Forbidden Food

the legacy of paradise lost and the promise of redemption

Roland Trujillo

Paradise Lost

The Legacy of the Garden

Food: Friend or Foe?

The Last Supper Revisited

Cancer and Compensation

The Power of Awareness

How Not to Remain a Victim

Children of the Lie

The False Faith of Feeling

Doubt and Intimidation, Faith and Courage

Paradise Lost, Promises Unfulfilled

Order and Chaos

The Hypnotic Power of Food

Devolution

From Intimidation to Confidence

Restoration Through Faith and Obedience

Repentance, Repair, and Renewal

The Subtle Process of Deterioration: Sin and Degradation Sacrifice

How Death Entered the Human Race

Sickness and the Spirit of Mammon

Learning to Cease our Egotistical Struggles

Our Love/Hate Relationship With Food

Dream Potion

Food – The Final Frontier

Postscript

- 1 -

Paradise Lost

"Let your food be your medicine"

Hippocrates "Because lawlessness is increased, most people's love will grow cold. But the one who endures to the end will be saved"

Jesus Christ

This book is about health and wholeness, which should be our natural state of being. Something has gone wrong in most of our lives. We have lost our sense of well being, and we want to find our way back to what we once had. But once undeniable symptoms emerge or sudden illness strikes, we start to get lost in struggling with the condition itself.

So, in this book I take a step back and look at what ails us in light of where we have fallen from. A person who is interested in the title of this book undoubtedly has some troublesome issues. Such a person has most likely gotten involved in a struggle with symptoms and has become fixated on finding symptom relief.

That goal becomes a pressure source, and soon resentment and frustration enter in, leading to an even greater need for symptom relief.

Thus, it is helpful to take a mental step back and get the big picture. Perhaps by looking at the truths with a small "t" about their issues in the Light of a greater Truth, the reader may see in that greater Truth what went wrong. The solution is inherent in the Light in which the lesser truths are seen. In fact, the Light itself is the solution.

For example, it may be the truth with a small "t" that your shoe lace is untied. But after someone points it out to you, the greater Truth is that by seeing it, you realize the solution. Once observed in the light, no elaborate decision making process is required. You simply see what to do.

The truth with a small "t" may be that you eat too much or eat the wrong food, but the greater truth is seeing why. The even greater truth yet is the very Light of Truth in which you see the subtle error, and by seeing the error, you may let it go.

When it comes to life's deepest issues, if you receive the truth about your error with the right spirit and don't resent it, you are given the power to change, which you never had before. The power to change is in the Light itself.

In fact, just observing something objectively and unemotionally is already helpful. The teenager who is not invited to the prom feels devastated, but the wise grandma knows that "this, too, shall pass." Grandma's calmness conveys this unspoken message to her granddaughter.

The Truth itself is positive, and the lesser troublesome truths are less threatening when seen with the right attitude in the Light.

Taking a stale towel out of the hamper, you go outside and hang it on the clothes line in the sunshine. In the warm light of the sun, the towel is soon fresh. The lesser truth was that the towel was stale. The greater truth is the very light in which you see the lesser truth.

In this case, the solution is in the light itself. A few hours in the bright warm sunshine and the towel will be fresh and clean. It's like magic.

It is amazing just how effective the simple application of awareness is to many issues when someone sees the light.

Sometimes we can improve the quality of our life tremendously just by seeing the need to be more forgiving, letting go of some volunteer activity that is draining us, asking a free loading relative to leave, or turning the mobile device off for a few hours a day.

Most people snap out of their comfort zone (which is actually a mild undetectable trance) when they have a big wake up call--usually some tragedy that enters their life or a brush with death.

Alas, unable to cope with what has befallen them, many are only driven deeper into psychosis.

But for those who wake up and see the need for a new attitude and allegiance, it marks the beginning of changes for the better. If they were to persist all the way with a sincere desire to know the truth, they might discover the secret to life itself.

Unfortunately many people soon fall back into mere variations of what they did before. Perhaps they start drinking wine instead of beer, change their meds, or swap religions. Many live more sensibly for a while, but sooner or later slip back into the same old practices that got them in trouble in the first place.

How diligent the reader may be in his or her search for truth, I cannot predict. But what I can say is: wouldn't it be better to wake up now and make some positive changes rather than wait for the big wake up call when it might be too late?

It has been said that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. This book is not just for someone suffering from a major illness or chronic condition. It may be read by anyone interested in conscious living, authenticity, and finding the spiritual side of life.

Many of us, as adult children, have wondered about our parents and other adults we observed when we were kids. Particularly troubling to us is when they were decent people who lead a clean life, doing the best they could. They may have been hard working, church-going solid citizens; and yet we saw them slowly or quickly deteriorate, or we saw them suddenly stricken with what would be a terminal condition.

If they were near to us, such as our parents or grand parents, we may have watched them go to an endless series of tests and treatments. We saw them go from one doctor to another, and soon their medicine cabinet was full of pills and vitamins. We wondered what went wrong along the way, and frankly we have a fear that the same thing might happen to us.

Most doctors and health care practitioners are conscientious people who really and truly wish to help people. I am grateful for their assistance, and I myself have benefited from their services on several occasions. Yet there is only so much they can do, particularly when called upon to help with a condition which is both complicated and which has taken years or decades to develop.

