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In Sanskrit they call it lîla. The word means play. Yet not in the limited sense of our word. Lîla is free play, deep play, wild play carried out in a timeless NOW. It speaks of divine play. It’s the kind of play that sets us free to be who, in essence, we already are, even though we may not yet know it. Lîla is also the kind of creative play that brings new worlds into existence. FROM CHILDLIKE TO GENIUS In its simplest form, lîla describes the spontaneous activity of children so absorbed in what they do that they don’t even hear you when you speak to them. One morning my three-year-old friend Marina came to visit. Scrambling onto the four-poster bed where I was writing in a state of intense concentration, she told me the story of how she had climbed to the very top of a pirate’s ship as high as the stars. Like all still-innocent children, Marina entered into her imaginal world with ease—a magical realm in which creative sparks can be seeded then begin to grow. The imaginal world is a place most of us adults have lost touch with—a powerful realm in which the joys and fruits of lîla reign supreme. At a deeper level, lîla speaks of the all-encompassing absorption out of which Beethoven, then dangerously ill and nearing the end of his life, nonetheless created the most remarkable music of the 19th century: The Late Quartets. Or the obsession of Van Gogh, which led to his having painted 900 pictures and turned out 1100 drawings pictures during a lifetime. This kind of lîla is far more complex and committed than child’s play. It can produce achievements that enrich the way we look at life, that connect us to the deepest levels of our own being. Some fruits of mature lîla even transform the world. A big deal? You bet. This is play of the highest order—nothing less than an outpouring of the most intimate and essential nature of each unique human being. Living your creativity as fully as you can while you walk the earth, in whatever way most satisfies your unique nature, is the most exciting and enriching process any individual human being can experience. It brings a sense of meaning and purpose to your own life that nothing else can. CREATIVE PASSION Creativity is not a problem to be solved or a subject to be picked apart in psychologists’ laboratories. Those who try end up wandering in an endless maze of moribund words and phrases which miss the point. Meanwhile, the wrinkled fiddler on the city street plays on—smiling. He is lost in the excitement of improvisation, magically blending movement, feeling and sound—making music never heard before, that touches his heart and awakens the senses of all with ears to hear. We have grown up with some weird ideas about creative power. We’ve been taught that creativity belongs to a few select human beings whom history labels as genius. Nothing could be further from the truth. Creating is not a rare privilege—it is a right, even a necessity for all of us, if we are to live a fulfilling life. Creating anything, from cooking a healthful meal to writing poetry or playing games with children reminds us all what life is about. From this place we learn to live and work, to imagine, invent, and finally give birth—not only to things that have never been seen, heard, felt or touched before, but to a way of living more wondrous and exciting than most of us would ever have imagined. A passion to be lived, a lîla to be danced, the wild creative power within us urges us to tell the truth and shame the devil. It demands that we express our love, our obsessions, and the fascinations which pursue us. It asks that we live out life from the very core of our being. “Genius,” as late American writer John Gardner used to remind his students, “is as common as old shoes. Everybody has it.” CREATIVE RELEASE A few years ago, I began to explore not only the power and dimensions of creativity in you, me, and all of us. I wanted to discover how each of us can gain greater access to it, and how best we can live out our own creative power in our day to day lives as scientists, professional artists, musicians, writers, dancers, actors or as businesspeople, parents, teachers, lovers, gardeners, healers, craftsmen and thinkers. I was sure that on a larger scale, the way we as a group choose to use our collective creativity determines whether or not we will be able—in the wake of having laid waste to so much of our planet—to emerge as a sustainable species in a sustainable world. A lîla of enormous proportions; what could feel more powerful or more daunting? Yet the creative power on which it depends springs from the same source within each person as Marina’s imaginative play. PRIMORDIAL POWER Mysterious, enigmatic, spontaneous, occasionally even frightening, in essence creative power is the power of life itself. It is the force that gave us birth which continues to give birth to universes. It is what created us and brought each of us our own lives. It originates from a place within each one of us where we can touch and tap into the numinous energy of the Cosmos: God, Being—call it what you will. No words can adequately describe it. In truth, it is far more an experience of aliveness than a place at all. And, although we may never describe it adequately, we are perfectly equipped to enter this locus of creative power within us and find out how to live ever more of our lives from it. For the majority of artists, creativity pours forth most easily when they have intimate support for it. Shakespeare had his actors and a Globe Theatre eager for his plays, Virginia Woolf entered a room of her own and there wove tapestries of words. Emily Dickinson wrote out of the intimate community of a family who adored her, admired her and made sure she was given the space and time to carry out her imaginative work. For others who are highly creative, there is no such intimate support. Many have suffered childhood abuse, loss, illness or intense suffering. The creativity of such people can be monumental. Each man or woman is brought to the exploration and expressions of their creative power through suffering in just the same way that, so often, we discover what is most important to us by having what we believe to be of greatest value—a loved one, a job, a title—taken from us. Painful as such experiences are, often they turn out to be great gifts when it comes to freeing our creative power. Caught up in our lives of work, children, and householder duties, few of us live in such fortunate circumstances as Shakespeare and Emily Dickinson. But that does not matter. What has not been given us we can make for ourselves. Art is not the province of the