Touch The Future

The point is maintaining relationship – not connecting something that is broken.

The terms bonding and attachment imply separation, to bond, connect, glue together separate parts. Life is relationship. We are never separate, except in our minds.

We are the light, the air, the water, the nutrients, the heat, the vibration, gravity, ever-changing movement and much more. The human body and brain is defined by the environment. Each mirrors the other. But we forget. The deeper reality and challenge is to prevent this ongoing, dynamic and reciprocal connection from being broken.

Joseph Chilton Pearce and I were exploring the root cause of our social and political calamity. Joe lamented that nature’s agenda during pregnancy, birth and the sensitive postnatal period – doesn’t happen. What could be fails to unfold. ‘Houston, we have a problem.’ See: http://ttfuture.org/files/2/members/esa_jcp_biology_culture.pdf

In the closing chapters of his latest book David B. Chamberlain, PhD, author of The Mind of Your Newborn Baby and Babies Remember Birth, questions if the failure of mothers and babies to share the deep biological experiences we generally call bonding, in mass, all over the world, is altering the basic foundation that we call human. See: http://ttfuture.org/authors/dbc

James W. Prescott, PhD, cultural anthropologist and neuroscientist, based on lifelong studies of sensory deprivation associated with mother-infant separation describes two brains, one associative, bonded, the other dissociative, unbounded, separate, isolated. The first, so called ‘bonded’ brain, produces a self-world view based on contact, trust, wonder, play and pleasure. The unbounded, dissociative brain produces a very different self-world view based on lack of trust, anxiety, unsafe touch and intimacy.

The social-cultural self-image or egos that emerges from each of these brains are different. To the associative, play, wonder and pleasure brain the world is safe, inviting, and full of pleasurable sensations. The more engaged and connected the better. The isolated, touch, play and pleasure deprived self-image interprets the world as threatening, something to be defended against, may be hyper-sensitive to touch, often sad, depressed, agitated, addictive, aggressive, even violent. See: http://ttfuture.org/bonding/front

In his latest book, the Functions of the Orgasm, physician, surgeon, founder of water-birth, and primal health researcher Michel Odent, MD, describes how the natural opiate oxytocin, the so-called love hormone, biological bonding agent, reaches peak levels, many times higher than sexual orgasm, during natural, non-drugged, non-technical birth. Nature, by design, floods the mother and the baby with ecstasy, sealing the nine month relationship with the highest-high human beings share. Ecstasy is pleasure. Pleasure is addictive. It bonds naturally. Pitocin, a synthetic counterfeit of oxytocin routinely administered in high-tech hospital births to induce labor because the environment is so scary, so filled with intellectually induced stress that normal, nature’s design shuts down, fails to function. Pitocin does not produce the ecstasy of oxytocin. Mother and baby are flooded instead with stress hormones, physical pain and all too often find themselves on the operating table prepped for a C section.

Having missed the natural hormonal high, the ecstasy, the deep whole-body euphoria, each - Joe, Jim, David and Michel, along with thousands of midwives and ecstatic mothers, wonder how all of this is affecting what it means to be human? Recent research suggests that C section mothers are less responsive, less empathic to their newborn infants. There is a strong implication that child abuse and neglect increases when natural bonding decreases, but of course, this is extremely sensitive territory.

These infants are often placed in non-familial stranger-care institutions as early as six months, something many ecstatic natural birth mothers find too painful to consider. Very early, during this most sensitive ‘primal’ period the body’s regulatory markers are set, and set for a lifetime. Being played with, touched, breast fed by a pleasure-hormone full adoring mother sets these markers differently than an infant picked up when necessary, bottle fed by strangers in a care center for six to eight hours each day. These regulators - touch is safe, pleasurable, nurturing, or touch is scary, unfamiliar, to be avoided, and defended against, are the filters that sculpt who we think we are, our self-world view for a lifetime.

Not so very long ago, just a blink in biological time the tribal-village-extended-family was replaced by the isolated, often single parent struggling to make ends meet. TV and technology, computer games and smart phones with cute little apps replaced intimate storytelling, wandering though backyard fields, collecting tadpoles, building forts and digging tunnels to China, bonding with nature. The developing brain adapts to what is normal, but in today’s world normal isn’t natural or healthy. Entire continents and cultures are influences by these deep changes in the building blocks of human life. Is bonding today anything like what it was a thousand or even a hundred years ago?

Referring to addiction, Canadian physician Gabor Mate notes: the question why the addiction is the wrong question. Why the pain, the unfillable feeling? See: http://ttfuture.org/authors/mate.