The mystery of why even good people are stricken with conditions like cancer and other life threatening situations is to be found only after deep soul searching and a sincere crying out for answers.

We are a fallen race, and each of us is born with a nature we inherited. We are gullible by nature and tend to follow what others say. It takes the utmost awareness and wisdom to avoid often extremely subtle errors. It also takes courage and faith in what we see for ourselves to say "no" to what everyone else is doing.

The onset of the terminal condition is often preceded by a series of errors, not always our own, as well as complicated interactions between factors.

The shocking truth about our collective fallen condition, as well as about the spiritual realities behind our problems, are too much for most people to want to face; yet in order to fully recover and be restored, we must face the truth.

The causes of the current condition must be seen in a series of realizations. First we see and understand the most recent errors and then those just before, like a series of layers of an onion, all the way back until we eventually see our very first trauma in the resolving Light.

Sometimes we can buy a few extra years just by quitting smoking, losing a few pounds, and making changes in our lifestyle.

These temporary fixes give you more time, but don't think you have arrived just because you shed some pounds, survived a close call, or started exercising and eating health foods.

Life is a school. Any extra time you are granted should be used to seek the purpose for your existence and in discovering what more you need to know to transcend your fallen condition.

- 2 -

The Legacy of the Garden

A recent news release revealed that chronic illness worldwide is costing us over 43 trillion dollars a year.

Why are chronic conditions and disabilities like diabetes, arthritis, asthma, sinusitis, autoimmune disorders, AIDS, and gastrointestinal disorders on the rise? Why are autism and Alzheimer’s disease skyrocketing? Why are so many people suffering from PTSD? And why are more and more people going on the disability roles due to metal health issues?

We might also ask not only why are these diseases affecting larger and larger percentages of the population, but we must also ask why these conditions are becoming chronic.

As you can surmise, there are reasons at various levels having to do with what we eat, what is injected into us, and what we are exposed to in the environment. Then there are reasons that have to do with how we are treated for our infirmity – in that the treatments may be administered with the assumption that the condition will be chronic, and there is even the specter that some treatments might contribute to chronicity or even cause it.

Environmental and iatrogenic factors are not within the purview of this book. I am a counselor and a metaphysician, and so I will focus on spiritual and emotional factors that may be contributing to the increasing incidence of chronicity in our ailments and conditions.

One thing is certain. Something is wrong. We are missing the boat collectively and as individuals. Moreover, as well-meaning as our concern, care, and treatments that we give each other may be – they are not solving our problems.

In fact, I heard a rough estimate the other day that soon one in two Americans will be obese, one in three will get cancer, and the latest estimate I have seen from the Center for Disease Control is that one in three Americans will have diabetes by 2050. And this is just the tip of the iceberg.

Since things are quickly getting so much worse, it makes you wonder if all our care, concern and treatment are more palliative than anything else.

For the moment, let us set aside consideration of the palliative care and concern that we have given ourselves and to each other – the kind of supportive condolences, feel good messages and treatments that are failing to halt our steep societal and individual health decline. Instead, let's look at unrecognized spiritual and emotional factors which may have preceded our decline.

Perhaps by looking at what came before the physical decline so evident epidemiologically, we can determine what factors led to the conditions that fostered the terminal and chronic conditions.

In a previous book I discussed immunology

and psychoneuroimmunology. Another of my books focused on the restorative properties of a complementary meditation, used as an adjunct to professional medical care and wise lifestyle and food practices.

In this book I will take a special look at cancer and the spiritual and emotional factors which may play prominently in its development.

I intend to discuss emotional factors in the development of heart issues in another book

It is well known that the alcoholic, the drug addict and the gambler are in denial about their behaviors. In fact, the very negative practice itself began as an effort to deny some other reality.

An angry, resentful, or bitter person who is in denial about his or her own wrong will turn to alcohol to take away the pain (for being wrong). Soon the very "remedy" itself becomes a problem.

A person with financial problems due to a wasteful or unproductive lifestyle might turn to gambling (or the lottery) to try to find a quick fix to remove the evidence of their wrong.

However, bear in mind that there are a million ways to deny reality. Gambling, alcohol and drugs are obvious, but our mechanisms of denial are far more subtle and ensconced in our very psychology as well as our culturally acceptable lifestyles.

People make excuses to deny, avoid the issue to deny, or justify and rationalize to deny. They are usually unconscious about what they are doing. People work to deny, do community service to deny and the most subtle of all, eat to deny.

Long before the terminal condition appears, the person was in denial about something he or she did not want to face.

Even more subtle is denial through a lack of awareness. When you accept something that is not true, for example, because you trust in the person who said it, you are in essence rejecting the truth.

You may not have wanted to accept a lie, but through misplaced trust, and above all, a lack of awareness, you failed to do a reality check or ask questions. You thereby unwittingly become subject to the effects of the lie.

There is no substitute for plain open eyed awareness.

Until you discover the food mystery, you remain subject to the incredibly subtle truth denying properties of the very act of eating.

There is a connection between the simple act of eating food and being lost in the imagination. There is then a connection between our lowered awareness and the subtle mistakes we make that lead to illness and trouble. Even more profoundly, there is a connection between the eating of food and the kind of life we inherit – the life that leads to death.

