Sri Aurobindo on illness

A quote:

"The human body has always been in the habit of answering to whatever forces chose to lay hands on it and illness is the price it pays for its inertia and ignorance. It has to learn to answer to the one Force alone."

Something to aspire too. Definitely.

The universe inside - thoughts and emotions aside

I've been a little sick. Nothing too important, but a hassle when you are traveling, which I have been. Suddenly there is no energy to do what you want and your body claims rest, rest, rest.

On the other hand this has become such an opportunity and a fascinating way of delving into the physical body. The sense that there is something in the body trying to work out itself, trying to come back to balance. A fight that goes on between the good little bits and the not so good ones.

There is so much to see in regards to the physical body. Most of it remains unseen, unnoticed.

Isn't it amazing that all the time there is something going on inside us - thoughts and emotions aside? There is something happening to every single person in this planet: all these interactions happening in our cells to hold some structure that allow us to think that we are individuals... And we are vaguely aware of it. We go on, doing our thing, living our lives and these systems working their magic in the background. Unless something goes wrong, we don't have to think about how to breathe, how to send the air to the lungs and then tell the blood how to extract the CO2; we don't have to think about extracting the nutrients from our food (if any) and send them around to be optimized; we don't have to tell our left leg 'move after the right', so we can walk....

It's just amazing. There is a universe happening inside every second. Movements in all sorts of ways doing all sorts of things with such precision (most of the time) and wisdom. How is this possible?

Wow.

Iboga, the miracle hallucinogen?

A few weeks ago, navigating through the web (while researching raw food retreats), I accidentally ran into this.

I used to be a fan of Carlos Castaneda. I read ALL of his books and the books of Taisha Abelar and Florinda Donner, bought the Tensegrity videos and practiced them on my own (for a few months). Anything that mentioned him or Don Juan became a magnet to my interest. (Then life took another course... another story.)

Back then I was very curious about trying peyote or mushrooms or some sort of hallucinogen. I never tried them (am actually happy I did not). This led me to read about these substances and their effects. Nowadays I keep hearing about people going into a ayahuasca retreats or the use of similar substances with the purpose of getting to know themselves deeply, but I had never heard of iboga.

According to several sources, iboga is a shrub originaly used in Africa by the Bwiti (a religious group) for spiritual and medical reasons. Its main ingredient, ibogaine, was accidentally found responsible for removing withdrawal symptoms and cravings from chemical addictions.

I know people whose lives have been completely ruined because of addiction to drugs and alcohol, people that have tried and tried but keep failing to completely let go. Letting go is not easy for most of them and the effects of stopping using such substances can be deathly. Alcohol, for example is one of those substances, more so than drugs.

So reading about Ibogaine, a substance that is prohibited in the US, but widely researched in other countries, opened my eyes to a new alternative. Research has showed that it:

- alleviates 90% of withdrawal symptoms

- addresses cravings for two to six months

- changes habitual thought patterns

- helps restore proper functioning of the brain's neurochemistry

- is non-addictive and needs not be taken on a continuing basis

(from 'awakeninginthedream.com')


There are plenty of youtube videos and material available online. This is just one of them:



It does sound like a miracle plant.

I wonder how many things can be found in nature whose true healing properties are yet to be discovered (or perhaps forgotten).