Thursday 20 March 2014

The Passing of a furry nephew ... RIP Dexie

In a previous post I mentioned once having a huge pack of my own.  I had horses, dogs, puppies, cats, kittens, and lovebirds.  All interacting with one another on the daily.  It was a managerie of furry wonderfulness.  Some nights I fell asleep giggling at how many pets I had in bed with me at one time.

I recently said, "Ciao for now" to my last pack-member and furry feline India, knowing that she would very soon join the rest of our pack that have passed before her.  My own sister just said the same to her furry boy Dexter after sixteen years of love and life.  His energetic spirit will undoubtedly follow India's. For I believe energy to be like that.  It gathers when likeness is found ... like mercury from a broken thermometer.  You try to separate it; yet cannot.

My nephew Dexter was a funny boy.  A worry-wort who loathed bag-pipes, his mommy's absence, and anything but meat or cheese.  He wasn't too fond of the rumble strip on the highway either!   A one-woman dog, Dexter never really warmed up to anyone else unless his mommy was away.  Then he would very quietly come snuggle up next to you, touching you with his legs snuggled up underneath himself.  He was very very sensitive.  Not only because he was half poodle and half Shih tzu and his skin was thin, but he never really knew he was a dog, in my opinion.  His great loves were his ritual walks, going to gramma & grampa's house, and his little sister Gracie.

If I could, I would send a message to my passed-over pack members to treat Dexie with a little bit of softness.   I would ask that my Rotti Sasha show him her strong maternal side, and that my cocker spaniel Laya be a little less aloof to him.  My parents' dog Snookie will greet him, and my sister's dog Simon too. So many loved ones waiting for us to come back to the Source.

Upon re-reading, "Ciao for now" seems insensitive, overly light.  But it's been said that the word Ciao literally means, "goodbye for now".  So it is fitting.  I don't really believe in a heaven or a hell.  I only believe in the inevitability and the truth that energy cannot be extinguished.  Each and every living thing has this energy inside of it.  This soul.  This light.

So ... I'll literally see you soon my furry friends.  And don't forget to visit us in our dreams.

Sunday 16 March 2014

United Nations ~ Ukraine ~ City of Joy ... is there a connection?

Watching and listening to all the shtuff going on with Russia and Ukraine reminds me of the movie "City of Joy".  That's the movie with Patrick Swayze based in Calcutta, India.  Swayze is an American Doctor who teams up with a British nurse to build a clinic in the slums.

The part that reminds me of 2014, was the gang that everyone was forced to pay off each month for protection.  It seemed so one-sided to me.  The Doctor and Nurse would pay a sum of money with no idea what they'd get in return.  How would they be protected?  How well?  How soon?  How often?  With what means? And to what end?  And what happens if they can't pay one month?  What happens if they decide not to join that team at all?

Ukraine didn't join the team that is the United Nations.

If it had, would the UN do more?

Is there a connection here and a similarity in what you "pay for" and what you get?

And ... if there were HUGEMONGOUS stores of Oil in Crimea, would the U.S. do more to help the people of Ukraine?

Oh hell ya!

(imo ... but I might be out to lunch on this :-)

Tuesday 11 March 2014

The Demonization of Mr. T.H. Cannabinol

A few months ago I was speakin' to a friend about the herb.  She's been on the herbal for years and years.  I mentioned how Cannabidiol was stopping seizures and she had no idea what I was talking about.  Said she only knew about Tetrahydrocannabinol.

Stop ... the ... bus.  So even regular users are confused about this plant?  Wow.  Then what do non-users not know?  Better yet, what have they been hypnotized into believing over the years?

How many out there only know about Cannabis and THC ??  Is this the whole problem?  Well it's a problem for sure because putting all the responsibility of this plant onto one little compound's shoulders is just not fair!

Fifteen years ago I started learning about Cannabis.  The weed information highway was flowing fast and when I first started, the only compound anyone knew about was T.H.  He was everywhere, given the spotlight as the only cannabinoid in existence!  Most believed that there were only compounds in the flower bud, and the small inner leaves surrounding those buds. Well, some fifteen years later, there's this movement of people using "whole plant medicine".   From the very tips of the leaves to the very ends of the roots, every part of this plant has medicinal compounds in it.  Is prohibition of this plant all because of a simple misunderstanding?

