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Largest Recall of Ground Beef Is Ordered

New York Times
By ANDREW MARTIN
Published: February 18, 2008

A California meat company on Sunday issued the largest beef recall in history, 143 million pounds, some of which was used in school lunch programs, Department of Agriculture officials announced.

The recall by the Westland/Hallmark Meat Company, based in Chino, Calif., comes after a widening animal-abuse scandal that started after the Humane Society of the United States distributed an undercover video on Jan. 30 that showed workers kicking sick cows and using forklifts to force them to walk.

The video raised questions about the safety of the meat, because cows that cannot walk, called downer cows, pose an added risk of diseases including mad cow disease. The federal government has banned downer cows from the food supply….(read the rest).

What does it mean to be a Healer? The Healer is first a unifier. This can be at a political level or in the psyche. When it comes to healing, old definitions no longer fit. Definitions are broadened or altogether discarded. Why? Because the Healer personifies change. Change, and spiritually it’s more about transformation; change of shape, the shape of how you see yourself, the world, the cosmos.

The Healer represents an inclusive model. At its highest, this means that there’s an embodied realization of the Oneness of All That Is. This is a state of enlightenment. But it need not be other-worldly. At the social level it means including other. Of course this can only be engendered by the solid knowing that life is from One, undifferentiated source where there is no separation. This meta-level knowing must also be turned into healing action where other dissolves.

Let’s look at the Healer outside the confines of a healing context for a moment. Can anyone be a Healer? Yes. Anyone who has integrated and embodied a non-materialistic worldview, and this informs their understanding is a Healer. If you see the person in front of you as being six feet away, someone other and separate, if you highlight your differences in age, gender, race and social standing, then it’s a fragmented, dualitistic worldview that only leads to a limited embrace, very quickly threatened by ‘me and mine’ positioning in the frail mind.

Can you accept that the person in front of you reaches beyond the limits of his or her skin? Can we grow our understanding to know that they are not contained in their skin or defined by it, that the space between two people is illusory?

In reality, that is non-material reality, there’s a common ground of connection and unity between two people which is the Healer’s domain. In that domain we share humanity, resources, power, love, burdens and life.

The Healer’s worldview also comes into play in the relationship between human and Nature, which includes all its systems and life forms. The predominant approach is that the world outside of us is just that, outside! It is yet again, other.

Whether human or environment, when viewed as other the responsibility of kinship is so easily and callously discarded. The natural care of the heart is shut off and we enter destructive patterns of dominance, consumption and profit.

Just as we’re dependent on every single human that cohabitates this planet with us, we’re dependent on the planet itself, and it is dependent on us.

Symbiosis is the Healer’s virtue and strength. To install this lens over the eyes of the heart is the work of love and love at work.

It is love that reveals to us the eternal in us and in our neighbors.

–Miguel de Unamuno

to be continued…

Between birth and death is the hopscotch of daily despondency. Dimly in the background, the whoosh of eternity is coursing through my cells. The alarm clock of awakening is on perpetual snooze. It rings at regular intervals, yet an automatic programming silences it. Until the next time. And the next. And the next.

© Pamir Kiciman 2007

Related:
Ever-present Love
Threshold of Healing
Spiritual Love
The Self
Self & Divine
Existence
Wholeness / Duality
Order & Unity
Rounds of Incarnations
Pain
Searching

The bravest thing I’ve done is to take responsibility for my life: my thoughts and feelings, actions and behaviors, my pain, and my creations. This type of responsibility is like a subscription that renews. It’s not like you’re done with it. And it can propel you into another sphere altogether. More on that in a minute.

This writing is prompted by Jenny and Erin specifically in The Bravest Thing I’ve Ever Done and earlier when Understanding Courage was explored. Thanks for tagging, challenging and asking me.Taking responsibility is plenty courageous. There’s a point of total breakdown, of annihilation. It’s a death for certain.

Then courage in the from of an honestly raw accounting of the mess you’re in. This is what I call the ‘blood and guts of healing.’It need not stop there. In my case and the possibility exists for everyone, taking responsibility for myself lead to something much scarier: embracing my true nature. It launched me into a quest, which wouldn’t have been possible without the ‘first’ courage.

One of the biggest things we run from is our true nature. Afterall drama is so much easier. You know it inside out, can give a command performance in your sleep, and really validate how miserable your life is like 2+2=4, no room for error. This is the persona I’ve donned, these are my poisons and you better get the hell outta my way! I’m running from my Self and even Olympic athletes don’t have the steroids I do.

I did that into my early-mid-thirties. Amongst many other things. It was hedonist, escapist, lustful, fun, utterly dysfunctional, I loved and weeped and guffawed, opined, judged, raged, gave and stole, alienated and hurt people and myself, danced my tush off…and…

One dawn after Hurricane Andrew had torn through Southern Florida, I woke up. The proverbial light bulb. And that was still way back in the dark days, when the courage I knew I’d have to muster terrified me.

You have to be brave to have courage. Ironic isn’t it?

Folks, I’ve news for you. There’s so much unseen Grace. Divine intervention is waiting like a flickering candle about to drown in it’s own wax at the edges of our willingness. Initially it only takes your cupping the flame to steady it against the draft, to tease the wick out of the wax. That’s all. That moment of caring attention where you’re quiet and still enough that your true nature can enter, after its years of knocking and show you your colors.

Then the journey begins of healing the wounds of the human, and even more fear-wrought, that foundation propelling you into Self.

Self can be described in many ways and it’s not so important to do that here. What’s important is that upping the ante is courage on an entirely different level. This is the courage to own that while you were broken, your spirit never was; while you believed you were flesh and bones, your soul smiled and winked; while you felt worthless, gold poured into your heart; while you felt unloved, you were cradled in patient compassion; while your mind was weak, your consciousness was fortified; while you were in darkness, the Light buoyed you; while you were lost, wisdom protected you.

I know this. As a child, even though my personality never took it seriously, even though it was by rote and I thought I didn’t know how to pray, my soul took over and prayed and prayed and prayed everytime my house was filled with voices bellowed, things smashed, doors slammed, love crushed and laughter squelched. When later I consciously prayed my soul just beamed warmly.

In the physical world, you can’t ignore a wall. In the spiritual life, you can’t ignore Eternity. Eternity in this sense is the absence of time, not an endless span of time. Eternity is as real as the street you live on. Your street exists in Eternity. So there are two choices. Numb and run, and my god are there countless ways to do that! Consumerism is geared for that alone.

Or, allow the bravery of your true nature to infuse you and take the lead. This is going to require spiritual backbone, vigilance, recommitments, endurance, sourcing courage again and again, along with a host of other resources. But it then becomes a meritorious life. And simply happy and healthy.

That’s the one I chose, choose and re-choose.

I’ll end with a haiku of mine from way before my dawn, a kind of precursor:

hide and seeking
our souls
games people will play

© Pamir Kiciman 2007

Read the original meme “What Gives You Courage?” by Lorraine Cohen