The story of the Garden of Eden—ambition, disobedience, doubt, the eating the forbidden food, and the resulting curse upon the human race, descendents of Adam and Eve—is not myth but fact. You can see the tragedy replayed in everyone's life, if you care to look.

That is why when we eat to celebrate our fallen existence, we are denying the truth about the shame of our fallen race; and we are reinforcing, with every bite, the life that lead to death. When we escape into our food, we are using it to maintain the accursed hypnotic trance state in which the fallen race sleepwalks.

However, for those who search with all their heart, God in His mercy has not only provided the gift of awareness by which we may awaken from our trance; He also will then lead an aware, enlightened people out of captivity and into Paradise. Like the beautiful and apocryphal fairy tale of Sleeping Beauty who awaited the kiss of the prince, we await the kiss of the Prince of Peace.

Just as people use alcohol or marijuana to deny, many more use food to deny. Food comforts and ushers in daydream time. Food seems to love us and so we indulge ourselves, but as we indulge we also reintroduce the state of mind that is conducive to unconscious living.

People who munch away in front of the computer or television are living unconsciously. They are awake, of course, but they are hypnotically lost in the food or the television and oblivious to what is wrong with themselves, their lifestyle and in fact what may be wrong with the very practice they are employing to deny reality.

In this book, I intend to part the veil and reveal the mystery of the food sin.

The truth always appears at first harsh and cold, just like the demanding teacher appears mean. But those who become friends with the truth find it has love in it, just as the student who goes on to excel in life always thanks the demanding teacher for her tough love.

The unaware person, who does not want to face reality, will eat or drink to live unconsciously. But as she eats to be unconscious, she is also, without realizing it, unconscious to what might be in the food she is eating.

In fact, a plain and simple carrot or a raw apple might tend to awaken her to her own embarrassing eating habits.

It is the cultural food, fast food, wrong food, spicy food, drugs and alcohol that we put in our mouth which help to usher in dream time.

I read where certain aborigines ingested or smoked strange poisons to enter dream time and then come face to face with an alternative reality just on the other side of matter

It is the misuse of things that alters our consciousness and opens us up to an evil dimension that is on the other side of matter.

The human consciousness can either live in God’s light on this side of matter, or it can escape the Light and hide in the imagination.

The imagination is the no man’s land where evil approaches us and can impress itself upon or cohabit with our consciousness.

Most of us spend most of our time lost in thinking, planning, scheming, dreaming and daydreaming. There the unholy agency that knows how to appeal to our pride, to our doubts and fears, our secret desires, and resentments makes its approach. We daydream of sex and violence, of glory or revenge almost continuously. When we become ill, we dwell continuously on getting better.

I am not standing in your shoes, so I cannot offer specific advice about your or your loved one's issues, nor do I intend to. But I can offer some clues about the spiritual and emotional side of life, and extend my hand in friendship, not with platitudes and shallow reassurances, but with an intent to awaken.

I do suggest that partnering in awareness with your intuition and conscience, what you know in your heart, will add insight to whatever knowledge you have about your condition.

Awareness and insight are not at first comforting, so they are not what many people want; but for those who do welcome the truth, they begin a marvelous journey of discovery.

If at some point during your reading, you discover something profound and meaningful, you might best put the book down at that point and be quiet with your realization in the truth and its wonderful power to resolve issues.

I have a meditation that assists some people in getting out of worry and negative emotions which tend to interfere with recovery. The meditation also assists some people in re-finding their calm center of dignity and in making contact with the Light of understanding which is also a wellspring of wisdom and love.

If you feel moved to begin the meditation available at the Center for Common Sense Counseling, then you might as well go ahead and give it a try. In fact, much of what you read here will make more sense to you after meditating for awhile. A very nice short version is available to try for free. On the other hand, you might opt to just read the book for what insights it may have.

- 3 -

Food: Friend or Foe? Uncovering Food’s Mysterious Power over Us and Finding the Secret to Regeneration

Dr. Henry Bieler, a popular doctor who practiced medicine for over fifty years and who treated many Hollywood Stars, wrote a book called Food Is Your Best Medicine. Of course, he was talking about healthy food.

The other side of the coin is summed up in the words of Waldo McBurney, still going to work every day at age 106, who said, “We dig our graves with our forks.”

Food seems to be endowed with a mysterious power to make us better or worse, to upgrade or coarsen our existence. It is the vehicle by which culture stakes its claim over us. Then, by continuing to eat our cultural food, we are kept a part of that culture, and thus without even realizing it, prevent ourselves from becoming who we were really meant to be. It is for this reason that the average person lives in anxiety with a vague sense that something is wrong.

A steady diet of junk food, fast food, diet soda, and processed foods seems to be contributing to making Americans overweight, undernourished, and unhealthy in many ways. Somehow, the fast food fare is also contributing to a general coarsening of the population.

We are not as polite, as well mannered, or as noble as we once were. Our society is becoming impatient, selfish, harried, thoughtless and rude in countless ways.

Somehow, what we eat and the way we eat affect our way of living. Yet, though eating healthy food is good for you, it is not the total answer either. Health food cannot save you.

What then can we do? We must eat to live. Yet eating itself is somehow tied to our deterioration and demise.