There are thousands of different strains of Cannabis.  And there are mad scientist-meet tree huggers out there actively cross-breeding plants to create more strains using the skills of selective breeding and grafting.  There are hundreds of compounds in this plant in varying ratios. And most of these compounds are great team players.  In fact, studies and evidence is showing that these compounds work best when working together in combination;  not in isolation from one another. They simply work better as a team!  Maybe the Cannabis plant is here to show humanity that as a team, we are unstoppable. From arthritis to parkinson's, this plant does the body good!

I feel like I've heard it all..... Weed makes you lazy.  Pot smokers just sit around playing video games and eating Doritos.  Weed is a gateway to harder drugs.  Lazy lazy lazy stoners.  And everyone who says these things blames Mr. T.H. Cannabinol.  That poor guy.  How misunderstood can one little naturally occurring compound be?

Mr. T.H. here kills pain, has anti-spasmodic benefits, relieves nausea, stimulates appetite, and much much more.  But there is something else that my buddy does ... for me at least.  He pulls me out of myself.  Seriously.  Millions of us have some form of depression or anxiety.  And even those that don't, know what I mean when I talk about self-defeating mental chatter.  T. H. makes you forget all that.  He's such a great conversation starter that's for sure!  He really makes you think.  He makes you question things while allowing you to open up enough to see new perspectives.  Getting in tight with T.H.--I mean really spending some time with him, getting to know his strengths and his weaknesses-- has shown me how to practice something called "radical self-acceptance".   T.H. makes my skin feel more familiar to me, makes it fit on my bones better.  I'm not as self critical now that we've been friends, yet much more likely to see the road to change as navigable.

But there's a catch with THC.  In natural plant form, he doesn't really do any of the above.  In that form, which is basically just a different shaped molecule that doesn't fit into the same receptor, Mr. T.H. lowers inflammation, reduces seizures and convulsions, and inhibits cell growth in cancerous tumors. All without psychoactive effects.  It's only when the plant material is heated that THCA changes his shape becoming THC, and easily fits into that receptor.  While the plant is growing, the compound has zero psychoactive effects.  Zero.  Tell me again why we can't grow it in our gardens?

Can you see why it's just plain silly to blame T.H. for promoting lazyness, lethargy, and lack of ambition?  And don't blame that on the rest of the team either.  Better yet, blame it on the individual themselves.  Personal responsibility.  Because every day, millions of people worldwide are doing strenuous manual labor while medicated with cannabis, and doing it well.

Spread the word.  Share at will!  Scream it from the mountaintops .... Mr. T.H. Cannabinol rocks!
He has proven to me time and time again that he wants what is best for me and this biology of mine. Some friends just make us better people.


Friday 7 March 2014

Honesty

The validity of the following statement is only increased by the fact that you're reading this;  not hearing me say it.

"I have trouble being completely and totally honest when face to face." ~ the couch activist

The result of growing up in a small town during those early formative years?
The result of being the youngest child?
The result of too many Customer Service jobs?
The result of being born an Aquarius?
The result of being a people pleaser?
The result of growing up with severe shyness?
The result of growing up disliking my own voice?

Who the heck knows eh?   But I know I'm not alone in this either.

Monday 3 March 2014

Ripe for a Cult

I've always sort of been open to new things.  Looking back, I don't really know when it started, or if there was any one thing that sparked my life-long curiosity, but here it is.  The internet and all of it's millions of hours of information was ... life changing to say the least, and fed that curiosity with more than I ever imagined.  Did you know that in other parts of the world, people drink the mid-stream of their morning urine? Urine Therapy ... and people rave about it's benefits!

More than any other part of life and culture, I obsessed about health.  Seems like a quick obsession eh?  I mean, Health Canada and most countries out there have a comprehensible Food guide for us to eat by. What about that, left me searching for more?  Health Canada also has this field of modern medicine with trained doctors and nurses to treat me.  What about that, left me searching for more there too?

The Donnelly homestead is located in rural Ontario and that's where I grew up.  I grew up watching my parents and farming neighbors work the ground each and every year.  I'd watch them throw ashes or food scraps on there to fertilize the soil.  There was magic in that there soil. Each grain of sand or soil having gone through the intestinal tract of the millions of dew worms living there.  I feel like I grew up grundgy, dirty-nailed and like a kin to the earth, and then became an adult who saw that sterility and cleanliness was the goal in every aspect out there.  Not sure how soon I made the connection, but it surely didn't feel right to me and my pagan core.

