in this country, behind the scenes of the USA healthcare and food industries.
The dilemma of being stuck in the marketing/programming or in the truth of what’s really going on, is that it can overwhelm someone with a lot of fear based energy.
Several years ago I started eliminating foods and other things in my life when I was trying to detox myself into better health with herbs, diet changes, yoga and other holistic practices. Now what I am eating is mostly fresh fruits, vegetables, leafy greens plants, seeds, nuts and occasionally I will have beans, rice, bread or baked good, eggs, tufu, almond or hemp milk. I also cleanse my body on a regular bases in a variety of different ways. I have noticed a huge improvement in my health and how I feel after making all these changes. I also assessed what occurred when i did bring some of those things back into my life which i will get into later.
What i have observed from being more of an educated consumer is that it gradually brought me into fear based consuming. It brought be back to constantly thinking or making decisions based on possible toxins in our food, environment that could make us sick, just as I was, when I was working in the environmental field. The feeling of fear of toxins in our food or environment, which I haven’t had in several years, started increasing in my life over the last six months, not just as a result from these documentaries but all the different forms of education I was getting about food and health.
The fear motivated me to purchased a home water distiller to get rid of all the impurities in my drinking water, purchased organic fruits and vegetables whenever possible, stopped using the microwave, stopped eating processed and preserved foods and most breads, switched many of my health and beauty products to “safer” and products, and I started detoxing my body in a variety of different ways.
Has doing all these fear based things helped me stay healthy and did i feel better doing so? Maybe for some of the things. I think i saw a huge improvement in how i felt when I was eating mostly fresh fruits and vegetables and less processed or preserved foods added to my already vegetarian, mostly vegan diet and yogic lifestyle. When I felt the worst is when i tried to reintroduce eggs, dairy, breads, coffee, and processed foods back into my diet.
How much was the feeling healthy or good cause and effect or the programing of my thoughts and emotions? Could my thoughts and emotions change the cause and effect these foods had on my body?
I observed the fear based consuming increasing in my life to a point where i was depriving myself of my desires to eat something that could possibly be toxic but gave me pleasure through the senses, then binging on it later. Some have said cravings to sweet things is probably the effect of the excit-0 toxins in the system. I am not going to get into a whole discussion of excitotoxins in this blog but here is some info about it http://www.joyfulaging.com/Excitotoxins.htm.
You see, us educated consumers have labeled everything as good or bad, toxic or helpful, positive or negative which just puts us into duality, illusion and fear instead of balance. Fear based energy is at a lower vibration or frequency than Love or Joy. Sometimes though, we need to feel the extremes of two opposite emotions or vibrations to find the middle so we can have balance in our lives.
It seems as though this fear based educated consumerism has thrown me off balance in my thinking, emotions, energy, and when their is imbalances there is more of a chance that these imbalances will cause symptoms, illness and pain the more we hold onto them.
As a holistic educator I have seen, how our thoughts, emotions and past experiences as well as diet can create in-balances within our energy body (aura, chi, chakras, meridians,) which correspond to different organs, glands and systems of the physical body. I have also seen how people have changed their thoughts, let go of past experiences, changed their diet, and have done activities to balance the energy body such as yoga, tai chi/chigong, Jin Shin Jyutsu, Reiki, Sound Healing have healed themselves of serious illnesses.
TAKE A JOURNEY WITH ME TO EXPLORE BEING A BALANCED CONSUMER AND STAY HEALTHY
So the question is….
How to move away from the fear and become a balanced educated consumer and stay healthy?
Sacred Centers of Holistic Arts 