The very act of eating has to be looked at and understood, so that we might eat in such a way as to eat with understanding and with awareness, and perhaps a dispensation from God, that will protect us from the curse of food.

Let us look at the food mystery and unpart the veil to the power that food has over us. If eating wrong food contributes to sickness, ill health and a downgrading of manners, can eating the right food stop our downward slide? And even more importantly, might we then, with awareness and grace, discover God’s plan of salvation?

Food has a curse attached to it. It was in the Garden of Eden where the human race fell from faith and reliance on the Creator. Food was involved in the fall. God had promised Adam that if he ate the forbidden food, he would surely die.

When Adam ate the forbidden fruit, it sealed the deal and made God’s promise a reality.

Today we, the distant relatives of fallen Adam and Eve, must eat to live, but even as we eat, we are living under a death sentence. We try not to think about it, and for much of our life, most of us manage to sweep it under the rug. But as the years pass, we must begin to confront its reality whether we like it or not.

Eating good food (healthy, unprocessed, natural food from God’s garden) is likely to help us live longer. But even so, all it can do is prolong the inevitable. Even the best of food may not help us if we eat pridefully or while upset, angry, or in excess.

The best of food only helps us live longer. It does not remove the curse. The situation appears to be an insolvable dilemma. Because we must eat to live, we can’t just stop eating. Yet, food was involved in our fall and somehow contributes to our deterioration.

The evidence of food’s involvement in our fall can be seen today, if we care to look. First of all, many people simply eat too much of the wrong kind of food. And their food indulgence leads to illness and contributes to an early demise.

Food is also very often involved in our own personal misjudgments and errors. Many an affair or act of promiscuity is preceded by a meal. The salesman, recruiter, or person who is wooing you knows the best time to make his pitch is after the meal he invited you to. Somehow the food weakens our resolve and opens us up to some suggestion we might have resisted before the repast.

And don’t forget that marijuana, alcohol, and drugs are types of food: something we ingest. Somehow the drug, the marijuana or the alcohol separates us from awareness, from reason, from common sense, and from control. Then we say or do something we are sorry for later.

Medications are also substances to be ingested, and thus have the same trance producing effect that food has. While medications are often helpful, even life saving, they can also be addictive, over prescribed, or cause side effects.

More importantly, we must be careful lest we place all our trust in science and technology and partake of medication in a trance of trust, with lowered awareness and faith in the hand of man.

Medicine, like food, can be helpful, but whatever you do should be done with awareness because you also see that it is a wise course of action.

Could it be that these effects of food and food-like substances are variations of the result of eating the forbidden fruit in the Garden? It could be, and it is.

Food has a curse in it. Food has an effect on the body. And food has an effect on the consciousness. But there is more to it.

Food is fraught with suggestions. It’s not the chocolate that makes a Swiss person act Swiss; or the hamburger and soda that make a teenager act like a teenager. The food is loaded with suggestions, and when we eat the food, we unconsciously buy the suggestions. We begin to act like what the culture, through its various trappings, suggests we should act like. Then the eating of that food reinforces what we become in the process.

Similarly, it’s not the baggy pants or the tattoo that makes a gang member into a gang member. It’s the suggestion and what those pants and tattoos mean. It’s the rebellious actions they inspire. The manner of dress suggests a certain lifestyle and reinforces it. What we wear has an effect on us.

We act a little better when we are dressed up for church on Sunday. It is well known that kids act a little better when they have school uniforms. The clothing has a suggestion in it.

In the short run, this is good because it helps the suggestible people act better; but in the long run, we must learn to function from inward truth, not suggestions. And we must learn to eat to keep body and soul together without buying the food suggestions.

If there is a suggestion in the food or the clothes, then there must be a suggestionist. Most of our authorities are passing on what was suggested to them.

But somewhere back in time, there must have been an original suggestionist who began the worldly order based on a lie. He was there in the Garden, suggesting an alternate disobedient lifestyle which that he knew would give him power.

Today’s ambitious, power hungry wanna be's repeat to us the lies they were told and give us false versions of the real thing. They know, just as advertisers know, that trance inducing cultural food is one of the best ways to keep us asleep and malleable.

We are encouraged to a pride of life. It is no wonder that education is big business. We are still entranced, living under the suggestion that education (knowledge) will bring us happiness. Even religion has fallen under the domain of knowledge, and millions lap up religious knowledge believing that religious study can save them.

We believe that science and technology can solve all our problems, that medicine can cure our ills, that psychology can solve our emotional issues. Can you see how a field like psychiatry, which today is a combination of raw knowledge and the substance of psychiatric meds, is but the latest evolution of eating the forbidden fruit of knowledge?

It is not necessarily the knowledge itself that harms us (unless the suggestions are in error), nor the substance itself, though we know that food, drugs and medications can have deleterious effects. It is a continued belief in the lie and a stubborn clinging to pride it inspires that keep us entranced.

When our prideful lifestyle leads to physical, financial, relationship, mental or emotional problems, we then double down on our belief in the saving power of knowledge and again look to our religious and scientific experts and authorities to save us. If their help keeps us going a little longer, we fail to take full advantage of our wake up call and soon go back to sleep.

