Escaping from the “Concrete Jungle:” David’s Diet Rant

By David Wilcock

5 / 20 / 99

 

[3/15/09: I definitely went on a soapbox and ranted in this article — definitely was going through an unhappy time — so I changed the title accordingly!] 

In today’s society we have allowed ourselves to separate further and further from nature, until our lives have become only scattered remnants of the agrarian lifestyles known only a few generations before.

In this modern machine age, we have become addicted in an increasingly parasitic relationship to the voluminous number of conveniences that we have created for ourselves. Among them are motorized transportation, electric power, running water and prepackaged foods that need simply be picked up at the local supermarket.

We don’t always think that “natural” is better. Many of us would have no idea what to do if we were stuck in the woods or if our electricity and water were shut off for a few days.

We have grown increasingly reliant on the multitudes of conveniences that society has provided for us, and there does not appear to be any end in sight – although the y2k computer bug might certainly give us a new crack at it.

So let’s talk about us. Many of us still prefer the flavor-enhanced, sugar and MSG-laden foods now available in our stores to the simplicity and health of brown rice, raw vegetables, beans and nuts.

We much prefer to drink Diet Coke as opposed to regular water, and one soda commercial from a few years back implied that “When dogs get thirsty, they drink water. When humans get thirsty, they drink Squirt.”

The deeper implications of that statement are that it is somehow beneath us to drink ordinary water – that we are somehow “too advanced” to drink something so plain and uninteresting. How many times have you heard someone say that they cannot drink “regular water” because it “has no taste?” Come on now, be honest – it might have been you saying those things at one time, too.

It is no wonder that so many of us are coming down with chronic degenerative diseases such as cancer. We squander away the time that our bodies require to heal themselves with our addictions to being awake.

We somehow convince ourselves that we “don’t have time” to sleep, only budgeting six hours a night for ourselves, and if unexpected situations arise we may get even less.

 

“THE BOX”

We bind ourselves into an endless system of “wage slavery” where we work forty or fifty hours a week in a box. We also travel to work in a box, leaving our own box at home to go to another box.

Then at lunchtime we go to yet another box, to get away from the box or cubicle that we normally work in.

Then it’s back into our horribly expensive mobile box to once again drive home, and return to our own private box where everything is safe.

We are then entertained by yet another box made of glass, where dancing colors arrange themselves into the images of human faces that give us the illusion that we are really engaging in social contact with others, when in fact we are just further replicating our pattern of boxed-in isolation.

And so, to what degree have we boxed ourselves in to a life that society has mandated for us?

To what degree do we accept the proclamations of the media / political / corporate hierarchy and its demands upon us?

We are taught that our purpose in life is to consume, to store more nuts and trinkets in our little box just like all good chipmunks do.

We are taught that beauty is a 36-24-36 female body with bulging silicon-formed breasts and a rippling, well-muscled male form that few can achieve without dedicating their very lives to that pursuit.

And yet paradoxically, we are also taught that there is no finer pleasure than to sink our teeth into a product comprised of processed bovine flesh, refined sugars, cheeses and greases. Furthermore, we need to make sure that we can purchase these grease packets for literally pennies on the dollar, in order that we might get a “good value.”

We are horrified at the idea of trying to make our own clothing when we can go to the thrift shop and pick out a bargain for less than a dollar, or to the mall to get the latest fashion for a hundred dollars.

If we had to weave a piece of cloth ourselves, we wouldn’t even know where to begin.

Many of us are so entrenched into our “box” mentality that we might only actually spend a few precious minutes outdoors each day, dodging from one air conditioner to another from our favorite parking spot, always as close to the main door as we can possibly get.

We can hardly conceive of what life would be like without the massive machine organism that we have built up around ourselves and continue to live off of each day.

We don’t like to admit to the fact that the machine is killing us. When we have positions of power in major corporations, it is much easier to turn the other cheek and allow whatever environmental disasters must be committed to go on unabated.

After all, the only measurement for the success of a corporation is profit. The more profit a corporation makes, the more of a success it is, and if it fails to profit then desperate measures must be taken.

Look on a map of South America and study the largest country, Brazil. If your map gives you the names of cities and the locations of major highways, you will notice something interesting.

