If you believe that a power lies within the secrets of nature, that great knowledge can bring you new health and life, then this article is for you!
If you understand that man’s opposition to nature, his ignorance of the laws of life, has deprived you of health and life, then too, this article is for you!
If you are willing to cast out the errors and misinformation of your earliest years and learn anew the ways of natural living, then life can begin again for you and “old age” can become a useless, meaningless phrase. For with new knowledge and determination, you can truly say, “I AM BEING REBORN!”
From this moment on, your life can take on a fuller meaning than it has ever held for you; with each piece of content you read, you can expand the horizons of your existence beyond the reaches of your dreams — to a scope you never knew existed. Equipped with this new understanding of yourself and your world, you can go forth to build a healthiness and physical purity that can defy the years themselves. You can do this — if you desire it. The choice is yours!
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These are not hastily written, ill-considered promises. I do not hold lightly the responsibility of these words, any more than I would expect you to. Human life is far too precious, too wondrous a thing for any man to deal with in promises and pretences.
What I have brought to these blogs is the wisdom of many years and many men, least among them myself. But what you find in these blogs is only that which you are willing to seek out. Your future life is what you are willing to create with your own brain and hands. The evil done to men is done by men. The good that can undo that evil must also be dope by men. And it is important to remember that nothing: is bought cheaply, neither happiness nor unhappiness.
Health! Years of painless, joyful existence that have been but a dream until this moment. If you will but pay the small price, a price of conviction, self-honesty and loyalty to your new life, all these can be yours:
Happiness! The wondrous feeling of being at peace with yourself, the earth and all mankind. The happiness that comes with understanding your place in life; your part in the scheme of earth, trees, rivers and man which we call our world!
Longevity! Decades and decades of a good life, a bold and glowing existence that can be yours, with the understanding and conviction to make it so.
To each his own desires! Colour your hopes, your dreams, your aspirations with the ripe tones of reality, then multiply them by the number of dreams you have never dared to dream..
THIS IS THE PROMISE OF YOUR REBIRTH!
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A tall order? Of course. Impossible? Only the way something you have never attempted seems impossible before the doing.
To want to be, that is not enough. To know how to be, that is too little, To want, to know how, to determine to be, that is the way of all successful men. Primary to all of these is self-honesty. You can cheat others, now and then. You can rarely cheat yourself. You can never cheat nature!
Many years ago, Dr. Albert Rutsen Allen, a man for whom I have always had deep admiration, taught me a fundamental rule of living. “Remember that,” he said. “Don’t forget it as long as you live. You can’t get more out of life than you put in it. If you think you can do it, you’re tricking yourself! “
I have never forgotten that. You must never forget it either!
You will gain from life only to the degree that you bring something to it. You will learn from these blogs only what you are willing to put into practice. If you reach a point in the reading in which some plan or exercise is outlined, and I suggest you try this out, then that is what I mean— now, today. Or, as the French entertainer, Chevalier, would say, “Not tomorrow, not ze next day, but r-r-i-i-ght now!”
When you reach a passage that says, “Recall from your own life,” then stop reading long enough to do just that. What you yourself have experienced you will find hard to deny to yourself. Each time that you and I can reach a point of mutual experience, a true point of personal contact, we are coming closer to the kind of understanding that will make these blogs a part and working detail of your new life.
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Beyond the personal dreams which each of us will bring to this new life, what do we mean by rebirth? Getting more out of life? Yes. That is only part of the story. A release from many of the physical pains and mental anxieties that plague the average person? That, too, but again, this is merely a fraction of your new life. If you combine these two factors, a more productive life and a less painful and confused one, you find that between the two a third force is introduced. The absence of pain and anxiety increases your ability to create new values, while those new values which you create in turn increase your immunity to pain and anxiety. This is not a quantitative change but a qualitative one. What we have produced from the combination of increased creativity and decreased depression is what we shall call the force of life.
Even with the force of life guaranteed us, we would still lack one important factor for genuine rebirth. Longevity! What good is this new life if it is to be snatched from us? Must men be constantly cheated of the wonders of a long life? No!
Long life is possible! Longevity is desirable!
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Men have denied themselves the full span of life through one terrible error. They have attempted to live without the natural source of life, nature! Men of science who would extend our life span, have made the same error in their work. They have tried to correct the error only to repeat it. They rejected nature. In the end, their work was rejected by nature! “The book of Nature is that which the physician must read; and to do so he must walk over the leaves.” (Paracelsus)
Compare man’s existence with that of other forms of life and you will see what we have done to ourselves in our constant tamperings with natural living. The natural life span of a dog is some twelve to fourteen years. A dog reaches full maturity within two years. Thus the natural life span of a dog is five to seven times the period required for maturity. Now if we multiply the period required for full human maturity (some twenty years) by the number seven, we arrive at the astounding figure of One Hundred And Forty Years!