For most people it takes extreme suffering, such as that of cancer treatment, to sober and wake them up from the comfort zone of culture. Likewise, some people will only wake up when they are literally in the gutter with their life in ruins. But as every counselor knows, some will still not wake up. Their stubborn pride finds a way to continue their belief in their own innocence, or perhaps they change allegiance and now are loyal to their new medical, technological, political, or religious savior.

Mostly what we want is symptom removal. We want the evidence of our faulty lifestyle removed or covered up.

Bear in mind that our error may be very subtle. That which brings otherwise decent upstanding people to ruin is not always gross and obvious. Wrong eating and stress take their toll, of course, and a simple lifestyle change can be very helpful. But the underlying error is often of a spiritual nature – a malevolent spirit that hides under a plastic facade of culture and penetrates us through our interactions with others who have been infected. From its hidden abode within it subtly alters us and renders us susceptible to illness that suddenly strikes seemingly out of nowhere.

Our medical men do the best they can, but it is only the utmost awareness and a pure heart that permit some to discover just what it is that is harming them and also victimized those who passed it on to them.

Many of us have wondered how decent solid citizen people we have know suddenly fall prey to some horrific disease, especially when they live moral lives and avoid drugs and risky behaviors. Of course there may be environmental factors, exposure to toxic or carcinogenic substances involved. Sometimes exposure to environmental toxins can enter into a complicated relationship with inherited susceptibility, lowered immunity through stress, faulty eating habits and psychological factors.

But the truth that must eventually be faced is about the faceless subtle presence within, the familiar spirit that masquerades as you but which is not you.

It is an alien entity. Hiding in the subconscious, it is a spiritual presence, which you think of as you or a friendly familiar presence, but its real nature becomes manifest in the chaotic face of cancer. Too horrible to admit, we prefer to deny the truth and look to other causes for our ills. But the awful truth about this entity is something we must eventually face.

If evil of the most subtle and serpentine nature were to have a face and a physical presence, it would be that of cancer, the rebellion and chaos that takes advantage of a compromised immune system.

If this subtle evil of which I speak were to gain access to the body, it would seek to hide itself, compromising the defenses of the body, and eventually subtly worming its way into the sanctum sanctorum. It would need to take over the immune system which would otherwise protect the body from mutagenic factors and the chaos and rebellion it wishes to foment.

It is quite possible that this is the reason why oncologists must often resort to treatments that destroy the immune system—it is an immune system that has been taken over and appropriated by the entity that remains unseen.

The rebel may not really be bad. He is acting out the lifestyle suggested to him as a way to be free. At the cellular level, the rebel cells may be acting out, under the influence of the spiritual intruder.

The person who eats and drinks too much is acting out a lifestyle suggested as a way of living it up and having a good time.

The weekly church goer may not really be a nice person. He is acting out a way of life suggested as a way of being good and acceptable. Even the slightest falsity is a sure sign that one’s behavior is being directed by the wrong spirit. Christ often warned about hypocrisy. Many of the falsely religious did not even realize they were acting the part of a good person and had not yet found the real thing. And so it is today.

Can you see the role of culture in suggesting to us a way of acting out (even religious behavior) that is conveyed through the post hypnotic suggestions found in cultural food (or mom’s cooking)? Now you will be able to read the following passage and understand what Christ meant: ...Thus you have made the commandment of God of no effect by your tradition. Hypocrites! Well did Isaiah prophesy about you, saying:

‘ These people draw near to Me with their mouth,

And honor Me with their lips,

But their heart is far from Me.

And in vain they worship Me,

Teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’” (Matthew 15:6-9 (NKJV)

Clothing has an effect on us. So does language, rituals, and music. But food is far more subtle and profound. It is intimately connected with the fall of the human race. Food is loaded with suggestions, which are reinforced daily as we eat.

Just as food suggests party time, pride in ambition, pride in achievement, and freedom to do whatever we want, it also reassures and comforts us for what its suggestions have made of us. It is under cloak of this false comfort--where we are reassured that wrong is right, and that we are okay the way we are--that the malevolent spirit is able to function through millions of people who are comforted by culture and who remain unaware that the evil even exists.

It is for this reason that the seemingly nicest people are most susceptible to cancer, for example. They believe in human niceness and have given themselves wholeheartedly to the love from and love of others. Sometimes a child may develop leukemia, smothered by a vampirish life sucking parent who to all the world seems like a wonderful person. Many children sacrifice their whole life to a parent, who manipulates them with phony love. The parent takes the life of the child, and the child gets the spirit of the parent.

The rebels are less likely to get cancer, because they see through the falsity and pretense around them. But they are angry and full of rage, and likely to self destruct with a heart attack or through accident, drugs and self destructive behavior.

Bear in mind that cultural food also conveys pride in our religiously correct or politically correct conformity.

The rebels have their beer and marijuana. The conformists have their punch and cookies or wine and cheese.

Food offers a mysterious salvation and escape for us humans. And because it offers escape and comfort, we turn to it when our ego is hurting, when we need our anger soothed, or our anxiety taken away.

For each of us, food has both a personal history and one that is inherited along with our heritage as a human.

When life is boring, we look for something distracting or exciting. When life is boring we look for something to excite our imagination.

When life makes us uneasy and nervous or anxious, or when we have a hard time coping with what we see, we look for escape.