The vast majority of Brazil has very few highways and no established cities, while only the outskirts, especially near the Atlantic coast, serve as host to modern civilization. The economic situations in Brazil have significantly deteriorated several times in a row.

Brazilian coin currency that once carried great spending power is now worth practically nothing, unless you have squirreled away an entire fishbowl full of it. With the lack of profit as such a pressing issue, Brazil is driven to desperate measures in order to survive.

And so, when we actually stop and think, we realize that the entire center of Brazil with no highways and no cities is host to a unique world ecosystem – the rainforest. Satellite photos from space still show this area as being lush and green.

Much of the rainforest has simply never seen human interference or habitation, since it has been around even longer than we have. Tens or even hundreds of thousands of species of animal, bird, amphibian and insect remain undiscovered.

And, perhaps more importantly, entire phyla of plant life have yet to be discovered and cataloged. We simply have no idea what is in there, because so far no one has made the degree of massive effort that it would take to find out.

Since the Brazilian economy has had so many hard knocks, they are desperate for profit and will do whatever it takes. As a result, loggers are allowed to clear and destroy these rainforests at levels that can easily exceed four football fields per day.

The trees that once stood the test of time for thousands and thousands of years are now converted into wood, which forms our furniture pieces and buildings that we inevitably dispose of in well under 100 years.

Anything that lasts longer than that is referred to by us as an “antique,” and we might spend a little more money to acquire it before wear and tear renders it completely valueless to us, and then off to the garbage dump or Salvation Army it goes.

Remember what we said about cancer? Our current society has built-in a variety of institutionalized systems that appear to demand our participation. Hardly anyone can imagine what you mean if you tell them that you do not own or watch a television.

They eyeball you with furtive glances of skepticism, scorn and derision if you skip the pizza, hamburgers or ice cream cake.

They await your opinions on meaningless news and media tidbits, and they stare at you as if you are from another planet when you regretfully tell them that you have no idea what they are talking about.

They are horrified when they go to the doctor and are told that they have tumors, and all of a sudden they start to become aware that something is dreadfully wrong with this whole system.

But because they can’t think on such a multidimensional level, they still might miss the point and collapse into a desperate, self-pitying fear, never realizing the responsibility that they had in creating their illness through their tacit participation in a wildly dysfunctional system.

All the knowledge that we need to combat cancer and other degenerative diseases is available to us now. But since our society as a whole has not assimilated this knowledge, we continue to have the same problems.

If we don’t allow our bodies time to heal by sleeping eight hours a night, if we don’t give them the combination of fresh, natural foods, clean and clear water, exercise and sunlight, if we indulge in worry, hate and fear instead of positive emotions such as grace, beauty and joy, we are headed down a road that looks increasingly bleak and dismal as we move ahead.

We don’t really understand why white flour, red meat, refined sugar, dairy and prepackaged, preservative-laden foods can be so bad, since we are brainwashed day after day with the idea that these are the very nuts that we, as chipmunks, must harvest into our own little box.

Our opinions are so cleverly marketed by the brightest advertising think tanks in the world that we are convinced that life just wouldn’t be the same without Flavor Burst chewing gum and a Domino’s Pizza on the weekends.

We don’t handle the concept of the y2k bug very well, because we are so indoctrinated into the Machine that we can hardly think of it ceasing to be.

No one is really preparing yet, because the Machine is just too all-pervasive to even imagine that it would no longer be there. Cigarette fiends and alcoholics have probably never once thought about what it would be like if they simply could not satisfy their addictions at the local stores anymore.

No alcoholic talks about stockpiling beer, because they simply have never thought that far ahead, and would probably end up drinking all of their storage anyway – it is unfathomable to think that it might actually disappear.

Few people ever really think about the fact that we are on a one-to-one level of food production; in other words, as soon as we make it, we consume it. Hardly any of our modern automated farm equipment is y2k compatible, and if supply lines are compromised, we just might not have even the most basic conveniences that we have come to rely upon anymore.

Our eyes are dazzled by the television, and we can hardly imagine what life would be like if we reached for the remote and nothing happened. We might very well start pacing the floor in a manic, stir-crazed frenzy if all of our TV’s died, having no idea what to do with all of our suddenly free time.

It would probably take us a few days to realize that we could actually go for a walk outside or spend time with our children.