Other animals, such as the turtle and certain birds, have been known to have actual life spans of one hundred to three hundred years! In any number of living things, time and again we arrive at that same formula of longevity, ‘Seven Times The Period Of Maturity’!
[Read: Live In Harmony With Nature For Better Health]
This is the promise of nature. This is what human longevity should be. We, being far above the order of other animals, have enough intelligence and understanding to make even that figure an underestimation of man’s final fulfilment. We could do this, if we would learn one simple, all-powerful truth. We are the creations of nature!
Creations of nature, we must live in harmony with nature. Having realized that, and when you have accomplished it, you can know the full promise of life. You can apply the rule of seven and make present life spans seem like childhood beside that of your new life.
Can it be done? It has been done! It is being done now!
On earth now, in various isolated and out-of-the-way areas of our globe, there are people who count their lives not in years, but in decades. “Where are they?” you ask.
Let us rise to the high peaks of the Himalayas, or the broad, plain lands of China. From here, fabulous and documented tales return to us of natural life spans averaging one hundred and ten, one hundred and twenty years! It is doubtless for this reason that authors like H. Rider Haggard and James Hilton chose just such remote areas for the scenes of their novels. She and Lost Horizons, books dealing with a people who counted their lives in centuries!
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These areas of long life are being closely investigated today. Scores of scientific teams from many lands are living among these people, documenting their histories, studying their lives.
It is particularly important to you that these men have centred their investigations around three major factors: diet, soil and living habits.
We want to know more about what these people eat, what they wear, how they live. Because we realize now that which Benedict Lust proclaimed a century ago. “Tell me what a man eats and how he treats his body, and I will tell you how long that man will live!”
Diet, yes. Living habits, of course. Why the soil? Why are these scientists investigating the earth upon which these people live? They are learning that soil is the mother of life. Earth feeds tree. Tree feeds fruit. Fruit feeds man. Here is the prime example of nature’s cycle. It is this great cycle which offers us relief from pain; health through natural living. This kinship of earth, plant and man is the secret of life!
Why is it that we, who have advanced so far in one hundred years, must turn to the so-called backward peoples to understand the secrets of longevity? Why, with our theories of medicine, physics, chemistry, food processing, why do we die at the prime of life — while half-way around the earth, in primitive villages, men live twice our years? They look like us, possess the same organs and tissue as we do. Then, if all men are created alike at birth, what has happened to these people since birth that has made possible their wonderful century of life? One thing, primarily: these people have never lost their place in nature’s cycle.
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They rise with the sun. Do you? They live largely on vegetables and fruits from organic gardens (grown without the use of unnatural agents). Do you? Bread is made from dark whole grains. They eat sugar in its natural form, when they eat it at all, not the white refined stuff we use to sweeten our food. They bathe naturally, in open streams. They sleep without the aid of drugs and walk without the use of shoes. How many of these things do you do? How many, could you do?
If you can say that you actually and regularly practise even two of the above, then you have a higher score than most men of modern society. Most people practise none! Many because they do not understand the meaning and importance of these seemingly unrelated matters. Others because they feel it would be too “uncomfortable”, too “unconventional” in a modern society. You see how we have twisted our lives around. We have brought ourselves to the point where we consider that which is natural to be unnatural, and that which is removed from nature to be the true way of life. Is it any wonder that ours is the era of heart disease, cancer, constipation, goitre, chronic indigestion, allergies, ulcers and constant fatigue, cold and headaches? If we defy nature, can we expect nature to refuse that defiance? We may hope so, but nature will not. Our choice is clear.
You may live with nature, in health, in the joy of full life, in the long years of natural existence. Or you may make enemies of nature, opposing the will and the patterns of nature, living in pain and dying before your time!
Must, you live as these people of the mountains and plains of the northern lands do in order to be in harmony with nature? Of course not. Because some people have misunderstood and believed that living in harmony with nature is some sort of “caveman” movement, they have foolishly rejected their rebirth.
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It is possible to live with nature, observing the laws of the earth, and to remain citizens of our modern civilization at one and the same time. Wherever you live, whether in the streets of the city or the rural lanes of the country, you can maintain all the comfort and ease of your present existence and still live in harmony with the laws of nature.
