I’ve had a pretty memorable life, and I’m not finished yet. I don’t say that lightly. I’ve been successful. I’ve had very tough times. I’ve faced near-death situations and serious health challenges a few times. I’ve been on the top and on the bottom. And I’ve endured through it all quite well, in spirituality and in life-awareness.
That is the backdrop to what the poem and video Ashes is all about. …The poem and video that I present in this post.
Obviously, I use the word ashes figuratively. It represents the ruins that I had to dig through to discern that the transformative journey that I traveled was ultimately a blessing.
I authored this poem years ago and decided to turn it into a video just recently. I wanted to convey the message visually. In the video, I am conveying my life journey, as well as the undoubtedly tough journeys of others, whose lives were transformed by difficult circumstances.
I love this time of year because it is a time of reflection, but for me, it triggers a deeper self-reflection, as it has for me for the last, I would say 30 or more years.
I just celebrated my birthday on January 5th, just a few days ago. With my birthday landing right after Christmas and New Year’s, I began soul searching around Christmas time, while everyone else seemed to be shopping and celebrating. As I mentioned, my holiday season celebrations are spent mostly alone and in nature, as was my birthday “celebration.”
I love the beginning and end of each year. As would be expected, at the end of the year, I usually aim to end a behavior, habit, relationship, or end an unhealthy lifestyle practice. At the beginning of the year, I reflect on how I will adapt to the change in era, time, and vibration. …Or changes in me. I try not to superimpose the prior year on the new year, just as I see ‘every day as a clean slate’. It is a given for me that the new year must be different in some way.
In this year, 2022, I have already accepted that “normal” no longer exists and will never return. I feel more certain that in 2022 I will not be trying to convince others who are on a whole different vibe than I am. I will be trying to connect more with others who are already on or near the vibe where I reside.
I have met such high-vibers through the Seasons as My Teacher blog. I love how blogging allows us to connect with other like-minded people, who have the passion to write, and read posts. It takes a certain calmness to take the time to do so juxtaposed with fast-paced social media.
Just last week, I celebrated my mother’s 103rd birthday! You may find from prior posts about my mother, that she is ‘my favorite girl in the world’. We were always ultra-close from childhood until her ascension.
Perhaps it was because I was her last child and because my father died 8 months after I was born. I don’t know, but our connection was strong, ride-or-die-strong’, and everyone in my immediate family knew it. She made it clearer than I did.
Caring for my mother for several years was a tumultuous experience emotionally, spiritually, physically, and logistically. We moved together across 3 states, dismantling and reassembling what we would call home, until our final destination in Denver, Colorado. She transitioned several months after our arrival, succumbing to cancer.
This is my chance to not appear as some sort of maniac who blindly bashes “medical and media science” with no regard for truth.
I am quite the contrary as this post, as well as all of the prior Devirusize posts, show. (See other recommended Devirusize poss listed below).
I do extensive research, analysis, and scrutiny of health information before formulating my conclusions. Furthermore, I follow protocols that I recommend that my followers at least investigate as I have, for some 30 years, no less!
It is important to note that those who blindly do what their doctors tell them to, and who take prescription drugs as well as vaccines without question, do little research, nor follow healthy lifestyles. So, who’s the foolish here?
Fairly methodically following alternative and natural protocols for over 30 years, I have experienced great success. My medical lab reports, including COVID19 testing, are very close to perfect, for a Black man of sixty-one years young. I can confidently say that I have defied several medical odds, without taking vaccines or medicine.
For the first-time caregiver, taking care of a loved one can be overwhelming so there is a bit of responsibility for seniors to plan for the day when they may need someone to care for them. But they must also plan for having a sustainable lifestyle that makes their later years their finer years.
Though the experience of caregiving can get grueling, if plans are not in place, seasoned caregivers will tell you, with a little guidance, it can also be one of the most fulfilling experiences life has to offer.
Harry Cline has compiled some of the internet’s best resources to give you a head start on your caregiver’s journey by preparing seniors to someday be cared for by another while remaining comfortable until that time comes.
Harry Cline, of New Caregiver, submitted this post for seniors to select their ‘Senior Lifestyle Options’. I appreciate him. Thanks, Harry!
I have taken the audacity to interject in Harry’s content that senior lifestyle preparation is the precursor to senior caregiving. In retrospect, I would advise seniors to plan their lives and lifestyle with this inevitability in mind.
…Someone may have to care for you later in your life. Be realistic about it. Kevy
As having served as a sole caregiver for my mother as she approached 100 years old, I will not glamourize the journey of caregiving for an elder, especially when coming from a large family, and having a mother who made no concrete plans for her care. It was a topic that she and the family avoided.
Fortunately, my experience ended as one of the most profound in my life.
But glamour came only after my work was done, and God took over. Now, I smile every day that I think of my mother, knowing that I gave all that I could when she needed me, as she did when I was a child, and I needed her.
I did not realize until years later, that it would be “the most fulfilling experiences life has to offer.”
I have been juicing and blending fruit and vegetables for at least 15 years now. I do both actively, but prefer juicing. I like to drink freshly prepared juices especially when I am fighting a minor illness or when detoxing, which is always since our environment and food supply is full of toxins. My juicing and smoothie regiment is a critical aspect of my Devirusizing protocol. But drinking freshly prepared juices is not equal to drinking smoothies. One is clearly better than the other. In this post, I will explain the differences as I see it, and have researched it.
When I worked at Whole Food Markets, I regularly asked customers, who were “strictly organic”, to consider a regiment for detoxing, daily, monthly, and quarterly. Many who go “strictly organic” do not detox, seeming to imply that being “strictly organic” alleviates this need. This is an illusion, in my opinion.