Our appetites demand the sweetest, greasiest, poorest foods, and we are completely unwilling to give them up, as they are so near and dear to us. We love our air-conditioning so much that it is almost unfathomable to think of living anywhere that didn’t have it.

Most of us have never conceived of what it would be like to wake up one day and have no hot water, or even better yet, no running water whatsoever. The microwave and electric stove are such a given that we have never stopped to consider trying to live without them.

So, if we can briefly separate ourselves from the world that we now see all around us and look in on our present situation, we discover something interesting. We have essentially built up an artificial planet and tried to superimpose it over the natural world that we started with. Huge buildings of glass and metal press down on the Earth’s bosom with an oppressive weight.

Concrete slabs have replaced soft green grass and loamy black soil, and long strips of pavement have sealed and covered over carefully wrought cobblestone roads and dusty old carriage trails.

Even railroad tracks are now almost a forgotten memory, and if we were to take an Amtrak ride cross-country we are surprised to see the dangling, barren skeletons of brick buildings and train stations that once fueled a nation — now the empty shells of a forgotten age whose windows are used as target practice for enterprising youths with a handful of rocks and a good pitching arm.

Indeed, some of the more outspoken social commentators have spoken of our modern concrete jungles as being the cancers upon the Earth, and we do need to stop and think that one over for a few minutes. After all, a cancer is nothing more than a foreign growth, an area of the body where the cells start to proliferate too quickly.

We have vast tracts of arable, usable land, and yet we herd ourselves into coastal cities where we are packed in like sardines. To those of us who live in these cities, very little remains of the world we once knew. Trees are delegated to little more than sapling size, framed in brick-enforced concrete squares and laden with the droppings of herds of desperate birds.

Even the majesty of our blue skies and clean air is marred by the harsh, lingering reality of an ever-persistent smog that reeks of urine, garbage and diesel truck exhaust.

The chirping of birds, rustling of leaves in the wind, peeping of frogs, cacophony of crickets and howling of Great Horned Owls have been replaced by the barely-audible noises of televisions and voices in the apartments surrounding us, the soft coo of armies of hungry pigeons, the angry rush of automotive engines and ceaseless clamor of car alarms, explosively loud stereos that shatter their way down the street, and insistent honking horns that hammer at our tired minds and hearts.

How is it that we can be surrounded with so many of our fellow human beings, and yet in our own little compartment of the egg crate, we feel so alone and isolated?

Are we just another larva, locked into our own cell of the honeycomb and unwilling to see the hive itself for what it really is?

Do we really have the autonomy and control over our lives that we believe should be present, or are we more appropriately suited for slavery to a system that is so all-pervasive that we don’t even realize that we are slaves in the first place?

Do we actually allow our self-indulgence to be so great that we continue to inhale benzene, dioxins and carbon monoxide, simply because the marketing machine convinced us that it was “cool” for us to get hooked on cigarettes?

Do we ever stop and think about the fact that it is very profitable for us to be hooked, because we pay through the nose to kill ourselves and then pay even more when it finally catches up on us as the inevitable fade to black in the hospital or nursing home?

The doctors and nurses and scientists will all tell you that we have longer lifetimes than any other society in history. But the key to understanding that sentence is that what they really mean is any other Western society in history.

For you see, other specialists then turn around and study a tribe of indigenous peoples without our modern niceties, and discover to their surprise that their average natural lifespan is 120 years – almost twice what we claim for ourselves.

A 90-year old man from these societies could outclimb the star athlete of our high school soccer team on everything from the shallowest to the steepest mountains, and yet to us the idea of “90 Years Old” conjures up images of nursing homes, stale white rooms, Depends undergarments, bibs and blender-processed baby food that is spoon-fed by a bored attendant waiting for her next cigarette break, wearing a little too much makeup to hide the creeping dark pigment under her own eyes from her ongoing self-induced liver and kidney damage.

Several of our generations in the past, a group of profit-minded individuals chose to reinterpret a particular line of Biblical scripture to come to the conclusion that God wanted us to “Subdue the earth.”

Little did they realize that this statement was metaphorical, having more to do with our need to control the animal portions of ourselves to then let the spiritual side flow through. Only when we can get a handle on our physical bodies do we then have an opportunity to allow our mental and spiritual bodies to truly blossom into fruition.