Virtually every film, every pop song, most television programs and novels pine and wine: ‘she loves me, she loves me not.’ The deep need to belong, to be seen and appreciated for who we actually are, not our score or grade point average, how tall we are or the car we drive – this authentic, deep connection is not there, never has been for increasing numbers of people.

Feeling connected, a part of life - that is what we are. The question is; how do we prevent this natural state from being broken? We must begin at the beginning, with our body, listening to it, allowing it to point the way. See: Creative Fertility with Jeannine Parvati Baker http://ttfuture.org/authors/j_p_baker

What we call bonding is really like surfing. Every moment the wave is changing, moving, increasing or losing energy and we the adult must be extremely sensitive, watching, listening, adapting, improvising our we will miss the ride. When that happens we, our children and all human life suffers a loss.

The moment we give this attention and act on what we see and feel – everyone is uplifted. Life rejoices wrapped in pleasure and play.

Michael Mendizza

What is it?
The songs, reaching out to family, the gifts,
decorating trees, December 25th, Santa, wise men,
stars, Christ, mistletoe, cycles upon cycles,
generation after generation, building and accumulating
for thousands of years.

Can anyone say exactly what love is, or beauty, or joy?
We know the storybook, the images, angels
and Old Saint Nick, ancient dreams,
over and over, year after year,
but why?

The rituals and traditions, are these sacred?
Or, like love and beauty, these only point,
point to something vast, something mysterious.

Do you know?
Can you whisper it in your lover’s ear?
Can you show it to a bright-eyed child full of wonder,
or the elder dosing in the corner?

If not you then who?
If not you why bother with the madness,
the feast, the cards, packages and silent night stories?

One breath ends and something new blossoms.
Ending and beginning, cycles upon cycles, generation after generation,
building and accumulating for thousands of years.

We are that vast unknowable movement, that mystery
much more than our hopes, our fears and beliefs,
our stories, religions, gangs and petty nationalities.
Much more than what we covet, cling to, fight over,
our politics, bank account and designer shoes.

We are creation, boundless and timeless.
We are the source and the form.
Look! Even closer.
Can you find the edge where one ends
and the other begins?

Solstice
Heaven stops, pauses.
She wonders and begins again.
One cycle ends, the next begins, forever and ever.
Can you feel it, inviting, whispering?
The mystery?
Can you?

Michael Mendizza
2011

Essential Themes
What gift could I share with you that will inspire, make a difference in your life?

Krishnamurti was one of the most influential figures of the 20th century. His insights begin when ideology and dogma end. At the heart of his collected works is a deep insight into the nature of our self-centered images and behavior. There is no freedom, and therefore no real intelligence, as long as we are trapped by these images.

I had the privilege of knowing Krishnamurti for many years and edited a collection of brief five minute videos from around the world, Essential Themes, such as Conflict, Meditation, Freedom, Awareness, Change, Conditioning, Love and more, four sets of twelve. We begin with set one and will add others soon.
See: Essential Themes

The Global Identity Crisis
Join us this evening on the phone at 4pm, PST

Inspired in part by Krishnamurti’s insights we will be exploring what I call the Global Identity Crisis this evening. Linda Pannell invited Joseph Chilton Pearce to be the guest of honor on a live, global Telesummit exploring the future of childhood on Monday the 12th. I was invited to participate this evening. The programs are being recorded. Thank you, Linda.

I have partnered with these inspiring global leaders to focus on family wellness and birth consciousness with an expansive view toward collaborating with Nature and her biological plan for the evolution and development of humanity. Linda Pannell

The event is being co-hosted by Marcie Axness, author of Parenting for Peace-Raising the Next Generation of Peacemakers.

See: www.worldchangingwisdom.com/mendizza

Cheers,
Michael Mendizza

Compassion? Wisdom?
Sorry, no one by that name lives here...

My son recently graduated from college. He could have been one of these UC Davis students. The well fed skin-head on the right is the riot clad officer hosing our children with pepper spray as they sit, Gandhi style, arm in arm, nonviolently. This act, not by students but by our friend the civil mercenary, and others like it around the world (see below), rips the thin skin of civility off our eyes. Serving and protecting, yes, but who and what? Watching his unaffected cruelty, like food poisoning, vomits up the question, How could he do such a thing?

In 1981 when a friend was nearly raped and murdered by a stalking stranger I asked the same question, Why would a man do such a thing? How can a man who supposedly loves his wife beat her so violently it caused brain damage? Or a coach, scream at an eight year old for dropping a ball? Violence is so easy, so natural. Or is it?

