I grew up believing that this is a valley of tears: “By the sweat of thy brow….” A book entitled “Dare to Desire” said:
“Starting very early, life teaches all of us to ignore and distrust the deepest yearnings of our heart. Life instructs us to suppress our longings and live only in the external world where efficiency and performance are everything. We learn from parents and peers, at school, at work, and even from our spiritual mentors that our heart – the truest us – isn’t wanted.” While typing this I realize that it is not life itself that misinterpreted things; I would rather believe it was social conditioning. Those who lived mostly according to the flow of life seemed to have fared well.

Reviewing Dr Christine Page’s “Frontiers of Health” has made me realize how doomed we are into lives of diseases because most if not all diseases are due to pressure and tension – not being able to relax. The diastolic reading of the blood pressure is indicative of the individual’s condition at rest. Sadly this is not given as much attention as the systolic reading.

Growing up I hardly heard any attention given to relaxation except for the required daily siesta which was imposed as a kind of punishment for being too noisy around the home. We were 6 active children!

We enjoyed our games because it was natural for children to play even in our dysfunctional family. But adults would send us off to play to keep us out of their way, mostly.

In school and in church nobody spoke of relaxation. It was as though it was not good enough to bring us to heaven! I was old enough to experience Sundays (days of rest) when all the stores were closed. Malls eventually were built and Sundays became “Malling” days with Sunday Mass practically relegated to an option.

Anyhow, my Buddhist books written by Americans and Europeans introduced me into the Eastern way, so kind and compassionate compared to how I was raised and educated according to the Western style.

You can imagine how shocked I was as a senior citizen, to read Ryoho Okawa classifying my religion as one of the religions that isolate humans from God. In my younger years, I abided by the teaching to shun readings that may endanger my Faith. This explains my late awakening.

To go back to diseases make that dis-eases. In my world, the bigger context of dis-eases was the pervading scepter of original sin.I am happy to read many books now declaring that sickness is not a punishment from God though most likely it is a result of an abusive life style either by deprivation or excess.

Today we are lucky because we have choices. However some cynics would qualify that statement by saying, only if you have money.