But as long as we continue to watch TV, smoke cigarettes, drink alcohol, cut back on sleep and eat junk food, we are happily securing our seat on the rollercoaster ride that will speed us down the inevitable descending spiral that delivers cancer, disease and death to our doorstep.

As we continue to gulp down white bread that is no more nutritious than styrofoam, heavy meats that might just as well be covered with blue-white slime mold, dairy and cheese products that just as easily could be Elmer’s Glue and sodas that are no more nutritious than used motor oil, we have to wonder why we remain so unhealthy.

As we continue to live inside artificial environments supported by air conditioners whose filters might not have been changed for years at a time, we have to wonder why our oxygen-deprived systems peter out on us.

As we continue to relentlessly drive ourselves through meaningless jobs simply to stay alive, is it any wonder that we have an increasing disenchantment with life, drinking ourselves into nightly oblivion and screaming at our spouses about how much of an asshole they are?

Where is the joy, the peace, the glory of simply being alive? Why do we insist on treating ourselves as somehow being separate entities from nature – entities that must completely redesign their own systems of food, travel, commerce, housing, education and love?

Can we continue to survive and prosper in a civilization whose only universal God is the almighty dollar, where the hardened casts of concrete and pavement effectively seal over the life-giving forces of nature that sustain us?

Indeed, how can we go on in such blindness, such disease and disaster, without having some kind of major awakening?

How can we be so steadfast in our opinions that everything we say, think and do is “right,” and anything outside of our often shallow opinions must somehow be “wrong?” How much longer will we continue to exist like the Borgs in Star Trek, allowing ourselves to become so intermeshed with our machines that very little of our original humanity remains?

Does being human really mean that you wall yourself off from nature and become a naked monkey with a remote control who lives inside a cement box? Have we become so accustomed to civilization as it now stands that we have actually forgotten our Mother, the Earth which has given rise to us?

Can we stand in defiance of our own heritage any longer, and continue to allow our materialism to proliferate, still convincing ourselves that “Greed is good” and that all the precious natural resources we use to build an automobile are suddenly worth less than 500 of our dollars in under fifteen years of time?

Are we still standing in defiance of the fact that we were and are created, part of an ecosystem that extends past ourselves, or do we now believe that everything around us must be built for our own particular uses and exploitation?

How much longer do we stand by the sidelines waiting for “something” to happen when we are unwilling to see what is right in front of us? Is it really so surprising that we have breast and testicular cancer, rheumatoid arthritis and diabetes, muscular dystrophy and Alzheimer’s disease?

Can we not see that this is nothing more than the end product of what must occur when we proudly declare ourselves as a separate entity from nature, and then enact the steps to insure that we keep it that way?

And when we do start getting sick, when these problems do come back to haunt us both psychologically and physically, do we feel that the Machine is the only answer? Since we have filed our divorce papers against Mother Earth and are still waiting for a hearing, are we really prepared for the 50 percent of our assets that she must claim back?

Do we still treat ourselves and our bodies in a disease model, and concoct elaborate chemical interventions to solve the problem? Do we smoke and smoke and smoke because we love it so much and then weep in self-pitying terror when we discover that we have come down with lung cancer? Do we still attempt to smoke cigarettes through the hole in our throat that was created when we needed to have our voice box cut out from emphysema?

As we grow older in years, how many different prescription drugs are we taking to lengthen our (seemingly) horribly fragile lives? Does anyone bother to tell us that every time we eat refined sugar, we completely shut down our immune system for five full hours afterwards?

Do we ever really sit down and try to figure out if there are unseen medication interactions between these various prescription drugs, or do we simply go on happily popping nitroglycerine pills to stimulate our hearts, remembering somewhere in a vague corner of our minds that it is this same highly volatile compound that causes dynamite to explode?

Do we “cure” our mysterious psychological depression by taking drugs that approximate the effects of marijuana, alcohol and cocaine in controlled dosages so that we will “feel more happy?” Do we stop the pain in our bodies by taking drugs that will simply make us so numb and dead that we forgot where it was hurting in the first place?

Do we “cure” a common head cold by taking pseudoephedrine hydrochloride and guaifenesin, believing that once we dry ourselves out and get rid of all the mucus that we are somehow “better,” while our nasal passages turn raw and red from their lack of protection?

Can anything that we do in this modern age actually make sense anymore? We are filled in fear at the dreadful “C word,” knowing that once it has its clutches on us there is little hope for us unless we start immolating ourselves in radiation.