Years ago friend and author Howard Bloom introduced me to the works of James W. Prescott, PhD. In a breathtaking book called the Lucifer Principle Howard takes us on a tour of human nature down through the ages and explains how violence is in our blood, how in many ways we breed violence. Plant a child in a violence producing culture and you will get a violent adult. The opposite is also true. Plant a child in nurturing, affectionate, pleasurable rich soil and you get an empathic, intelligent and perhaps even a compassionate culture. I wonder how nurtured, playfully touched, and unconditionally accepted our pepper spraying officer was as a child?

In light of increasing militarized police activities, that I hope we have all been watching, I asked Howard if I could share the chapter in the Lucifer Principle focusing on Prescott’s works. He said yes, of course. Violence is easy and so natural. So are empathy, wisdom, real intelligence and compassion. Please see for yourself.

The Importance of Hugging – Why some cultures seem abnormally prone to revel in violence?

A personal note about current events and our kids…

Freedom and any form of democracy depend on you and I being informed. The Germans were well informed in 1933, but as you know, their information was cherry-picked, censored, opinion replaced facts.

After WWII the Nuremberg trials revealed how easily the entire population was misled by propaganda. When news is biased (censored or contains propaganda) people are misled. The Fairness Doctrine was established to prevent this from happening in the US. When Reagan, then followed by Clinton, eliminated the Fairness Doctrine religious-political-corporate opinion radio and other one-sided information streams that mimicked news formats emerged, similar to the way Infomercials mimicked documentaries.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. described how American’s are the most entertained (distracted), least informed people (by design) in the world. What he is saying is that in our era of tsunami floods of information much is intentionally misleading (censored or propaganda). Here is a great example of what this looks like.

The social, economic and yes political forces at work right now have a direct and lasting impact on our children and will for generations; on jobs, food, education, healthcare, retirement, the nature and quality of our local police, civil rights, free speech, the right to privacy, and as of today even ‘innocent until proven guilty’ is on the chopping block, replaced by ‘prolonged detention’ without charges, just suspicion. Back to the Inquisition?

Occupy Wall Street is shining a light on this and corporate-government-media is fighting back using its ‘play-book,’ ignore them, diversion, distraction, show them football and reality TV instead.

What can we do? Don’t rely only on talk radio and corporate media for news. Seek diverse, international news services available on the net. Read the talk by Kennedy. If there is an Occupy Movement in your town, bake some cookies, sit down and have a chat.

Michael Mendizza

PS,
Egyptian security forces, their version of our man in blue, are now using a powerful incapacitating gas against civilian protesters in Tahrir Square casing multiple cases of unconsciousness and epileptic-like convulsions among those exposed. Yippee, more fun than pepper spray, bleeding from the lungs for more than 15 hours. Several deaths have been reported, something our kids can look forward to.

How can a sane person, if you can find one, be thankful realizing that we have been working overtime during the 20th and first decade of the 21st century to top the Inquisition and its murderous madness for profit? One in three Americans lives (if you can call it that) at or below the poverty levels. Walking through the typical market is like trying to find water in the Death Valley. There is no food in the grocery store, at least none that won’t stunt your growth, make you explode like the Pillsbury Dough Boy, rot your teeth, clog your arteries and dull what’s left of your mind. That will be $150 per bag, thank you and have a nice day. Even preschoolers are on dope-for-profit drugs pushed every night by lovely fantasy ads on the telly.

And yet, living in the thick of it as most of us do, I am profoundly grateful for the little moments of innocent beauty; the delight of a three year old nose to nose on the floor with tail-wagging collie. I am deeply moved by the communal experience of a hand touching mine. I am blessed to be able to say something that brings peace to another’s anxious moment. To reach through the mental madness and tug on that thin string that connects me to every living thing.

Of all the molecules in the physical universe mine get to feel the wet salty mist when a wave crash on the rocks below. I get to feel the sun on my face. I get to dream. I get to laugh and cry. I get to create and experience the way others express the same creative zeal. I am blessed to look up and see the blueness of the sky. When I am still I can feel what others are feeling, almost hear their thoughts and they mine. Wow, how great is that? I have the privilege of being able to type this rant, pop it in a make believe bottle and toss in into the internet-sea knowing it will land on some distant shore and pop out like a genie. Not that it matters, the joy is in the simple intimate act of creating. The meaning of life is what we make of it.