Watching surgeries with sterile instruments, latex gloves, and needles everywhere seemed utterly ridiculous when compared to the doctoring that I ever watched at the farm.  It just reiterated to me that there was a better way, a more natural way to treat illness and infection.  The white cloaked doc will give you a pill to cure that infection.  A pill that will have an affect on almost every other process in your body.  Or you could have a shaman or naturapath put some squirmy leaches on that one sore and they will clean it up better than any rubbing alcohol, and they'll do it without affecting any other part of your system.  Friggin gross... but friggin amazing!  

Gall-bladder flush
Liver flush
Oil-pulling
At-home enemas
Urine therapy
Facercise
Hair treatments
Hypnosis

Just ask my fam.  There were a few years there where Di's contribution to family dinners was always some kinda shit-over-the-log tree-hugger's concoction of grains nobody heard of!  But my family were great and they all tried some~ even my daddy who would take just the smallest of lovin' spoonfuls to make me feel good about myself.  I was influenced by them; this they could see.  I was a product of livin' off the earth ... as were they.

Even to this day, my curiosity is great.  It's not enough for me to simply see the finished product.  I want to know how it was made.  I need to step into those other shoes.  I need to see that view from right there. Here we go back to perspectives, but I wanna see what you see.  I wanna know why that makes you feel the way it does.  I just wanna know.

It is this insatiable hunger for knowledge that worries some people.  I know many many conspiracy theories. It doesn't mean I believe them all.  But I've read about them, and some of them do indeed have details that resonate with me.  But is this a bad thing?  In conversations, I bring these things up.  I love seeing the look on peoples' faces when you tell them about some of these alternative measures or as some call it, craziness.  But it was within the realms of one such conversation with a co-worker where I was told that I was "ripe for a cult."  He assumed that I believed everything I read, thus making me highly susceptible to being taken advantage of.  Now this co-worker is almost as polar opposite to me as he could be.  He sells cars during the day, goes home, walks his dogs, feeds his kids, and watches Dwarf porn til he falls asleep with his hand in his pants.   Well .... a cult or a travelling circus?  Maybe we're both ripe for something!

We're all weirdos.  Seriously.  There is something about you that only you get.  Guess what?  That's ok!  But if curiosity and the desire to know more about the world around you, makes you 'ripe for a cult', we'd still be wearing fig leaves over our private parts.

It was curiosity and an eagerness to learn that made DaVinci record the early flying vessels that he envisioned.
It was curiosity that encouraged early explorers to set off for the sunset with no idea where or even if they would land.
It was curiosity that made early Natives put corn kernels in the fire.
It was curiosity that gave prehistoric man and woman the wonderment of fire.

Without the natural urge of curiosity, where the hell would we be?  Can you imagine what life would look like if no one ever thought, "I wonder what would happen if I rubbed these two sticks together really fast?".

And finally, can you imagine where'd we be if that guy's co-worker discouraged him and told him he was ripe for a cult!?

Brrrrrrrrrr .... would be a more common sound :-)

Sunday 2 March 2014

Perception and the Pursuit for True Democracy

Perception:  the ability to see, hear, or become aware of something through the senses.

This is a broad definition of the word. Perhaps purposely so, leaving certain interpretation open. It attempts to encompass all of that which is experienced through the senses, but it never actually identifies or lists said senses. How many are there anyways? Five? Six? How many of us know someone with that sixth sense? 

Another thing this definition leads the reader to think, is that those senses are concrete and identical to each of us. We all see the same way. We all hear the same way. We all smell, feel, taste the same way. Or do we? Nope definitely not. As infants, when our brain is making connections and forming these memory structures, our environment and those in it have a huge affect on the outcome. It goes far beyond simply 'training' a child's taste buds to crave or demand sweetness because mum drenched everything in ketchup. It gets down to the core of our being. Down to the cell and it's very structure. We can only remember that which we experience. And how we experience those things affects that memory, and how we see certain things forevermore.