Heck, even if all our hair falls out and every living cell in the radiated area is damaged or destroyed, at least we are damaging and destroying the cancer as well, so that it hopefully didn’t spread throughout the rest of our bodies. And heck, even if we die at least we didn’t go out without a fight.

If we were separate from nature, if we were actually robotic creatures, if we were truly the machines that we treat ourselves to be, then maybe our current medical system would make sense. But to state it plainly, our medical system is completely backwards.

We are not robots, and we cannot fix a problem with a little grease here, a tightening of a bolt there. We have to treat the whole person, not just the individual symptoms that arise. We are living, breathing, Spiritual entities, existing in an incredibly complex symbiosis with nature that we have completely lost our understanding and respect for.

The DNA molecule that makes up our physical bodies has ALL the necessary coding in it to produce every other species of animal, bird, fish, amphibian, insect, plant, fungus, virus, bacteria and algae on this planet. As one example, we are 75 percent identical to the family dog in genetic makeup, and 25 percent identical to spinach.

All of the DNA on our planet, with no exceptions save for the deep-sea tube creatures that live in the super-hot conditions of underwater volcanic vents, is fundamentally identical in almost every way. It is only the way in which the fundamental code itself is arranged that determines the finished product.

We cannot ignore and cannot deny that we are indeed One with our environment. If our bodies are 75 percent water, and we are 25-percent identical to vegetables, does it not make sense for us to drink more water and eat more vegetables if we want to add up to 100 percent health?

If we really step back and think about this, can we not see that all of nature, indeed the entire Earth itself, is one singular organism?

We know that there is a veritable universe of life within each cell, and that much of our body’s functions would simply not exist without the cooperation of an almost infinite panoply of microorganisms. Similarly, we can now start to think of ourselves as the microorganisms that support and uphold the ecosystem of Mother Earth.

Once we truly exist in harmony with nature, it will no longer be necessary to destroy it, as we will realize that it is literally no different than destroying ourselves. And so, the first step is to find those parts within each of us that seek suicide and self-destruction, that seek to view ourselves as part of an impersonal, artificial Machine, and root them out.

We need to step away from the idea that our bodies are like our cars, and that we can pop a few pills and just like a quick oil change, everything is going to be fine. If we are all One in this infinitely complex, unified system of nature, then we must seek the ways in which we can reunite with this source and end the bitter separation that has gone on for so very long in our world.

If it rains outside while we are driving, we roll up the windows of our car so that it won’t blow in. Similarly, it is time for us to roll up the windows of our soul on the diseased, chaotic and fragmented machine society that we have now embraced. We can see that the storm is brewing outside and the clouds are darkening.

What we do not often see is that the storms do indeed happen for a reason, and once the lightning strikes and the thunder rolls, the mountains tremble and the seas quake, oceans spill onto lands and lands crumble into the sea, that the sun must indeed rise once again.

The seeds of our own collective awakening can lie dormant in the fertile soil of our consciousness for thousands of years, and with the right combination of storm activity and Lightening, or En-Lightening, we can again regain the Garden of Eden and live to see the dawning of a warm and bright new day.

And so, we must begin looking around us, looking at the parts of our world that we have not yet destroyed, and see what is waiting for us. We need to open our eyes, ears and hearts and be willing to accept whatever answers emerge in the midst of all this.

Somewhere in our own higher conceptions, we know that nature is One with us, and all the answers to our problems are already there. Now, we need to expand that knowledge and truly embrace what it means to us.

To live in harmony with nature is to eat in harmony with nature, to breathe in harmony with nature. This means that the vast majority of products that we now call “food” must be abandoned. Our own scientists are confirming that if we had never strayed from the natural food products of the Earth, we would have never gotten these chronic degenerative diseases in the first place.

As much as we don’t want to hear the news, still clinging to our hot dogs, twinkies, hamburgers, potato chips and pizza, we now are well aware that if you want to prevent cancer, you need to drink water and eat vegetables, cut back on meats, white flour, sugar and preservatives and sleep eight hours a night. As soon as we reintegrate ourselves into the natural web of biodiversity that sustains us, we need never again fear for our health.