It is much wiser to eat organic when it matters. Refer to the 2020 Dirty Dozen & Clean 15 Lists to determine when it matters. On this list released each spring, the Environmental Working Group (also known as the EWG) publishes a list of fruits and vegetables that experts at the nonprofit say contain elevated levels of pesticides that may be concerning. Now known as the Dirty Dozen list to health experts and in-the-know shoppers, the list has long called conventional farming methods into question, especially as the EWG also publishes a competing list called the Clean Fifteen that highlights produce containing little to no pesticides when grown conventionally.
It is better to eat organic when it matters, and wiser to not assume that there is no need to detox periodically. For in spite of going organic, we must accept that we are still living in a toxic world on many levels. We should include detoxing in our health practices. It is much wiser to complement healthy food choices, with detoxing. Juicing (and drinking plenty of distilled water) is a great practice for detoxing. This is a smarter way to Devirusize.
I also meet many people who sing the praises of juicing or blending (smoothies). Most people choose one over the other. Most that I’ve met, prefer smoothies over juices. They state obvious pros for smoothies, and cons for juicing, but leave out many pertinent facts when making this comparison. This is consistent with how most people practice being “healthy”, without pertinent facts.
I liken drinking fresh juices to drinking medicine, because it goes into the bloodstream within minutes, not requiring much digestion. Think about drinking a cocktail. After a few minutes, you feel it, because the alcohol goes into your bloodstream rather quickly. The same happens with juices, but not with smoothies. Continue reading “Devirusize – In This Corner, Juicing, In the Other, Smoothies – And the Champ Is?”→
In this post, as with every post, I have done research in advance, in this case, on blood labs and how to interpret the results. I have also provided recommendations, supported by the medical community, and ones based on my personal experience. You should complement this information with your own experiences and research.
With today’s increasing concerns about health, I recommend that you read this detailed post, and when you are ready, I suggest that you review your last blood lab reports again to see if you understand them better. If not, you should at least be well-equipped to ask your doctors intelligent questions.
I am not a doctor, but I should not have to be to understand my own blood lab reports. They are given to me by my doctor, to assess my health status. But had I not done the research; I would not understand how to properly interpret the reports.
In my experiences, only by exception are doctors willing to spend extra time with me to explain the full report. Also, often I have to make a follow-up appointment just to speak with the doctor in detail about my blood test results, and that’s if they are willing to do so.
Years ago, as part of my ‘Urban-Holistic-Rasta-Metaphysics’ approach to health, I felt that it was my responsibility to understand the reports, how seriously to take its results, and what things to do to ensure accurate tests in the future.
Too often the results were given to me as vital health information but often were never explained. I did not know what the various measurements meant, beyond the information I received about those numbers which were outside of ‘normal ranges’. Hell, they didn’t really explain what ‘normal ranges’ meant.
We are not adequately advised on how to prepare for our blood test to ensure that the results are not skewed by our lifestyle and habits days or hours prior to taking the tests. We are told to fast for lipid and glucose tests but are often unadvised on other factors that can skew blood results or cause false positives.
The Devirusize posts are meant to reduce your chances of becoming ill from viruses and other pathogens. This is the third installment and it is on the oil that we consume in our diets.
In the first two posts, I presented the importance of the Sun, and Water and how it impacts our health and immunity. In this post, I present the importance of the quality of the oils that we consume.
Oils have gotten a bomb rap from misinformation. Most of the misinformation is intended to boost corporate profits, product unnatural shelf life, and to sustain mass processed food production.
I hope to dispel rumors and urban legends about oils, the first of which is that all oils that we consume are bad. All oils or fats are not bad. We must consume certain in our diet because the body cannot produce them.
I am eager to also dispel that canola oil is not good. It’s trash for the body, due to all the techniques and chemicals used to refine it. Lard is better than canola, of course, when used modestly.
I have come to learn that nothing is totally bad in life. This belief even applies to the Coronavirus. I will show you its positive sides in a list of good things that will ultimately result from us enduring through this pandemic.
We tend to see only the negative aspects of challenges because that is what we are dealing with in the present moment. We have become accustomed not to expect the positive aspect, though it is inevitable. We don’t see anything positive because we do not look beyond the surface.
But based on my life experiences, often my worse trials and challenges resulted in unforeseen good, which was ultimately realized many years later.
Being very ill made me more conscious about taking better care of my health and lifestyle.
Being an insecure people-pleaser for years, through disappointment and pain, lead me to confidence, better self-worth, and self-love.
Losing nearly all of my material possessions, becoming bankrupt to care for my elderly mother, humbled me. Now I need less, have less, and am happier.
Experiences like these are what changed how I evaluate trials. I am constantly looking for the good in bad or good situations.
“Any kind of crisis can be good. It wakes you up.” – Ryan Reynolds
God really is good, all the time.
If you look for a silver lining in every situation, it will be there. I believe that exemplifies the belief that God’s understanding is mightier than ours. The infinity of God’s understanding goes far beyond whatever negative emotions that we may experience at the time.
“Great is our Lord, and mighty in power; His understanding is infinite.” – Psalm 147:5 – NKJV
Over the past few days, my mind has been marinating on a catchy way to present holistic health protocols that I have found to be very successful, after over 30 years of personal practice. I knew that the first one would be on The Sun since it has been really sunny here in Colorado. Higher altitudes receive more intense sunlight.
The reason that it has been a challenge to come up with an angle is that holistic healing involves many facets and perspectives, and therefore has a lot of areas to cover.
I do not want to overwhelm those who may be interested in learning more with too much, even though it will still be too much. I knew that I had to present it in pieces, though.
At first, I had ideas like The Ten Commandments of Health, The Holistic Health Bible, Holistic Health Verses & Scriptures. I then thought, ahh, no, I may offend even more people.