How I have dealt with-- or rather not dealt with confrontation up til now is a direct result of my environment when I was growing up. Some parents fight in front of the kids. And others don't. There exists every shade of grey between these two. My parents never fought. At least not that I remember. So verbalizing my feelings in times of anger doesn't feel right to me. I didn't see it, so I didn't know how to do it. What felt normal for so very long was walking away, shoving down, biting my tongue. But I've seen or babysat kids who thrive on confrontation, clearly getting a thrill from bullying playmates.  Where does that come from?

Because of my childhood in a rural town and my own desire to enter the overly-romanticized field of equine-training, I see people differently too. I know a bit about farming. I associate the smell of silage and manure with productivity and job security ... thus stable income. Scenario: I'm working at a swanky car dealership. In the door comes a smelly, dirty-from-the-fields farmer to look at the Caddy's. My co-worker is a city-slicker and he turns his nose up at our new customer, saying he's going on his break. To him, this customer is a piece dirt and if he had enough money to buy that Cadillac STS then he'd surely dress the part. To me, this customer isn't wearing his wealth on his body. His wealth is grazing in the fields as we speak. It's sitting in the barn dripping oil on the dusty floor. It's ripening in the silo, fermenting into valuable probiotic feed for his flock. Sadly, we see people so very differently at times. That man wrote a check for the car, and bought every product I offered him: rust, dust, and extended warranty too.

The parent who is naturally aloof will raise an adult who is also aloof, or compensates by being overly affectionate.
The parent who doesn't make eye contact will raise a similar adult or an adult who associates eye contact with trust, respect, and understanding ... demanding it from everyone.
The kid who was potty-trained too early may become the adult who is hyper organized, sterilized, methodized ... or become a complete slob.
The kid whose childhood teddy is made with rough canvas cloth will make that adult associate comfort with not cushy super-soft blankies, but with a fabric with more texture and strength.
The kid whose parents were super strict will become a super rigid adult, or will become someone who shuns order and law, always pushing the envelope, always bending rules.
And the kid who was raised by wolves will sniff assholes instead of shaking hands during new introductions.

With so many differences, it's understandable why so many countries are democratic ones. Or are they? People are always saying that elections are rigged. If not actually rigging the count, then surely rigging it by way of buying enough hypnosis marketing to win the votes over. That may be true. But I take issue with a more micro view than that. I take issue with the fact that all of the people in the world who make the big decisions are wealthy and faithful to one of only two or three of the major religions in existence. I'm repeating myself when I say that I've been poor and I've been relatively rich and I definitely saw EVERYTHING differently. But the people making the decisions are not just relatively rich, most of them are well established and wealthy business owners and as admirable and commendable as that is, it doesn't represent the majority!! Not by a long shot! This is one of the reasons I support Matt Mernagh for Mayor of Toronto. Perhaps Toronto NEEDS a mayor who takes the bus on the daily. It needs a Mayor with a tumor and an auto-immune disease so that he can see that maybe Toronto needs to beef up it's "Handicap Accessibility" measures city-wide. Perhaps Toronto not only needs but deserves "fresh eyes" in the house.

Would it be too much to ask to have real and true and uni-level brand of Politics? It's no longer enough to think that you can have one person of each sex and each race be on the panel to attain broad spectrum opinions and input. I want one person of every tax bracket on there, one of every religion including the anti-religion known as Atheism. Making up our Governments and municipal representatives with lawyers and only lawyers makes for a potentially clean-on-paper way of governing, but it doesn't represent reality or what society and each and every part of it needs to survive and be successful.  Financial disparity should not take away your voice!

We all deserve success. Success could be as broadly ranging as being able to finally afford something grandiose, to merely being published on a digital website. The bar as they say, when raised is not at the same level for us all. And that's just fine ... but we need government and authority that doesn't just hypothesize about certain situations, public safety, or municipal planning and spending. We need authority who experiences these things first-hand ... and within the last century!

With so many different perceptions ... so many varying ways to see, hear, feel, taste, be .... we're selling ourselves and our whole society short by not including every shade in that great and varied pallette we know as .... HUMANITY.

Saturday 1 March 2014

Emotions ... Friend or Foe?

Dear neighbors,

My name is Dianna, and I live on the eighth floor.  I live upstairs from you, yes I think you've seen me before. If you hear sniffling in the lift, if you see tears like there's some kinda fight.  Just don't ask me what it was.  Please don't ask me what it was ....  my words can't tell you ... what it was.