And yet, there is more. We all have various ailments that come along, viruses in the air, fungi between our toes, yeast infections in our colons and body parts and the like. Even if we do eat in a way that is in harmony with nature, we do still get health problems.

We get colds, irregular blood pressures, illnesses, flus and the like. In our modern, machine-age world, we have become so convinced that we are helpless and frail against these much larger concerns that we seem to think there is no way out.

We reach for the next prescription drug, the powerful stuff that they won’t sell us over the counter, believing that we need to take such chemicals if we ever even hope to get better.

Now, we are becoming more and more conscious of the fact that a vast majority of these prescription medications are not actually created from random chemical experiments – they are DISCOVERED as already existing in nature.

As the profit motive continues to consume the Brazilian rain forests at an alarming rate, marvelous medical solutions are forever lost. The profits for these discoveries do not spill back to the Brazilian people, and thus they do not have much of a choice but to continue to allow the rainforests to be raped and pillaged.

Since all diseases and ailments must also share the same DNA that we and all other forms of life have, it only makes sense that all the antidotes would occur in nature as well. Now all we need to do is to stop and think exactly what this really means to us.

The modern field of herbal medicine, (arguably refined and enhanced to a tremendous degree by the pioneering work of American psychic Edgar Cayce, the “Father of Holistic Medicine,”) actually shows us that we were and are meant to be here.

We are meant to be whole, meant to be pure, meant to be a sacred, living part of Nature.

When we actually start studying the field of natural medicine, we realize that all the conveniences of modern drugs have existed all around us, we just never opened up our eyes to see them before. It is actually hard for us to imagine that right in our own local area, a walk in the woods is actually a trip through a pharmaceutical wonderland that possesses a treasure-trove of artifacts that we are only still in the earliest stages of rediscovering.

The thing that is driving the storied pomps of modern Establishment medicine so crazy is that these herbs really work! They do not want to acknowledge that grape seed extract could be the best source of cancer-fighting antioxidants ever to hit town, when they would much rather ferret you into a hyperbaric radiation chamber and essentially kill you so that you may hopefully live.

Our future generations will look back on our current usage of radiation treatments the same way that we now look at the “bleeding” practices of the Middle Ages. At that time, they believed that if you were sick, you had “bad blood,” and they needed to get as much of it out of you as possible.

There might have been some abysmally poor level of success from this, since it would remove the volume of toxins in the blood somewhat, but we now can recognize the utter futility and stupidity of such a thing.

When we realize that the mental cause of cancer is suppressed grief and anger, and the physical cause of cancer is poor diet, exercise and sleeping habits, we no longer need to be afraid of lurking shadows in the dark that only the Machine can save us from. We simply need to be responsible enough to communicate our anger and change our eating habits.

And so, we are learning that we do not need to cut our heads off if we have a headache. On a very basic and accessible level, the concept of spirituality and Divinity takes on a whole new meaning when we realize that the Earth has already provided us with everything we need.

In our ignorance, we have separated ourselves from our Mother, and we use more chemicals to stop the damage that the chemicals have created in us. Since we are so efficiently manipulated by the media to crave these poisonous products, and they are so cheap and easy to find, we simply do not have the self-discipline to renounce them.

And all the while, Mother Nature must stand by the sidelines shaking her head, knowing that everything we ever needed was already provided for us if we would only start looking for it.

Now is the time to start loving ourselves and start loving Nature. Go outside and take a look around at what was created for us — the forests, rivers, mountains and wildlife.

Smell the crisp, clean air and feel the magic in a handful of soil, containing more active microorganisms than the entire population of humans on this planet. Relax under a tree and eat fresh, organic vegetables or fruits, whole grains, brown rice and vegetable proteins.

Look around you and become aware that you are surrounded by Mother Nature’s medicine chest, simply waiting to be honored and rediscovered.

Get yourself an herb book and start to become aware of the incredible natural options that are available to you for almost any conceivable illness or malady that might come your way. And most importantly, head off your illnesses at the pass by realizing that they all start in the mind.

Even the mainstream medical authorities are being forced to acknowledge the mind / body connection in disease pathology, as publicized by Deepak Chopra, Andrew Weil and others.

Take the time to honor your own heritage, to reintegrate yourself into the world of nature that we have all renounced, and be filled with the glory and truth of an abundant creation.

It truly is ours for the taking, if we were to simply acknowledge its existence.