Your rebirth demands that you reject only that which is harmful within your present existence. Modern living offers great conveniences. Nature offers life itself. There is a meeting-place between these two. We can find that meeting-place together. “Come forth into the light of things, let Nature be your teacher.” (Wadsworth)
The past one hundred years have been years of great enlightenment. Unfortunately, that wisdom has been largely in the direction of improving the body comforts without a like understanding of the improvement of the body itself. Even while we have busied ourselves in learning the fundamental laws of chemistry, physics, electricity, we have been learning about man and his relationship to the earth he lives upon.
Doubtless our most important discovery in the past one hundred years is the knowledge that man is a part, a glorious part of nature. Nature’s pattern, above all else, is motion. Constant motion. A never-ending cycle of change. Electricity, as we now understand it, is motion. The universe is motion. Man himself is motion. Understand this, for it is basic in understanding yourself and your new life.
Though you may bear the same name and return to the same house both evenings, you are, on Tuesday, a different person from the one you were on Monday. Twenty-four hours have wrought change; subtle change, true, but change none the less. You are a day apart from the one you were.
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Think back, for one moment, to the people around you who are important to you and your life. These are the people you know best. Think now of the changes within their lives; not the dramatic overnight changes which writers of fiction like to dwell upon. I refer to the every-day motion and the direction of that motion which has brought them from where they were five years ago to this present point in time. It is fundamental to living. Without this day-to-day motion, your life would be static and rebirth would be impossible!
That is why it is so important for you to understand. Each day brings changes, both mental and physical. Your body is constantly changing. Are you aware of it? If not, then learn it now, for you are about to apply this knowledge and change your life — mind and body!
Look at your hand. Turn it in the air, examine it closely. Is it the same hand you had yesterday, a year ago, ten years ago? It is not! In twenty-four hours, since this time yesterday, a small area of your hand has been shed and new tissue has replaced it. Overnight a bit of you has been reborn. This is constant, never-ending. New tissues replace old. You scrape your arm and it bleeds. Within a matter of days, that scraped skin has been naturally removed and new skin has replaced it.
Every organ, every bone, every single cell of life you call your body is in the endless process of change. A single red blood corpuscle has a life span of two months. This means that, in a period of 60 days, every blood cell you had at the beginning has done its work and ceased to exist, while new cells have been born to replace them all. This is the hope, the root of rebirth.
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Your body is essentially a different body from that which you possessed ten years ago. New organs, blood and skin have all been reborn in a period of seven years. Grasp this fact. Understand it and understand how it applies to your own life. What can it mean to you? What can it mean to the dream of a long and creative life?
When a mould has been cast, it cannot be changed. It can be scrapped or it can be used, whether fit or unfit for the work it was intended for. A ball of clay is another matter. We shape it once. If we are not satisfied with the results, we smooth out a little piece here, remove a bit there and replace it at another point where it will do the most good. Clay is malleable, capable of being shaped and reshaped. So are we! Brain, bone and mind can be reborn either through the creation of new tissue, or as in the brain, through retraining, rejecting the errors of the past and learning anew each moment of our lives. “Nature shows the true and perfect way, so learn how never from her paths to stray.” (Adolf Just)
It is strange how so many of us accept the law of constant motion in all things that concern us except that most important matter of all, our health and life. The housewife who finds her home cluttered with the dirt and waste of living, does not hesitate to clean it out weekly and maintain a neat and balanced household from day to day. She even sets aside one or two occasions during the year, generally spring and autumn, when she cleans her house from top to bottom and creates a fresh, new atmosphere within her home. She knows that the dirt and decay of her household is not a “normal” and unchangeable condition, and she refuses to let it become so. She recognizes the law of constant motion and applies it to creating a wholesome atmosphere in her home.
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But that same woman frequently loses this understanding when she concerns herself with her health and life. If she is overweight, she may accept this, using such foolish phrases as, “It’s natural for me,” or “That’s the way I’m built”. If she suffers from headaches or chronic indigestion, she reminds herself that her mother or father suffered similarly and therefore it cannot be prevented. “That’s how my family is,” she will say. In her own life, her own health, she has rejected the law of constant motion. She has forgotten that her body, like her home, can be cleared of waste and decay. She has neglected to apply the same logic to her own health as that which she applied when her home needed spring cleaning. She has forgotten that life and health, like all things which confront us, are of our own making. What men have done, men can undo. This is the past history of man and the promise of a bright future.
Man is the living symbol of progress. He changes. He adapts himself to natural changes around him. He learns and applies his learning to making a better life for himself. Silk is too expensive? We’ll invent rayon. Rayon is perishable? Let us find out how to make nylon. Nylon feels cold? Somebody discover orlon, please. That is what we have done since the beginning of time. We have done this everywhere except for health and life itself!