Most of all I am thankful because I know a species can pretend to be insane for only so long. We have reached the end. Like children playing hide and seek, sooner or later – the truth pops out. Joseph Chilton Pearce called it The Biology of Transcendence, that luminous light that knows, that is kind, compassionate, generous, caring, full of curiosity, humor, affection and intelligence, that stands strong in the face of all this madness and with such grace.

Notice all these amazing possibilities are not ideas. They are not beliefs, not dogma, not rules, or answers on a test, grades, trophies or stories found in what some claim to be a holy book. This amazing bundle of ever-changing possibilities is what I really am - and I get to see and experience what pops out next. I can’t wait!

When the bouncing ball hits bottom, where does it go? It goes up and up, and up, so high we can only watch with wonder the unfolding miracle that we are just about to become. And for this precious moment, yes, I am profoundly thankful.

The full essay

Michael

Simple phrases have governed my diet:

You are what you eat... Eat it today wear it tomorrow... Fresh is best, meaning nontoxic and raw.

I was wrong. Congress put the record straight. Pizza is a vegetable. Really.
More...

Not only are we what we eat, what we eat dramatically affects what we think, how we feel, our moods, and how we behave. If you have not watched this powerful presentation do so now.
Russell Blaylock, MD How food impacts anger, depression, attention and more.

Wonder how Congress can declare pizza is a vegetable and get away with it.
Find out how.

Cheers

Michael Mendizza

Falling leaves, pumpkins and football. Hundreds of thousands of boys and men dawn crash helmets, funny pants and march like Roman Gladiators onto the playing fields of America, cheered by lovely maidens while the whole world watches. Who can resist?  

We all know that adult organized athletics harms at least as many children as it helps. Why? Because parent values and behavior dictate what children experience. That’s right, you determine if your child will be harmed or benefit from the experience.

Bowen White, Physician-Clown with Patch Adams, put it this way.

There’s this great sucking sound, competition is going to help kids get a head start, and you’ve got to be able to compete… So you go to the soccer field. ‘Will the pre-school league please meet on the midget field and the kindergarteners meet over on field number two,’ and we’ve taken that original play time and organized it into zero some games with winners and losers.

Original Play Master, Fred Donaldson takes this further.

Games, entertainment, those are the things that we call play in our culture and they provide us, at least on the surface, what we think of as a way of being where we don't have to be so constrained. We're allowed to be more free. That's what we think. The problem is, very early those play activities become encompassed by the cultural idea of competition. And there you go again. The play becomes the same activity as going to law school or studying mathematics and physics.

Over 40 million children, under the age of 16, participate in non-school Youth Sports Programs. 4-5 million volunteer coaches each year participate in these activities with children. That is why we created Athletics and the Intelligence of Play, a vision and documentary that will change how you and your children ‘play the game’ forever. We are very proud of this ground breaking program. Watch it now. Share it with family and friends. That’s how we grow. Michael Mendizza

Sorry for the 2nd email.
Friend and colleague Lisa Reagan blasted me this interview with Leslie Manookian, Writer and Producer of the Award-Winning Documentary Investigating Vaccine Safety, The Greater Good the moment our newsletter hit the net. Thank you.

Lisa is the Executive Editor for Kindred Community, and the co-founder and past president of Families for Conscious Living. She is currently the associate editor for Pathways to Family Wellness magazine and the parent representative on the board of directors for the Holistic Pediatric Association.

As a Wall Street insider in the booming 1990s, Leslie Manookian witnessed the routine prioritization of pharmaceutical profits over public and individual health. In 2003, wrestling with a crisis of conscience, she left her lucrative and high-powered career at its peak to pursue a documentary investigation into the imploding vaccine safety issue. In this candid interview, Leslie shares her journey from confusion to clarity through a labyrinth of interviews with players on both sides of the issue, ignored research gaps, marketing tactics she recognized from her Wall Street days, and intimate, bedside views of the wreckage families with vaccine-injured and killed children face every day. Leslie believes the vaccine safety issue is a “sleeping dog now awakening” as part of a larger, global movement away from industry dictated choices and toward the more scientifically and ethically defensible respect for individual choice.

While the film’s stated goal is to educate and spur rational discussion, its final impact will not only lead the viewer to a greater understanding of the vaccine safety issue, but to the discovery of what and who is sacrificed when informed choice is exchanged for the promise of The Greater Good.

