2008 October

Cure to Cancer: It Starts with You

No Comments 31 October 2008

“Think of the earth as a living organism that is being attacked by billions of bacteria whose numbers double every forty years. Either the host dies, or the parasite dies, or both die.” Gore Vidal

Imagine a giant alien who looked down upon the earth in outer space…as you would look down upon a leaf on the ground. Should the alien study the earth through a microscope, he would observe miniature cells (human beings) in much the way you would observe tiny bugs on the leaf. Some of these cells would be healthy and perform positive functions that sustain life. But some of these cells would mutate, divide, and reproduce over and over “growing exponentially into a mass of cellular tissue that requires increasingly more and more nutrients. It re-routes blood vessels into it, and consumes the spaces and tissues of nearby organs in its orgy of growth. It takes over. It’s called cancer.”

That’s right. There are some human beings who healthy for the planet. And there some human beings who are cancerous to the planet. Let’s examine some cancerous activities and you can gauge if you are the problem or the solution:

1. Hoarding

Facts:
–In the United States, 11.7 million children live in households where people have to skip meals or eat less to make ends meet.

–In developing countries nearly 16 million children die every year from preventable and treatable causes. Sixty percent of these deaths are from hunger and malnutrition. –www.bread.org

The world is struggling right now. The economy is in the pits. Famine is prevalent. The distribution of wealth is way off kilter. Of all the world’s billions of people, there are 691 billionaires who have accumulated $2.2 trillion dollars.** Meanwhile, half the world lives on $2 a day or less. There’s nothing wrong with being filthy rich. God knows I want to be rich and have an amazing house and all the financial freedom in the world. I’m no Mother Theresa but I’ve got to say, something is wrong here. There is a cluster of cells clogging all the nutrients while so many other cells are lacking proper “flow.”

A few weeks ago, I went shopping at Costco. I felt repulsed at the massive amounts of vegetables, and boxes of cookies, and packs of paper products. It’s one thing if I was shopping for a business. But I was only shopping for two people. I was part of “the problem.” By doing a better job of buying what we need, rather than hoarding what we think we’ll need, we can act like a cell playing its part rather than a cell clogging nutrients.

For more on world hunger and how you can help, go to www.bread.org.

2. Infection

“When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace.” –Jimi Hendrix

As Thom Hartmann so brilliantly describes in The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight, in ancient societies, people lived off the land and consumed what they needed to survive. They enjoyed a much more peaceful existence. Then, when certain people began aggressively taking land as the white man took from the Native Americans, the Natives had to resort to aggression to protect themselves. In other words, a once peaceful “cell” was infected with a dangerous, diseased attitude of violence and aggression.

A human’s natural state is one of harmony. When you are most relaxed and in the moment, you’ll find that your only care to is love and be loved. So it’s a good question to ask yourself: are you finding that domination and desire for victory is the name of your game? God knows I spend most of my time watching sports and screaming at my teams to win. And there’s nothing wrong with that. But too much hunger for victory ultimately places one group of people on top of another. And again, such aggressive cells “consume space” at the expense of more submissive cells. This doesn’t mean give away your stuff and live in a commune. Rather, it’s just a suggestion to emphasize harmony as much as you emphasize victory.

3. Become a Stem Cell

“Personal transformation can and does have global effects. As we go, so goes the world, for the world is us. The revolution that will save the world is ultimately a personal one.” Marianne Williamson

When we get caught in our ways, habits, and routines, we maintain the status quo. As it stands right now, the status quo contributes to the disease of the planet. Take a moment to think of a stem cell. It has the power to transform itself to any kind of cell, and thus transform and heal other parts of the whole. If each of us would look around and honor someone who is struggling and needs help. Whether it’s your neighbor or a starving child in Africa or the bum you always see sleeping on the street corner. Each person has the capacity to restore flow of “nutrients” and cure the cancer plaguing the planet. Such is the transformational potential of every human.