All of us, in one way or another, are given opportunities to be pressured and stressed. I remember endless opportunities to feel stressed when I was a farmer, and I embraced just about every one of them! If it wasn't the weather or the slumping prices of our produce, it was overseas politics negatively affecting the sales of our beef. There was always a chance for a good old grumble. In those days I did not know that the rumbles of my grumbles had a negative impact on me.

Now-a-days, well, I'm a very different person. Once I became a committed student of life, living all the lessons that either I thought I had learned, or I had in fact learned, I moved stumblingly along my path toward a far greater awareness. Now, I'm happy to say, as I become ever more conscious of being conscious, and ever more loving with Love, I seldom grumble nor stumble!

Recently a person emailed me to ask if I had any thoughts on the Codex Alimentarius. Although I had a remote and lurking memory of it, I really know little about it, other than it is yet another assault on the rights of common people. And, of course, another opportunity for pressure and stress! Basically, it all boils down to an attack on the rights of people like you and me to choose our own ways of providing health and nutrition for our bodies. The Codex Alimentarius is a pressure to have nutritional supplementation monitored and controlled by the drug companies. The Codex has a broad-based agenda, which includes forcing us to accept genetically modified plants as food. I have no doubt it is the huge multinational pharmaceutical companies that are applying the pressure on the governments, and hence the public. Probably their profit margins are not yet big enough. Apparently, we need protection from making rash choices about our own well-being, so that we who choose to use alternative ways of caring for our health are to be forced toward using prescription drugs. Strange, considering I have read reports documenting the escalating death toll regarding prescription drugs. Nice!

There is, of course, another side to this. In the world of so-called 'aware' people, there is an ever-increasing dependency on the 'Health Stores' to provide us with nutritional supplementation . . . through tablets, capsules, and/or powders. In fact, there is so much money to be made in this industry that the drug companies are already heavily involved in selling us 'natural nutrition.'

In effect, nutritional supplementation could be taken away, or made much more difficult as the winds of change increase. Good! Let the change that is sweeping this planet sweep away the deceptive idea that we can find true, lasting health in capsules and tablets, no matter how 'natural' their contents are supposed to be. Maybe this is a wake-up call to all those people who place a 'real' value on their health. I, for one, will not fight this change. Sure, I will sign the protest petitions that may impede the flow of yet more control over our right to choose, but I am going to use the impetus of change in a very positive way, moving back to the self-sufficiency I used to enjoy when I was a farmer. It all fits in perfectly with the flow of life for me. Carolyn and I are keen to experience organic vegetable growing, keeping hens for our own organic eggs, and having our own fruit trees. In a way, becoming a world traveller forced me away from my previous lifestyle. It is ironic, considering I wrote the first book on organic gardening in Australia, updating with a further two since then. My newest is Conscious Gardening.

I am now in the fortunate position where I can encompass my travelling life as a spiritual teacher, and also have the organic self-sufficiency lifestyle. Back then, it was a choice I had to make. I had to surrender my previous lifestyle to concentrate on my spiritual life and the direction it was taking me, thus enabling me to become the spiritually enlightened man I am today.

So for me, personally, I will turn a potential negative into a definite positive. How about you? During my travels I see gardens after multiple gardens of lawns and flower beds, with scarcely a vegetable in sight. What am I suggesting? If this is your situation, and you are going to be affected by Codex Alimentarius, I recommend that you dig up your lawn and learn to grow your own vegetables. Make the change. Turn grumbles and resistance into nutritional and financial gain. Make it all work to your advantage. Even the physical work will save you money at the fitness centre. There are thousands of books on organic gardening - my book is excellent - so you can easily learn a new and basically simple skill. Let go of your nutritional dependency on a 'health' shop and find better health in your own garden. All the nutrition and minerals your body needs you will find in the soil, or you add them to the soil so that you ingest them naturally via the vegetables. This is the way that Nature intended us to get our nutrition, particularly our minerals.

The personal satisfaction from growing your own food and vegetables is huge. Generally, the whole family loves to be involved. We are living in times of ever-increasing dependency on a 'system,' seldom realising that this system is based in terms of money, not your health or well-being. Only you can take responsibility for your overall health. Get out and get active. Organic gardening will keep you out of the hospital and add years to your life, especially if you become passionate about it. Just the fact that you will eat fresh - and I mean "fresh" - vegetables without poisons and toxins will radically improve your health. And the flavours . . . yummy!

If you live in a city and have no garden, get a group of like-minded people together and investigate the countryside for options. A farmer or landowner might be happy to rent or lease a group of people a small piece of land on which to grow your vegetables, and it takes very little land. Or check out the allotment situation where you live, or, failing that, investigate growing vegetables in a community-based situation. Once you open the mind and invest the determination, you will find many options and opportunities to take a greater control of your health and life. Maybe you even need to leave the city, change your whole lifestyle. It just may be the very best thing that ever happened to you and your family. You always have a choice, no matter what the situation or how grim it is. It is very easy to see the Codex Alimentarius as one of the most negative impositions in a long time, and you can rage against the injustice of it, but you also need to realise that we all too easily slide into comfort and apathy. Over two thousand years ago, Lao Tzu said, "The mark of our ignorance is the depth of our belief in violence, injustice and tragedy. What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly." This is as true today as it ever was. You can turn this apparent injustice into the impetus to end your lazy caterpillar days, where you depend on someone else to grow and provide your food for you. This, now, is the opportunity to turn toward your butterfly-self, flying above the old, outdated benchmark of your life.

With self-determination you can begin turning away from the escalating dependencies that creep into your life through the years, allowing you to become more independent and self-sufficient. Not only will you no longer have need of the nutritional supplements from the health shops, but as your blood pressure drops and your physical fitness and self-esteem returns, neither will you need the prescription drugs that increasingly accompany old age. Instead you will experience the natural sense of achievement that accompanies self-sufficiency. Even when purchasing garden seeds, there is no need to buy the unnatural, infertile hybrid seeds on offer today. Every country has garden seed suppliers of integrity who will be only to happy to sell you top-quality natural seed from natural organic plants, plus there are all the gardeners who have created their own bank of natural seeds from heritage vegetables. You will meet these innovative people when you join your local organic gardening group.

Codex Alimentarius! Call it "Reclaim Your Life."

In Love and Light,
Michael