Our salvation comes by way of the two-fer we get with food. It offers a pleasurable escape, as well as comfort.

The comfort part is easy to understand. Food fills our tummy and takes away hunger. It also is associated with childhood memories of mother, her love and her food. So when our ego needs comfort, it turns to the mother love that food represents.

Food's escape value is also easy to see, but has a more profound aspect to it. The down to earth aspect is the simple fact that food offers a pleasurable diversion when, for example, we eat a nice meal, have a snack, or enjoy a sandwich with the Internet, newspaper, or television. In short, it is a pleasant break to eat.

But in a more profound sense, food also has a hypnotic quality. It ushers in dream time. We float away with our favorite food, and we are carried away from reality. Watch people sometime in a restaurant. As soon as they start eating, they are gone, off in a very private munching world.

We celebrate with food, but we also escape with food. When our life is not going well, when we have issues and problems, when we don't feel good about ourselves, when people are upsetting us--we turn to food for comfort and escape.

Food seems to understand us--just as a mother might. Comforting and forgiving us, and reassuring us that everything is alright. Just as sleep is an escape for some people, so is the food trance.

Here is another very important aspect of why we have such a relationship with food. Food fills the emptiness. When we feel empty and unloved, many of us turn to food to love us. That's why many of us have food problems.

A young lady whose dad is not there for her might find a sort of substitute love in food.

A married woman, who resent her husband, may find love in food.

A man, who was close to his mom, might now be his own chef and cook for himself (thereby loving himself).

Food represents love to them--the kind of ego supporting love they got from their mother. Through food they love themselves. But they also hate the food.

They have a love-hate relationship with food. Food now represents their degradation, their loss of control, their emptiness, their loss of identity. Behind it all is an often unadmitted hatred of father for having failed to rescue them from everyone else's tender mercies. It is the resentment of our father that is the major contributing cause of bulimia, anorexia, identity exchange, and a host of other issues many of us struggle with.

Of course, it is a small stretch to see how marijuana comforts and reassures certain people; or how another person will turn to alcohol ( a variation of food) to comfort himself. Cigarettes, coffee, soda or even sipping on bottled water all day offer an oral comfort reminiscent of our early food gratification and assurance. The heroin addict even finds a sort of love in heroin, as it carries him away to his drug induced fog.

Here is a key principle to bear in mind: the human being is created in the image of God. Our soul should be loved and reassured by its Creator. But most of us do not have a bond with our Creator within. Most of us have not really found Him (though some will, and that is what I am trying to help you to do). Something gets in the way of being close to our Creator and having His love.

If you were to find this inner rapport with God, then you would not need the love of the world. You could be a good wife, husband, or neighbor, enjoying fellowship with others--but you would not need other's love.

If you found the life of the spirit that would come from within, you would not need distractions, diversions, or escapes. You would enjoy reality. You would live and move and have your being in the light and love of the Creator. Life would be exciting in a quiet way, and you would receive an invisible comfort from being in the good graces of God.

You would still find a modest pleasure in food, friends, work, exercise and so on. But nothing would become too important. You could be moderate in all your ways.

We are separated from God by pride. We do not want to become still before the inner light of conscience and admit we are wrong. And because we are avoiding conscience, we can receive no comfort from conscience. Instead we have to keep running from reality into comforting arms of whoever or whatever helps us escape from conscience.

We are also separated from the love of God through resenting and judging others. We resent our mom, dad, husband, wife, and neighbor. We resent people for their errors and imperfections. And we harbor grudges against them. The resentment of others separates us from the love of God. It says in the Bible: "You cannot hate your brother who you can see and love the Father you cannot see."

Next time you become angry and resentful--notice how you become hungrier and thirstier. Resentment and wrong living excite and awaken a lust for life. But the piper has to be paid. We lose the approval of God and we become dependent on worldly comforts to soothe our pain. A wife can have food problems because she resents and judges her husband.

God is ever ready to love and help us, but we fend Him off by running from what we wordlessly know in our heart is right. Nor will He forgive us unless we first forgive others.

So we become locked in a love-hate relationship with people, objects and substances. We resent them, and then we love (need) them for the distraction or comfort value they provide. But when we accept their comfort, we then hate for what they do to us.

This love-hate aspect is also seen in such things as binge eating. For example, food may represent mother and her will. And her will, which we once resented and struggled against, now is embodied in the food with which we now struggle. Food also represents false love.

Beneath mother's catering and food service there may have been a resentment of her husband, perhaps even of the kids. Eating her food meant accepting her will; and partaking of her service (which she performed as a compensation for her hate and judgment) meant accepting her will, even her resentment of your dad.

Years later, the adult child struggles with food, having the same relationship with that food that she once had with mother. Just as the child had a love/hate relationship with mother and struggled with the willfulness in her food, now the relationship is transferred to food (which represents mother).

Understand: I'm not blaming mother. Undoubtedly her father had not been there for her, and chances are her husband was not there for her either. She wanted something from him which he seemed incapable of giving. And for this, she undoubtedly could not help but resent him for failing her. You may one day realize that your resentment toward your dad is not even yours—it is your mother's hate which you picked up now in you. Perhaps her spirit or her guiding entity too.