privileged few. It belongs to all people—those of us who spend our days in front of computers, cooking, sweeping streets, running errands, caring for children, handling the stupidities of bureaucracy, and living our constantly changing lives in a world that is ever less secure. THE WAY AHEAD We are alive at a moment in history where one age is dying, yet another has not yet been born. We are, each one of us, faced with a choice: As we sense the foundations of our world shaking, do we withdraw in anxiety, trying in desperation to hang on to what we once believed to be “true”? Do we become paralyzed, and try to cover our fear with apathy? Or do we summon the courage offered us by a Universe in flux, honor our personal sensitivity and consciousness, then choose to face the challenge of entering the realm of creative power within? Then, trusting our individual capacity for lîla, do we begin to play in ways that may help bring forth a new world for all? Regardless or age, background, or limiting notions about what’s possible, each one of us has a choice to make. It’s a choice between continuing to conform to established belief systems that stifle the human spirit, or trusting in ourselves. Are you willing courageously to explore your intrinsic creative gifts and make use of them? “That which we give birth to from our depths is that which lives on after us. That which is inborn in us constitutes our most intimate moments—intimate with self,” says Theologian Mathew Fox, “intimate with God the Creative Spirit, and intimate with others. To speak of creativity is to speak of profound intimacy. It is also to speak of our connecting to the Divine in us and of our bringing the Divine back to the community.” Personally, I urge you to begin connecting ever more deeply with your own brand of creativity. Discover new ways of living. Leave automatic assumptions about who you think you are and learn to respond to each moment and each day of your life with new eyes and an open heart. The more you do, the richer your life can become. Such is the joy of lîla. Such is the power of lîla. If you have not yet explored it, you have an exhilarating, wondrous adventure ahead of you. Take it. Trust it. It’s the adventure of a lifetime.

Whether you’re aware of it or not, you are ceaselessly involved in the act of creating the quality of your own life—your looks, values, attitudes, actions, and the nature of your relationships. You do this through image-making—a universal characteristic of the human mind which appears even to precede thinking in the brain. We see, worry, put together ideas, dream, speak, wonder, all through the use of images. We experience a continuous flow of mental pictures, both conscious and unconscious, every moment of our waking lives. In fact, the capacity to visualize—to "image"—is one of the miracles of the human organism, for through it we are able to organize reality, communicate with others, and make sense of the restrictions of time and space around which our lives are organized. And images have tremendous potency. Your own images can be used for your good or they can be used against you. WHAT WE’VE BEEN TAUGHT Each of us comes into the world with a particular set of genes that determine our skin colour, sex, body type and, to a certain extent, our personality and intelligence. But by the time we are four or five, the form of what we were at birth has been altered physically and mentally so that we have become more complex and quite different in the way we respond and function, think and express ourselves. Some of these changes, such as physical growth, come from the same genetic inheritance that gave us our original form. Others, probably by far the largest number, come from what is commonly referred to as behavioural programming—the things we learn spontaneously through day-to-day living, such as motor control and speech, as well as the things we are taught, such as how to communicate with people, dress ourselves, use a pencil, and so forth. In all that we have learned from experience (things like if you touch a hot stove it hurts) and all we have been taught by our parents and other people, there are an enormous number of mental images that greatly affect our ideas and our lives ever after. For instance, from our programming we get a notion of what in our behaviour is considered good and what is called bad. We form innumerable impressions of what we are like and what others are like. And, finally, we come to have "sets" of knowledge about the world. All these things form our belief systems—conglomerates of images, ideas, and assumptions that make it possible for us to function from day to day. Some of these belief systems are individual—they pertain to our inner world alone and are entirely personal. Others we share with the rest of humanity—for instance, together we "agree" that the brown-and-white, rather square-shaped animals with horns that graze in fields and give milk are "cows." We also agree in common with others that if you step in front of a moving bus you will be hurt. Such belief systems are important, for without them we would not be able to live or share our experiences with others. WHAT WE ASSUME IS TRUE Our own individual belief systems are somewhat different in character. They consist of the many unconscious notions and assumptions we hold about what we are and are not and can and cannot do. They influence whether we see life as exiting and challenging or rather as painful and hopeless. And although most people are not aware of it, these belief systems, formed gradually as we grow up, wield enormous power over us. GROWING UP IS NEVER EASY A child who grows up in a family where he or she is treated with respect tends to grow up believing that she is worthy of this respect. When her needs are frequently met, she comes to believe that they are likely to be met in a similar way in the future and, although he is probably completely unaware of this, she actually comes to expect it. Similarly, if someone is brought up in an environment where she is treated with disdain or carelessness or as if she were stupid, then she gradually forms more negative assumptions about herself and they become the "systems" by which she lives her life. The whole creation and formation of our belief systems is a very complex process. It is largely an unconscious one, too, because the amount of sensory information fed into a human brain even in one day is immeasurably rich. We are continually responding to one perception, feeling, word, or sensory experience after another. Our belief systems, formed from these events, are therefore many-layered and extraordinarily elaborate. But they all have