How much time, money and study has been invested in the discovery of what makes for a healthy body, a sound mind, a happy life? Pennies, as against pounds in comparison. And even these pennies have been spent in the pursuit of an understanding of health that brings us once more into direct combat with nature. Medical research is spent in discovering the so-called wonder drugs, which day by day prove less wonderful and more harmful to mankind than most physicians -are willing to admit. How much time and money are we willing to spend in understanding the natural sources of health — sun, light, air, food, soil? The answer lies in the present state of our national health.
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The longer we refuse to devote ourselves to an understanding of what makes for health, the greater the problem will become. Here, too, is a cycle. The man who is ill is the man who broods upon his illness. This despair in turn induces illness. The result is that modern man has lost great measures of the vital sense of existence. Joy is a product that is fast disappearing from the open market. The will to live is being sapped through despair, yet, “ ’Tis very, certain the desire of life prolongs it.” (Byron)
No one can help a man who refuses to help himself. If your life is to be a long and happy one, you must want to live! You must love life! If you want to be brought from despair into a hopeful and vital state of existence, it can be done by proving to yourself that there is much to live for. There is a whole beautiful, lovable and loving world to go on living in. Can you do that? Can you prove that life is really worth the price we pay for it? Can you add up your joys and sorrows and come out with a good chart? Or are you running in the red, with more debits of sadness and gloomy views than you have credits of happy experience, hope and faith in the future?
This is not just idle chatter. This is the substance of all that we have ever learned about health and rational living. If you cannot say, with certainty, that you want to live — that you love life — then you are not prepared to build the kind of body and mind that will extend your life and end pain and disease.
If you know within you that life is precious, life is good, then more abundant health and happiness are yours for the building. If this is not so, then you have a job to do on yourself before you read another blog of this Wellness Club. It is not a long or difficult task. It is pleasant, to say the least. You will be repaid, in two short hours, with a new lifetime of happiness. Is it worth it? I believe it is.
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Here then is what I ask of you and what you must ask of yourself. When you come to the end of this piece of content, minimize the website for a while. Put on your hat and coat (unless the weather permits you to enjoy the outdoor world without benefit of outer garments). Now step out of the house and look around you. Choose a direction you don’t so often take. As you walk, breathe deeply. Enjoy the air for the wonderful tonic it is: tonic for body as well as soul. Breath is life! Breathe fully to live fully I
Look around you as you walk. See the homes you have never really seen before, though you may have passed them a thousand times. See the people who live within those homes. Watch them relaxing, working in their gardens, tinkering with their cars or playing with their children. Watch the children, particularly. There is the future! In those children you see tomorrow. How does that future look to you — dim? No, it does not! Their laughter, the serious little faces they wear as they work out a boy- or girl-sized problem, the joy in their songs, their shouts, their strong, young bodies — you know that they are the promise of a bright tomorrow.
Man is only one of nature’s great works. Man is the jewel of nature’s workshop. All else is the setting for that gem. What a magnificent setting! You can feel it, touch it, breathe and taste it. Feel the breeze; the warm green zephyr of spring, the crisp brown breath of autumn, the cool white bracing wind of winter. Take a leaf into your hand and examine it. Science speaks of plants as the simplest life form; so simple, they say. Yet man has never duplicated even this “simple” creation of nature. For here, in the smallest leaf, is the whole great power of life.
Look at the trees around you. What do you see? You see within the beech or evergreen a life span of over one thousand years! There are cedar trees which live 700 years; chestnut and oak with a life span of 3,000 years; cypress and yew that have lived 3,000 years, fifty times the so-called normal life span of man. Near Athens there stands the famous olive-tree of Plato that is more than two thousand years old. Yes, a tree that was born before the coming of Christ still stands today!
As if the above were not amazing enough, there are recorded claims of Dracaena, tropical trees, that have lived for eight thousand years! These simple trees! Perhaps man could do with a good share of this simplicity. For of all these, cedar, chestnut, oak, cypress, olive and Dracaena, there is one common factor: all live with nature, not against it! Man, who thinks that he can change the patterns of life without harm to himself, spins out his life in sixty-odd years and shakes his head in wonderment. But there are some men, and their legions grow with each passing day, who have learned to live in harmony with nature. If you would live the long and full life that all men desire, then you must make yourself a part of those who live the balanced life, the natural life. “Life is amply long for him who orders it properly.” (Seneca)
This is the beginning of your road back to life. It is a road of friendship, health and joy. Here is where you will find the promise of real happiness.
Stop being a stranger to the world! Know the world, as well as all creations of nature, and you will see life for what it truly is: beautiful, warm, alive with every breeze, each ray of sun, each drop of rain. This is worth living for! It is there for us all.
The will to live! That is the key to the first day of your new life!