If you start to meditate and wake up, you will begin to observe many things about yourself which before you were unable to see or unwilling to see. You may, for example, discover that there is hate in you—a hate you are no longer in agreement with. You may discover that the hate in you is not even your hate—it is someone else's projected onto you or suggested to you. You may, if you are like may people, one day discover that you have your mother's hatred for your father and for all men in you.

It is not your hate. It is this spirit of hate, of which you may have been unaware, that tormented your mother and drove you to commit atrocities, that led you into wrong relationships, and which taught you to sabotage every good thing.

Do not be alarmed. Just stand back and observe it. Continue to meditate and watch all the tricks that it plays until one day, it will leave. As you come to God, it cannot stand upon holy ground, and it will be forced to leave.

When you see that it is not your hate, and that its thoughts are not your thoughts, you need not feel guilty any longer for what you once were ashamed of and protected. Desist from struggling with it. Let the Light do the work.

- 4 -

The Last Supper Revisited

Here is a key principle to bear in mind: the human being is created in the image of God. Our soul should be loved and reassured by its Creator. But most of us do not have a bond with our Creator within. Most of us have not really found Him (though some of us will, and that is what I am trying to help you to do). Something gets in the way of being close to our Creator and having His love.

So, now perhaps you can see why struggle is not the answer. Understanding is the answer. If you will, read more about the food mystery that has the whole human race in its grasp. If you receive the message I offer with the right spirit, it might mark the beginning of a gradual return to a right relationship with food by way of a right relationship with God.

Food has its celebratory side, but far more subtle and dangerous to the health of the soul is its comfort side. As long as food is used to reassure us that the lifestyle that everyone else laid out for us, beginning with our mother, is just fine, we remain asleep to the truth and asleep in sin.

The bottom line of all comfort is a comforting (to the prideful ego) belief in the suggestion of the inevitability of deterioration, disease, and death. Most people have their lives neatly arranged around death.

Might there be a way for us to get beyond suggestions, so that we are not influenced by either positive or negative suggestions? Might it be possible to eat without buying the cultural suggestions? Absolutely, as you will see.

Might it be possible to eat without dying? I think so. Though this is speculation on my part, perhaps we can live without eating, or with a special food. After Christ rose from the dead He appeared to the apostles, spending many days with them; and during that time he ate. Perhaps there may be a special food like manna that would perpetually renew our bodies. Jesus did tell his disciples at one point, "I have food to eat that you know nothing about."

Might we thus live perpetually in the flesh right here on earth? I believe it is possible.

Christ came to undo every aspect of the food sin, restore those who believe into Him, and make perpetual life and life everlasting a reality.

He comes between the source of the suggestions and the victim of the suggestion. By transferring our belief to Him, we are separated from the suggestions and the source of those suggestions operating through the plastic system.

The curse is undone and the suggestions neutralized. But this happens only for those who find the mystical way to discover His Presence and to believe into Him.

Eating healthily is better than eating junk food. Healthy food, eaten in humility and moderation, is less likely to cloud the mind or facilitate early death. But just eating healthy food is not the answer. Some people eat a diet of health food, but do so with pride or merely to support and prolong their fallen lifestyle. Even health food eaten pridefully only preserves a fallen way of life.

The answer is, in a mysterious way hidden to the prideful, a series of correct beliefs in the Truth that is revealed and unfolds in the life of the blessed sincere searcher.

It is the power of the Presence of the Spirit of Truth, promised by Christ, that leads the penitent seeker to a series of discoveries and which permits the exercise of faith and the laying down of willfulness.

As we are now, in our fallen condition, we almost can’t help but eat to deny. Without a burning desire to remain aware, it’s just too easy, too automatic, and too comforting to slip into a mild trance by munching away.

If we do become aware, we experience the ignominy and coarseness of our food practices. So we dress up our food with fancy decorations, use fine dinner ware, and make eating seem to be something glorious—which, in essence, is a denial of its lowliness. Eating may be natural and it may be necessary, but it is not glorious.

The trance is temporarily broken when you find a hair in your food or see what goes on in the restaurant kitchen. We sober up when we are ill and can’t eat for a couple of days—but soon we fall back into our old patterns.

Even if we don’t dress our food up with too many spices and don’t try to make too much of it, it still has a hypnotic effect on the mind. And so, no matter how pure our intent is to remain aware, after a few bites we slip away and lose awareness.

That is why we eat too much. We approach the chocolates or the potato chips with the intent to eat just one. We start off eating slowly and modestly, but as we eat, our will is weakened and we drift off into a trance.

Before you know it, we’re eaten half a box or half a bag.

If eating regular food has an effect on us, just imagine what an unconscious denial it is to eat junk food, smoke marijuana, take drugs or misuse prescription drugs (to deny). If a person’s unconscious desire is to deny reality and to deny the truth of our fallen, sinful, dying condition, then he will eat to deny.

The more bizarre, chemical laden, mind affecting the food (or drink or drug)--the greater the denial.

The truth denier will also misuse the services of the well meaning doctor by demanding that the doctor give him something to take away the symptoms. Rather than admitting a wrong ego attitude and consequent lifestyle, most people would rather blame it on the body and take a symptom removing, truth-denying pill. This is not to say that we sometimes don’t need the services of the good doctors. We do. But we mustn’t misuse their help or try to make the doctor into a god and empower him or her to lie to us.