one thing in common: power. The images we hold, consciously or unconsciously, about ourselves and our lives are real in the sense that they tend to reaffirm themselves over and over again in our experience. Studies have been done in which a child's IQ, tested at school, is measured against her expectation of herself and her performance in the classroom. Almost invariably, the child whose belief systems include the idea or image of herself as not really very bright does badly in schoolwork regardless of what her IQ shows, and vice versa. In fact, there is also considerable evidence in older children that even IQ measurements soon come to reflect a child's basic intellectual self-esteem—or lack of it. All because of the belief systems she holds about herself. SELF-FULFILLING NOTIONS When it comes to health, relationships with other people, and creative functions, belief systems are particularly important in determining our success or lack of it. If you take the time to sit down and look at a particular area in your life that you consider reasonably successful—say your work, or your relationship with a particular person—you will find that your ideas, feelings, and attitudes about it are generally of a positive nature: pleasing, charming, fun, interesting, and so forth. Similarly, if you look at an area of your life that doesn't work so well or with which you are not satisfied, you will find it is accompanied by negative images or visualizations. Most important of all, these negative images and the belief systems they create will tend, when put to the test in real situations, to bring about exactly the effects you expect. If you feel you are uncreative when you paint a picture, it will turn out to be uninteresting. If you feel like a failure when you try to reach a goal, you will fail. Under even mildly stressful situations you become ill, and so on. And, of course, failures only further strengthen the negative belief systems you already hold. It is a vicious circle—that is, until you are able to become aware of these negative belief systems you are unconsciously carrying around with you, examine them objectively, and then make a decision to change them. So long as they are unconscious, you are in their power and no real act of will is going to change them much. When they become conscious, you can begin working with them, looking at them, examining where they come from and their validity or lack of it, and decide on whether or not they are useful. Then gradually you can become free of them. In a fortnight, we’ll exploring simple practices that make use of the power of creative imagery—the deliberate repeated use of specific mental images— to bring about dazzling positive changes to your health, your life and your core beliefs about who you are and what you love most. See you then...

Get Your Free Copy Now But HURRY only 2500 downloads available I’ve just finished writing an e-book that is now up on the www.curaromana.com site. It’s called HEALTHY AND LEAN FOR LIFE. In writing this book, I have drawn on knowledge and experience amassed over more than four decades of researching and working in the fields of natural health and spiritual development. Some of what you will read in this book may shock you. Why? Because, since the mid-1950s, most of what we have been told about what is supposed to be a healthy diet has been nothing more than conjecture. Not grounded in solid research, current widespread beliefs about nutrition are not based on hard science but on many unproven hypotheses. GUIDE TO LIFE-TRANSFORMATION This book sets the record straight. It's a guidebook for transforming health as well as preventing and even reversing the Diseases of Western Civilization. It is also a testament to an important truth: Aging is meant to be a joy, not an experience of growing disabilities. It tells how to make this so. My wish in writing this little book is to bring to the thousands of men and women who continually struggle with their health and weight practical, simple information with which we can transform lives. In the pages that follow you will find life-changing discoveries, new ways of thinking and powerful cutting-edge technologies that can help heighten vitality, restore natural size and shape to your body, slow aging and bring greater freedom from degenerative diseases. Here’s a extract from the first chapter: JOIN THE HEALTH ELITE Informed people—among them some Hollywood stars and a growing number of the world’s top endurance athletes—know and make use of information that you will find in this book—stuff that most have yet to discover. I call them the health elitists. Their work requires an ongoing ability to access high levels of energy, creativity, freedom, stamina and good looks. Their goal is to live life at the peaks, no matter what their age. Living this kind of life is no longer the preserve of a privileged few. What I’ve learned in 45 years of researching and working in natural health, as well as mentoring people on Leslie Kenton’s Cura Romana, is this: Each one of us can change our current life experience into one of expanded wellbeing by drawing on the work of visionary scientists and leading-edge clinicians, and taking guidance from the finest pioneers in human health and development. Some of the information you’ll find in this little book stretches back to discoveries made more than half a century ago; other revelations are so new that they may be mind blowing. For the media, nutritionists and the medical profession as a whole have yet to pick up on them in any significant way. Make use of the tools, technologies, information and inspiration you find here. Put them into practice. You, too, can change your life for the better. For, when you supply your body and psyche with what they require to function optimally, your own innate powers for healing become activated and profound transformation begins to take place. GET IT FREE HEALTHY AND LEAN FOR LIFE is available for free right now to the first two thousand five hundred people who download it.  II want to share with you my intention in providing a copy of it free. I would love to know from you what else your would like to see in the book that is not yet there.  Menus? Recipes? More information? About what in particular?  I'm excited about doing this.  In the next three months, HEALTHY AND LEAN FOR LIFE will double in size, incorporating more practical advice about how to use the cutting-edge information it now contains. Then we will be selling it on Amazon and elsewhere. If you would like to share with me what more you would like to see in the book, do click here to download you FREE copy.  I would love to hear from you.