I grew up somewhat emotionless.  I mean, I think I was a happy kid.  But I was apparently too busy loving animals and being outside.  I'd ride my bike up the side road looking for a horse to buy, sometimes further than I've every been.  LOTR Samwise Gamgee's moment where he stood at the furthest place he'd ever been from the Shire-his home-resonated with me.... so many years later.  But I didn't hug a lot, and mum used to tease me that I was so "cold".  In fact, now that I think of it, there's a bit of a pattern with me not expressing myself.  For instance, and sorry sisters to have to repeat this once again, but my sisters found a way to make me hug them when I refused.  I remember one such time where we were at the top of the stairs of my parents' 175 year old house.  For whatever reason, they wanted a kiss.  And for whatever reason, I hated giving them because I had a thing about saliva.  So they told me that I was adopted and that mommy and daddy didn't love me ... until I broke down in tears and hugged them.  Boohoo ... woe is me eh?  Maybe I was just stubborn.  To this day, I'll give almost anything to you.  But if you demand it, that all changes.  Makes me wonder what makes a kid huggy and what makes a kid aloof?  Are they born that way?  Or does that develop at random on it's own?

My early twenties saw me begin my journey with antidepressants.  I know depression is real, because I remember feeling it even in grade school.  Some days I was just 'off'.  And my bff Dina was such a good friend.  I feel like I treated her badly at times in the midst of my depression. But I felt different than everyone else.  I felt watched.  I felt at times the same hopelessness that I've felt in adulthood.  If I needed therapy, it was to see that there are more than one way to be.  And how I felt was okay.  It was what it was.

But the meds flat-lined my emotions for me.  Instead of feeling that hopeless drowning sorrow for no real reason, I'd feel fine all the time.  Just fine though.  Not great.  Never great.  Just fine.  And fine definitely is better than hopeless.  And thus you see how easily the cycle perpetuates.

I recently read about the power of the placebo affect and just how powerful that is.  It's immensely powerful. Yet we too often forget why.  I remember working 40 hours a week at a cell phone call center.  I smoked cigarettes and couldn't even think about quitting those while working there.  It was not a great experience for me.  I was on two kinds of antidepressants at the time and I finally had coverage through work.  Just having that full bottle of pills made my blood pressure stabilize, and made me feel like I had all the tools I needed to survive this month.  Yep .... just survive.  The placebo affect is huge because our brains and the power they wield over this hulk of a body is ... huge-mongous.  You doubt me?  Just think about the erection.  One thought can cause a whole organ to salute the flag.  That's power people.

For the last five years or so I've been medication free and seeing a striking difference.  The cold emotionless-ness I used to feel is gone.  Now I am overflowing with emotion.  Those tear-ducts that barely worked when I was younger, get a workout almost every single day.  Can we get a happy medium here?  Or ... what is medium?  I mean, if there are so many ways to be, how can we even know what the median is?  Maybe it's perfectly fine to cry at talent shows and touching tv commercials, at flash mobs and live music events. When I see strangers showing love to strangers I'm toast.  And maybe that's okay.  Maybe it's okay to get pissed right off when you see inequality and fukkery going on.  It feels more than okay.  It feels like a force I cannot stop.  I'm the Wolverine and these emotions are my blades and no matter how hard I squeeze my eyes and clench my jaw, the tears slide out in slow mo almost as though to prove that I am now and forever powerless to control them.  And maybe that's okay.

We've been molded to connect tears with sadness.  But for me it's almost the opposite.  A child singing like an angel grabs my heart and squeezes the emotions out.  An Olympian who pauses to help his competitor get up sends some kind of feeling into my sinuses and my throat, and I'm powerless.  Tears are not necessarily sadness but emotion.  The uni-browed Scottish lass who sang like Julie Andrews weakened my knees.  A while back I was really struggling with this all.  I thought, if I'm so all-loving and one-love preaching, then why does the expression of love make me cry?  But I was seeing it wrong.  Tears are emotion in physical form.  Sometimes space is limited and out they come.

So ... not sure I solved this one folks.  Not sure I've proven whether these vast emotions of mine are a friend or a foe.  Or are they just what they are?  And their 'goodness' and 'badness' is all about timing ... and whether I wore my water-proof make-up or not.  Meh ... sometimes even the ugly-cry can feel so friggin good.