Should such a person’s health improve, it only permits them to continue living longer, still with an unresolved cause. Pride or denial of some sort will result in the same or another sickness returning, usually worse than before.

Only the person who has the complete change of heart and mind will recover permanently.

Remember the serpent’s lie: he told Adam that he would become like a god by eating the forbidden fruit. But the truth was that Adam would die. The serpent promised life, but the forbidden food brought death instead. Today, the death-as-life lie is as active as ever.

The drug taker is looking for a high (to feel like a god) with his drug, but in essence he is killing himself. When our unaware and prideful living lead to excesses and errors, we want someone to help us erase the evidence of our wrong. We turn to drugs for a cure, only to discover their dark side. Remember Vioxx? People took Vioxx to feel better but by the time it was discontinued in 2004, after adverse side effects and a cover up of adverse effects were discovered, it had already caused an estimated 60,000 deaths worldwide.

People take pills for depression, despite the Black Box Warning of increased risk of suicidality. Even spirituality and religion are not spared—there are plenty of false teachers leading a flock of glory seeking followers to destruction while promising them salvation.

One by one, each false promise reveals that it was just another variation of the death as life lie. The serpent promised a high and success, and delivered death instead. As long as we want to believe and doubt the truth, we reveal that we have the same selfish nature that Adam did. And for every ambitious Adam, there is surely an Eve who will support him in his wrong.

The answer is not to struggle with our mortality on the one hand, nor trumpet and flaunt our fallen condition on the other. Nor is the answer to give in and wallow in decadence and “embrace” deterioration and death.

The answer is to have a change of heart and welcome truth. The answer is to meditate for objectivity and become aware. God’s first gift to us on our way to salvation is awareness: the ability to see things as they are in the Light of Truth. You will then be given the ability to see the lie as the lie and perfectly disbelieve it.

One by one, we are shown our sins and repented of them. We are shown the truth about our fallen nature, we are shown the deception in the plastic establishment order, and we see through the shallowness and foolishness of the so-called experts and authorities who claim to know but really don’t.

We see the wickedness and deceit of those who do know the truth but who cover it up and withhold it in order to keep from losing power or profit. And we see the falsity of the worldly comfort and support that only keeps us wrong, anxious, and deteriorating.

We are also given the grace to quietly say “no” to our most recent and most gross forms of denial: drugs, cigarettes, excessive alcohol, excessive study, or gross overeating.

Incidentally, many people have a problem with work (using it, or the money earned, as a form of denial). This is also why some people rebel from work or can’t work: having seen their parents misuse it or having experienced the guilt for resenting work. With a change of heart, such people will be given the grace to learn to work without resenting it or misusing it.

By grace we give up the noxious toxic habits. Then our other habits are moderated. As time goes by, we find we are able to eat, work, exercise, and do everything with moderation.

But even with a return to innocent common sense living, we notice that though we are doing things humbly and with moderation, especially eating, and though we have been restored to natural innocence, it is still less than the perfect way of existing (which Adam and Eve knew before the fall). After we have been repented of our sins and have learned the lessons of moderation and living by faith, we will live our lives in relative innocence. Years pass and we are ready to approach with grace and discover the mystery of the food sin.

The Last Supper was undoubtedly original sin undone. In the Garden of Eden, Adam ate to forget. Christ instructed us to eat with awareness in remembrance of Him. In the Garden of Eden, Adam ate in disobedience. When we eat in remembrance of Christ we are doing so in obedience to His instruction.

In the Garden of Eden, Adam ate and took in the suggestion and the lie. When we eat in remembrance of Christ we eat to live to take in the Truth.

In the Garden, the food was cursed, and the act of eating took in death. In the Last Supper, the food is blessed, and by eating with Christ’s blessing we take in life.

Through the baptism of the Holy Spirit we are reborn into the family of God. We are given a new nature. This nature grows and is strengthened through all the trials and temptations it must undergo. Our heavenly character develops through every exercise of forbearance, of longsuffering, of speaking up truthfully, of forgiving, of abstaining from selfish ego advantage, and quietly saying no to selfish fulfillment. Our character grows every time we snap out of ego serving imagination, and every time we overlook without judging.

The next to the last thing we will overcome is the food sin, and then death itself is overcome.

After being repented of our sins and after developing character and living our life in all Godliness and honesty, we are finally ready to overcome the food sin. Eating in remembrance of Him, we partake of His innocence and are led to the belief that saves us from the death sentence. With God’s help, the redeemable child of God is able to do something impossible for anyone else: disbelieve the inevitability of death, despite the evidence all around us of what sin has brought upon the fallen race. “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” (Hebrews 11:1 NKJV) ...and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, "This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me." In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me." For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.

1 Corinthians 11: 24-26 (NIV) Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed— in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: "Death has been swallowed up in victory." "Where, O death, is your victory?

Where, O death, is your sting?"

I Corinthians 15:51-55 (NKJV)

The Center for Common Sense Counseling

Forbidden Food

CONTENTS

- 1 -

Paradise Lost

- 2 -

The Legacy of the Garden

- 3 -

Food: Friend or Foe? Uncovering Food’s Mysterious Power over Us and Finding the Secret to Regeneration

- 4 -

The Last Supper Revisited