I once spent the night lying on a platform above an animal watering hole staring into the vastness of space beholding the great, fathomless mystery of the African sky. Aaron, my youngest son, then three years old, lay curled up next to me like a kitten lost in his dreams. Dazzled by the inconceivable expanse of the sky whose darkness was so overcome with the light from billions of stars that lived in it, I lost myself in timelessness and infinity. That night I came not to think or to wonder but to know with absolute certainty in every cell and molecule of my body that this cosmic world was not something separate from myself, nor I from it. We were, in a way I will never be able to understand rationally, one being. It was one of the greatest moments of my life SEA OF UNKNOWING Like the proverbial iceberg, most of us live with the lion’s share of our potential for freedom, joy, creativity and authentic power submerged beneath a sea of unknowing. We go about our day-to-day duties and pleasures conscious only of what comes to us through our five senses. How does it taste and feel? What does it sound like? What do we see in front of our eyes? Meanwhile, beneath the vast ocean of consciousness that constitutes what it is to be fully human, our greater selves hibernate waiting to be awakened. Sometimes, when we fall in love perhaps, or when we are faced with an event of life-shattering proportions like a critical illness or the death of a close friend, a submerged area of our being erupts in magic or horror and often in surges of passion, energy and beauty. Then, for a time, the mundane quality of everyday life is replaced with a sense of expanded being. Not only do we feel more alive, we wake up to find that familiar things—the tree that stands outside a bedroom window, the cat that greets us when we come home each day, a simple shell we picked up and slipped into our pocket while walking on the beach—have taken on a luminosity which we can’t explain. AS ABOVE SO BELOW Other times, without warning while listening to music or walking down a city street, we are suddenly gripped with a sense that the world is far greater than we ever imagined it to be, and a certainty that all we see around us somehow is us. While the experience lasts everything seems right in the world. Then, like the sun at the point of setting, everything fades beneath the mundane horizon leaving only the faintest wisp of color to remind us that we once stood in its glory, felt it’s rays on our bodies and knew that being at one with the universe brings a sense of meaning to our own life and to the lives of others that is simply indescribably. The greatest desire I have is to live my life conscious of the oneness to which we all belong. After all, the magnificence of that African sky not only stretches out to infinity above us, it lies within us calling to us—asking us to discover that it is who we are.

Heavy emotional stress from anxiety, resentment or depression can drain us of energy. Such delinquent influences also lower your immunity, make you vulnerable to catching colds and flu, and susceptible to premature aging and the development of degenerative conditions. For lasting high energy the energy thieves in your life need to be cornered, collared and dealt a fatal blow. the energy drainer scenario A woman is in a job which she hates. She feels unmotivated and resentful (inner energy-drainers). After work she goes out to drink (alcohol-addiction drainer). Sometimes she drinks too much and this creates friction with her husband (relationship energy-drainer). She feels bad about herself as a result of arguing (emotional energy-drainer). Her poor self-image leads her not to care for herself (poor self-esteem energy-drainer). She eats badly (biochemical energy-drainer). She feels worse and suffers depression. Nothing in her life seems to work and she has nothing to look forward to... You see the pattern. She is stuck in a rut. The energy-drainers have stolen her personal power and she can only see everything in the worst light. Now let's look at the flip side. Energy-enhancers tend to attract other energy-enhancers, creating positive feedback loops and making you feel empowered and in control of your life. Compare the following situation with the previous sketch. the energy enhancer scenario A woman is in a job which she hates. She discovers an inspiring exercise class (physical energy-booster). The class makes her feel good about herself and inspires her to eat better. (biochemical booster). She loses a few pounds, feels better in her body and begins to dress in a more flattering way (self-esteem booster). She meets some new friends whose company she really enjoys (relationship booster). As her self-esteem increases, the people she works with begin to appreciate her more. Her job becomes more enjoyable (work booster). She feels excited about her life and confident about looking for a new job, something she will really love. Identifying your own blockers and drainers, and making the choice to let go of even one or two, sows the seed for more positive feedback loops in your life. It is an important step to take in accessing more core energy and developing your personal power. Sometimes even awareness itself is enough to get the ball rolling. wasting anxiety On an internal level few emotions drain energy like anxiety. While you dash about (either physically or in your consciousness) feeling unsafe and unstable and trying like mad to make everything all right, you deplete your body and your creativity. Where there is anxiety there is a high level of electrical, electropositive magnetic activity and chemical acidity which affect the sympathetic nervous system and encourage feelings of fear, irritability, nausea and headache, as well as an inability to concentrate, muscle pain and insomnia. Even minor attacks of nervousness can dramatically undermine your work performance and make it almost impossible for you to enjoy yourself. Anxiety is frequently related to food allergies. Realigning your diet can help. So can physical exercise which calms electrical and chemical overactivity, replacing it with a more balanced energy, which you can call on, and a feeling of mental and physical well-being. Depression can be a big energy-drainer as well. Sometimes depression develops as a result of blocked emotions which you may not even be aware you are feeling - like grief. Often depression is rather like an anger turned in on yourself to block you from doing harm to anyone else. To break through and release the energy that has been blocked by depression you may need to examine your experience of depression carefully as well as change your lifestyle. Resentment, too, can be an enormous energy-blocker. Anger immediately felt and expressed keeps energy flowing. As adults we tend to swallow our anger, turning it into resentment. Fear can also block energy. In a measurable physical way it freezes you into inactivity and makes all things seem impossible. So can negative feedback loops. When you feel low in energy you tend to attract energy-drainers which in turn attract other energy-drainers and before you know it you find yourself caught up in a negative feedback loop. You feel helpless - a victim of circumstances over which you have no power - and you lack the energy or the incentive to break out of the loop.