"A new documentary about childhood immunizations, The Greater Good, could intensify debate around the potential dangers of vaccines." -- Anthony Kaufman, Wall Street Journal Review

"Deftly examined... provocative... film is an effective eye opener." -- Gary Goldstein, Los Angeles Times

Lisa: As an editor for a family wellness magazine, I know from talking with parents that many people believe you must be the mother of an affected child. But that assumption is far from the real truth. So share with us who you are and why you wrote and produced a documentary on vaccine safety.

Leslie: You know, it’s kinda funny. I was actually a Wall Street executive. I went to the University of Chicago to get my MBA and after that went to work for Goldman Sachs, and Goldman Sachs transferred me to London. After a couple of years in London, I went to work for one of my clients, Alliance Capital and ran their European Growth Portfolio Management and Research business for about seven years. It was during that time that I started to have questions about what I was doing. Eliot Spitzer was investigating the Wall Street banks for different kinds of corruption and I just started to feel more and more uneasy. I definitely saw evidence of conflict of interest and other activities that concerned me. I just started down a path and thought, “someday I am going to leave and commit the rest of my life to making a difference on the planet.”

Fast forward a couple of years, I met this man who told me that vaccines could cause harm. I was stunned by this because I had never heard anyone say anything negative about vaccines. I had always believed they were the greatest invention of human kind. I’d always gotten my flu shots and never questioned anything about them. Then he told me about a book and urged me to read it. Because I had a certain amount of experience, being on the inside of the corporate world and on Wall Street and having an understanding that conflicts of interest sometimes lead to profits being prioritized over, for instance, public health or individual interests, I was open to it on some level, but consciously I thought the guy was crazy.

But I read that book, and I was stunned by it. In the back of the book there were over 900 references to mainstream medical literature that documented all sorts of ailments after vaccines. I was so stunned by this, I decided then and there that someday I was going to make a movie on this issue and investigate for myself whether or not there was any truth to what the author had written. I wanted to look these officials in the eye myself and find out what we did and didn’t know about vaccines. And that was really the beginning of the whole journey for me. And that is why I made The Greater Good.

More...

The Greater Good
I have been aware of this important documentary for some time. Now you can view the entire film free for a short period of time.

The Greater Good "weaves together the stories of families whose lives have been forever changed by vaccination," and shows how modern medicine, especially when driven by politics and big business, can rob you of some of your most basic rights. The results of such politically- and financially-driven policies can be devastating and one movie reviewer, who saw the groundbreaking documentary, commented:

"What's being said is staggering, especially if you don't know too much about the science of, and politics behind, vaccines." - LA Weekly

You can support THE GREATER GOOD's Community Engagement Campaign by purchasing a Limited Edition DVD for only $10! Click HERE to purchase a copy to show your support!

Landmark California Law Now Bypasses Parent Consent
Recall our newsletter warning that corporate government is stripping away parent informed consent rights. It was signed into law. Seventh graders can now be vaccinated without parents’ knowledge or permission.

Dr. Tim O'Shea was the first to introduce me to the vaccine controversy with his book Vaccination Is Not Immunization.

Tim recently published a review of the new California Law and the MONEY, not health of our kids behind it...

Vaccine marketers scored a landmark victory in California in October 2011 when Jerry Brown fetched the stick and signed into law a new bill allowing schools to vaccinate 12 year olds without informing their parents.

You may have noticed the recent media flood of hysteria regarding the Human Papilloma Virus vaccine and new laws about 12 year olds. Most of the articles talk about how lucky 7th graders are now that we have a vaccine that will protect them from STDs. Like cancer of the cervix. The vaccine has been on the Schedule for the last 4 years, but the claim of STD protection is brand new. In order to pull it off, they had to re-categorize cancer as an STD. Which it isn’t.

Less difficult than stating a scientific error like that was getting parents to accept it without a second thought. But that’s not really the bad news. As of last month in California 7th graders are now allowed to be herded into a room, shown a video on sexually transmitted diseases, told they can be protected by a vaccine, and then taken into another room and immediately get the shot, en masse. With no parental knowledge or permission.

Several fictions have to be maintained however, in order to support the whole ruse scientifically. These facts must be ignored:
- HPV virus has never been proven as the cause of any disease
- HPV virus has never been proven as the cause of cancer of the cervix
- HPV vaccine has never been proven to have the slightest effect on any cancer at all
- By no stretch of the imagination can cancer of the cervix be regarded as an STD
By your silence you may be consigning your 12 year old to a very dangerous new area of biological experimentation through vaccines. That is no exaggeration.

Please read Tim’s full article on this landmark new law.

Michael Mendizza