Complex life processes remain unexplainable within the confines of conventional science. As a result, they have a long history of being ignored, misinterpreted–even viciously attacked by the self-promoting “Richard Dawkinses” of the world. After all, it’s easier for the so-called experts to bury their heads in the sand and ignore vital cutting-edge research than to challenge themselves to learn something new. You see, the energetics of the ways in which life breaks the rules are central to an understanding of the body’s marvelous ability to heal itself and slow down degenerative changes. The body’s natural capacity to recreate order makes mincemeat of the outdated second law of thermodynamics as applied to living systems. No wonder this truth makes so many conventional scientists squirm. Here’s why: Within the paradigms of Newtonian physics, this second law has been shown not to apply to a living body. (Click here to read more about this law) For genuinely life-changing guidance on health and healing, we need to learn about the body’s energy fields, and to find out what we can do to enhance the order and vitality within and around our own bodies. This is easier than you think once you learn how. CUTTING EDGE TRUTHS In the 1960s, a Polish priest and biophysicist, Wlodzimierz Sedlac, brilliantly described biological structures in energetic ways. So powerful were Sedlac’s findings that they helped trigger an energy revolution which one day will topple the limited chemical and mechanical paradigms that are still used to define human health. Father of Polish bioelectronics and of the electromagnetic theory of life, Sedlac described our cells as diode resonators. He showed that mitochondria within our cells act as intracellular interferometers and inductance emission coils. As for our cell membranes, these behave like photon resonators communicating through light emissions. Then, in 1974, brilliant German biophysicist Fritz-Albert Popp found out that, when stimulated by a laser emission from the mitochondria, our DNA emits ultraviolet light. In fact, the body’s main communication system appears to be a complex network of light, resonance and frequency. Our cells give off light energy—biophotons. These emanations are strongest when cells are either dividing or dying in order for new cells to be born. It’s the coherence between biophoton emissions and electromagnetic communication that gives cells their ability to vibrate at frequencies that support health. Because our cells behave much like radio transmitters, this makes it possible for them to communicate within the superconductive semi-solid plasma of the body's liquid crystal matrix—the mesenchyme. LET THERE BE LIGHT For more than 150 years, European doctors and scientists trained in natural medicine have insisted that the mesenchyme is the seedbed of health and youth. They tell us to look after the state of the mesenchyme—the body's biological terrain—and, thanks to the constant exchange of coherent light and energy that takes place, our health looks after itself. Increasingly, researchers in mathematics, biophysics and wave mechanics have begun to describe the nature of all biological systems as kinetic, electrical, magnetic, light responsive entities—all of which fit into the cohesive field theory at the cutting-edge of advanced biophysics. Many of the reasons for health problems, which from the point of view of mainstream medicine continue to be diagnosed as “chemical” in nature and treated symptomatically with pharmaceuticals, have far more to do with energetic imbalances and the loss of biological coherence. They develop from poor lifestyle choices we inadvertently make. The wrong foods, excess stress, alcohol and drug taking for instance trigger incoherent biophoton energy exchanges in cells and DNA undermining the health of the whole body. NEW APPROACHES TO ANTI-AGING These new energetic paradigms have important implications when it comes to controlling the rate at which our bodies age. They make it clear that slowing down the aging process requires more than swallowing mega-doses of vitamins, minerals and nutraceuticals to support our antioxidant and immune systems. It is necessary to approach the whole question of food not only from the point of view of energy (calories) and materials (specific proteins, vitamins, minerals, fatty acids, etc) but energetically. And they are stimulating researchers to explore how nutrition for age-retardation is dependent on the complexity of the way all of this energy and material is woven together by nature itself. For going on 50 years, I have recommended eating a diet which consists of 50-75% fresh, live, raw foods. Why? Because naturally grown, fresh raw vegetables and fruits are themselves rich in light energy. The more light a food holds—the higher its biophoton capacity—the greater its ability to communicate health-enhancing light energy to the human body. ENERGETIC TRANSFERS FOR HEALTH The right kind of food is not the only carrier of energetic information needed to support health and slow aging. We are also dramatically influences by the quality of electromagnetic stimulation to the nervous system: environmental conditions, the water we can drink, and the air we can breathe. All of these things are forms of energy transfer. Even body movement is energetic. They act as powerful stimuli to an organism. In terms of aging, their effects will be either good or bad, depending upon the quality of the energy they transmit to us. We need to make use of everything possible to ensure they are beneficial to us. This is something which the long tradition of healing through natural medicine has been urging us to do for generations. Applying good quality energetic stimuli enhances bodily responses and increases vitality—from water therapy to infra-red saunas, and magnesium chloride baths to simple, regular exercise. The quality of light and energetic information that reaches us from our environment is vital to our wellbeing. If it is not the right kind of information—if the air you breathe is not rich in negative ion particles, for instance—this can seriously undermine our sense of harmonious well-being. If your environment is full of industrial pollutants, cell phone towers, negative electromagnetic frequencies from microwave ovens, computers, and smart meters, then your health, mental and emotional wellbeing can become seriously depleted. Such destructive energetic frequencies are inimical to human life. And, never before in history have human beings been subjected to such an overwhelming array of them. Now, more than ever before do we need to take whatever action we can to protect ourselves from the damaging effects of this kind of energetic information which our bodies are being forced to handle. The energetic order necessary to sustain health and support our physical, mental and emotional wellbeing in our world of increasing chaos is not easy to come by. ENERGIES OF CONSCIOUSNESS Mechanistic science and mainstream medicine also continue to ignore the energetic and light-transmitting power that our consciousness exerts on health. Although consciousness is not something you can hold in your hand or draw a picture of, it exerts enormous influence both in preventing and treating illness, slowing aging. It is even capable of altering material reality. This is far from an empty statement. Hundreds of researchers throughout the world have carried out skillfully designed multidisciplinary, multicultural research as part of what is often called The Human Consciousness Project. Their intention has been to map the spectrum of human awareness, including those areas of consciousness that are generally categorized as either the unconscious or states of expanded consciousness. The efforts of scientists and doctors involved in consciousness research have begun to converge and produce a surprisingly coherent picture which indicates that expanded states of awareness—often referred to as transpersonal states—can not only enhance health and heal serious illness. They foster creativity and deepen our connection with multi-dimensional spiritual revelation. In transpersonal states, we have the potential to experience ourselves as part of the divine creative principle itself. Amazing as it sounds, each one of us is not only a small part of the vast Universe. In a very real sense, we are the the Universe. Within us resides the entire field of creation. YOU CAN BREAK THE MOULD Yet despite all this, most people continue to follow the values of our society. We go on absorbing what we’re fed through the media, outdated science and education—even though such information may be inaccurate and limited. We go on buying what we are told to buy, and eating what we are told to eat. Meanwhile, from somewhere deep inside, we sense that we are being limited by all this. We perceive ourselves as largely devoid of being able to be guided by personal choice. When things get really bad, some of us even come to feel that we have been living in a wasteland—a mechanical world devoid of meaning. And so we come to experience ourselves as separated from our own authentic power. The longing for freedom—our birthright which allows each of us simply to be what are—requires that we eat healthy foods and make use of the beneficial energetic fields, while protecting ourselves as much as possible from destructive energies on every level. It beckons us to reconnect with our deeper instinct. Instinct is the voice of awareness and expanded conscious, asking that we come home to ourselves. This we can do without drugs, without gurus, without becoming a disciple, or having to belong to any privileged group. We can do it regardless of our age, physical condition or religious beliefs. Freedom gradually becomes part of our day-to-day experience when we decide to: Become an explorer of the multi-dimensional universe in which we live. Come to recognize, honor and respect the beauty of your individual soul and to allow its authentic expression in your day-to-day life. Let your worldview gradually expand until it gets large enough to encompass the whole of reality. Decide to let go of the restrictions imposed on us all from childhood, religion, education, mainstream media and the powers-that-be. Develop a deep and abiding friendship with the inhabitants of the multi-dimensional universe in which we make our homes—from the moles and the stars, the grass and the trees, the rocks and the quasars, to the helpful light and electrical energetics that guide, bless and inform us, the muses who inspire us, angels who shine for us—even the maggots who eat away decaying matter so that new life may come forth from old. Begin to build powerful bridges between your rich inner world of consciousness and your day to day existence. Commit yourselves to bringing your own unique creations into being, for yourself and for the benefit of all life. Who you are is unique. There is no one else like you in the world. Live your truth and share your visions and gifts with all of life.

Pain is what many of us fear most. We all know the misery that can come from a sore back, a throbbing headache or toothache, not to mention children’s earaches. All too many also know the immobilizing pain of migraine. Herbs and essential oils can reach out and help when pain strikes, and without the upset stomach and muzzy heads that over-the-counter treatments can bring in their wake. We’ve all done it—picked up something too heavy or twisted awkwardly—and suffered the pain of an indignant back. Essential oils really come into their own with back pain; use them to relieve muscle spasm and ease your mind. Essential oils of sage, thyme and rosemary all contain thymol and carvacrol, which are excellent muscle relaxants. Rosemary has the added advantage of being anti-spasmodic. Clary sage is also used traditionally to ease the pain of a pulled back. You can mix a few drops of one of these essential oils with a couple of tablespoons of almond oil, coconut oil, or walnut oil. Either massage it into the sore spot yourself, or allow someone you trust to do this gently for you. A warm bath will also help ease the tightness out of strained back muscles. Put a few drops of essential oil of rosemary or clary sage in the bath, plus 2 cups of industrial grade Epsom salts—simple magnesium sulfate—which you can find at a pharmacy in kilo packages or order much more cheaply over the net in big 25kg bags. Allow the essential oils to vaporize on the steam to help you relax all over. Stay in the bath for half an hour, topping up with warm water, to let the Epsom salts do their muscle-relaxing work. Then get out of the bath, dry yourself gently, and crawl into bed or lie down for 30 minutes with a good book. For my family, Epsom salts in huge bags are always in good supply. Aaron and I take an Epsom salts bath daily. It’s a practice which is not only health enhancing but deliciously pleasant.

The cold is the most common human ailment. It has been with us forever, and affects people all over the world. It’s estimated that the average adult will catch two to three colds a year. Despite its astounding prevalence, there are many natural means of helping your body avoid catching one. And if you already have a cold, you needn’t suffer a full-blown attack. Read on to arm yourself with invaluable cold-kicking know-how… GO WITH THE FLOW Catching a cold is no coincidence. It’s your body’s way of telling you two things. One: There are wastes in your system that need to be eliminated. And two: Your immunity is compromised. It needs building up. The kindest thing you can do for your body is to help it with these elimination and immune-boosting processes. An Epsom-salts bath is a great place to start. Soak, for half an hour, in blood-temperature water to which two cups of Epsom salts have been added. This will assist your body while it is trying to throw off toxins, thanks to the salts’ wonderful toxin-leaching properties. It will also relax you, and ease any bodily aches you might have. But perhaps the single best way you can help your body flush out the nasties is by drinking water—lots of it. (In fact, drink nothing else, except herb tea if you wish.) Make sure your water is fluoride free and otherwise clean. Then go for it. Two glasses first thing in the morning, and two between each meal, is a good amount for starters. EAT YOUR WAY TO HEALTH Next, you need to stop putting any toxic stuff back in. This means no baddies like alcohol; caffeine, grains, cereals and sugary convenience foods. Eating such things will put an extra strain on your system, undermine your body’s ability to fight back, and slow down the healing process. Milk products are also a no-go, as they are mucus-forming. And mucus is the last thing you need when you are already bunged up with a cold. What you need to eat are fresh, raw foods: Fruit. Vegetables. Unprocessed seeds and perhaps a few raw nuts. These will provide you with all the nutrients you need while your body is clearing the cold. Also, importantly, they will not put pressure on your digestive system. Apples, grapes, sunflower seeds and almonds are a few ideas. When you eat fruit, try starting with just one type to make digestion even easier. Then gradually add different fruits, fresh vegetable salads, and then, in a day or two, some lightly steamed vegetables as your cold improves. THREE HANDY COLD REMEDIES We all know that rest is important in fighting off illness, yet it’s often impossible given today’s demanding lifestyles. Quick, symptom-busting fixes are called for. So relax: help is at hand. Take tincture of Echinacea to get your circulation going and your system buzzing. On the first day, take a teaspoon in water every three hours; then three or four times a day afterwards till your cold clears completely. If you have a sore throat, it’s garlic to the rescue. This will surprise you but it works wonders: Tuck an entire unpeeled clove between your lower teeth and cheek and keep it there for as long as you can. Its amazing antiviral qualities will help your body kill off the bugs causing your sore throat. Vitamin C is another fantastic way of supporting your immune system as it does its job. Take between 3 grams (3,000 mg) and 6 grams, three times a day, until a day after the cold has cleared. YOUR HIDDEN DEFENDER So much for getting shot of cold symptoms while speeding up the healing process. “But how on earth do I stop catching colds?” You may well ask. The key to this is a fit, healthy and vigilant immune system. Keeping your immunity strong isn’t difficult. It just requires a little extra effort and awareness on your part. Here’s how. Start by taking a daily multi-vitamin and mineral supplement: Food-state supplements are best. I recommend Rainbow Light, Advanced Nutritional System, Food-Based Multivitamin, Iron-Free, 180 Tablets. As for extra Vitamin C protection, one to three grams a day is the way to go. Next, make sure to include plenty of fresh garlic in your cooking—one or two cloves per day—and use the Japanese Shiitake and Maitake mushrooms in your diet. These contain wonderful immune-strengthening compounds. Keep up your water drinking, too. Last but not least—remember that depression often goes hand in hand with depressed immunity. Laugh hard and often, and enjoy life. It will keep you well and make you feel great. Rainbow Light, Advanced Nutritional System, Food-Based Multivitamin, Iron-Free, 180 Tablets Powerful Antioxidant Stress Formula Energy Support Potent Superfoods Complete Multivitamin/Mineral Digestive Enzymes & Probiotics Buy Rainbow Light ORDERING FROM IHERB.COM: Get $5 OFF your first order. They ship all over the world very cheaply, and their products are the cheapest and best in the world. Get your order sent to you via DHL. I use them for almost everything no matter where I am.

As parents we feel obliged to correct our children when they make mistakes when speaking. Yet so often the words they coin seem much more sensible and charming than their “proper” counterparts. ‘It's a froggy day,’ my son, Jesse, used to say when he meant ‘foggy.’ ‘Where are the ouches?’ My daughter, Susannah, would ask when she wanted to hang something on the clothesline. (She once caught a finger in a clothes peg and her great-grandmother had consoled her by saying, ‘Ouch, that hurts.’) Then there were ‘flat tireds’—the things you get when your car runs over a nail in the road—and the ‘constructions’ which you read to find out how to use something for the first time. Aaron, my youngest child, announced one day after playing with one of our Burmese cats, ‘Mummy, guess what, pussy cats have dangerous toes'. Kids have taught me to express my anger instead of being afraid of it. Watch two children fight. They sling the most appalling insults at each other. One gives the other a whack and swears not to play with him or her again. Two hours later they are best friends once more. They know so much better than we do how to forgive. Somehow they seem to understand that being angry with someone—no matter how important it seems at the time—is not half as interesting as all the things you can do, see, say, and make together as soon as the anger has passed. LIVING DEATH One summer day, many years ago, everything seemed to go wrong for me. For no apparent reason I awakened in the morning with the awful feeling that nothing was worthwhile. At 10am I received a telegram from a publisher saying that two manuscripts (of which I had no copies) had been lost in the mail. By noon not even the brilliance of Californian sunshine (where we were on holiday at the time) could shake off the heavy black cloud that surrounded me. I was angry with myself and trying to avoid being angry with everyone else. Jesse, then aged eight, and Susannah, ten, kept hounding me to take them to the beach. I didn't want to go anywhere, especially the beach. I didn’t want to do anything for anyone. In the worst possible spirit I eventually consented—making sure, of course, that they realized I was doing them a great big favor. The pure white sand and fresh sea air on an almost deserted beach did nothing to improve my mood. It seemed to me that life was ‘out there’ and I was ‘in here’, locked away in the depths of the gloomy dungeon I'd somehow built for myself and was powerless to break out of. As the sun shone brighter and more beautifully I grew steadily more gloomy. Finally I could stand it no longer. Despite the fact that the children were playing in the sand nearby and I didn't want to upset them, I broke down and cried. Susannah asked what was wrong. ‘I don't know, just about everything seems wrong at the moment,’ I whined. ‘I feel like that sometimes,’ Jesse said, offering no sympathy whatsoever. ‘I think you must be angry.’ ‘So what if I am?’ I snapped. ‘Why don't you hit something?’ he suggested. ‘There's nothing to hit,’ I replied irritably, ‘and anyway that's stupid.’ ‘No, it's not,’ Susannah chimed in. ‘It’ll make you feel ever so much better, Mummy. Or maybe you should try growling like a dog.’ REDISCOVERING LIFE I was willing to try anything. So, feeling like a complete fool and admonishing myself for behaving so stupidly in front of my own children, I growled and complained. I hated everyone, I said. I hated myself. I was lonely and I felt the whole world was stupid. Then I growled some more while the two of them sat listening silently. Not once did they try to console me, or tell me I was wrong or protest that the world was really a lovely place to live. Not once did they pass judgment on me or make me feel ashamed of myself or foolish. They just sat and waited. Finally I felt a little better. Jesse had been right, I thought, but I still had no idea where to go from here. At last I was quiet. Only then did Susannah say, ‘I think maybe I know what's wrong with you.’ ‘What?’ I asked skeptically. ‘You're always thinking about such serious stuff. You're always telling yourself what to do and what not to do. No wonder you're angry. You've forgotten how to have fun, Mummy.’ She was certainly right. Having fun seemed as far away as the moon at that moment. I realized then that for several months I had saddled myself with my work as if work were the only thing that mattered. I'd hated almost every minute of it but had felt proud of being such a ‘responsible adult.’ ‘Maybe you're right,’ I replied. ‘But how does somebody who's forgotten something so important remember it?’ ‘Come on, let's did a hole,’ was her reply. ‘Yeah, I like holes,’ Jesse chimed in. HIPPOPOTAMUS THAW Feeling like a half-frozen hippopotamus, I lifted myself off the towel and mechanically moved toward the site they'd chosen for the hole. I started to dig. Jesse, who often acted the role of a clown, was soon sliding down into it. Susannah was snapping at him for ‘ruining the shape.’ I looked at the two of them fiercely sneering at each other and saw myself as I had been just a few minutes before. I began to laugh. So did they. Before long we had a beautiful hole dug. It was the most gorgeous hole I’d ever seen... or so it seemed to me. We had a contest to see who was best at running up and leaping over it. Then we drew pictures in the sand and ran into the ice-cold water, splashing each other. By the time the first wave struck me, I, like the two of them, had become part of the sea and the sky. There was no more gloom and no more supercilious self-assurances that I was ‘doing the best thing.’ I was alive again. Later that evening I thanked Jesse and Susannah for helping me and teaching me to have fun again. Then in typical adult fashion, I added, ‘You know I'm likely to forget and be all grumbly again before long.’ ‘That's all right,’ replied Susannah, ‘we'll remind you.’