What is it about Dreams???

I want to touch on a book that I just finished reading. It starts out a bit drab as it discusses the psychological work of Carl Jung. You may remember studying him during your early college years. Then, it gets into some really interesting analogies from the Bible. In the book, Dreams, God's Forgotten Language, author, John Sanford draws on the work of Carl Jung to show how dreams can help us find healing and wholeness and reconnect us to a living spiritual world.

Dreams traces the role of dreams in the Bible and how God speaks to us. Carl Jung, the founder of analytical psychology, pioneered a whole new outlook on the way we tick. He peered into our darker spaces and our dim, forgotten corners.

To start, lets discuss our shadow. If you stand facing the light, you will cast a shadow. Unless, you turn and look on the floor behind you, you will not be aware of the dark shadow following you. The shadow is the part of our personality, which is in our background, of which we are usually unaware. Similar to Eckhart Tolle’s idea of “the ego,” our shadow is the part of ourselves we want to hide from the world...our mistakes, guilt, failures, insecurities and demons that we bury under a carefully crafted ego of armor.

So the shadow is our angry side, our weakness, our sickness, our primitiveness, our sensuality, our rebelliousness, our inferiority...whatever it may be about ourselves of which we are most afraid and would rather not face. The shadow slinks around and most often we would rather die than have someone say we are like them.

Where do we see our shadow? In our dreams. It appears as the sinister or inferior figure of our own sex. The more we try to remain unaware of it, the more it manifests itself. To understand the shadow, we can contrast it to the persona. The persona is the front we put on. It is a form of adaptation to the society in which we live. Most often, we come to identify with the persona. We think we are the person whom we would like to appear to be. The shadow stands in direct contrast.

From a Christian perspective, our dreams reflect the life process at work in us that seeks to make us aware of Christlike totality or wholeness. So, it is not a matter or "either or", but of "both." We cannot give our shadow a full license, but instead, we become one with our good side and reach out  and intergrate our lower nature. This solves the "Christian Problem."

To learn more, consider reading Dreams, God's Forgotten Language by John Sanford. You will see illustrations of dreams and visions in the Bible and you will also see how we, as Christians, have suppressed our shadow and have literally become "split."

Glycemic Index

• In the past, we used the terms simple and complex to describe carbohydrates
• The problem some complex carbs caused a rise in blood sugar similar to simple carbs
• Now we use the term Glycemic index
• Measures how fast food is likely to raise your blood sugar
• Glucose is given an arbitrary value of 100 and other carbs are given values relative to glucose
• The impact a food will have on blood sugar depends on many factors such as:
• Ripeness
• Cooking time
• Fiber content
• Fat content
• Time of day
• Blood insulin levels
• Recent activity
• Particle size
• Low glycemic index foods are those values less than 55—these are foods that as they are digested produce a low, slow blood sugar response
• Intermediate glycemic index are those values between 55 and 70
• High glycemic index are those values greater than 70—these foods are quickly broken down in the intestine and cause the glucose level to rise quickly
• GI, however, tells you only how rapidly a particular carb turns into glucose. It tells the quality of the carb. It does not tell you how much of that carb is a serving for a particular food (quantity)
• Glycemic Load takes quantity of available carbs into account. Glycemic load equals the GI times the number of carb grams in a food

Lets be careful!!!!!!!! The worth of any food cannot be measured by a single number, but a single number can tell you a great deal about how the carb in that food affects blood glucose levels. For instance, the number tells us nothing about the nutritional value, vitamin/mineral content, or fiber content. The numbers can be misleading. Some worthless foods like diet soda have low numbers and nuts, for instance, have higher values.

• Meal planning:
• Hulless barley in the rice cooker sweetened with splenda and cinnamon
• Bread is near 100 on the GI, but using a different grain such as corn, soybeans, oat bran, or barley are good choices. Burgen Soy Lin in the lowest GI bread available
• Pasta substitutes include Shirataki noodles in the refrigerated section. No need to boil them….simply heat up and eat. Any other high fiber pasta is appropriate to substitute
• Cereals such as Mc Cann’s Irish Oatmeal which are steel cut oats instead of rolled oats
• Chips such as Trader Joe’s Soy and flaxseed Tortillas
• Veggies
• Nuts such as walnuts
• Dry roasted Edamame and frozen variety in place of higher glycemic veggies (peas, carrots, corn)

HEALTH INSURANCE DOES NOT EQUAL HEALTH CARE

Health insurance doesn't automatically lead to health care. Today, the average American life expectancy is close to 80, and the fastest growing segment of the American population is adults 85 years or older. While there may not be an actual fountain of youth, we are continually re-defining old age and pushing the limits of lifespan further and further.

Increased lifespan may sound like a dream come true. But it may be a nightmare in progress. Unless we assume far greater responsibility for our health, current increases in longevity spell decrepitude and financial disaster for millions of Americans.

If rates of disease and disability continue at their current levels, America will become a nation of sick, senile, disenfranchised, impoverished seniors, with too few resources to care for them and astronomical medical costs that will cripple our economy.

For example, the average American over the age of 65 suffers multiple chronic conditions, including hypertension, diabetes, arthritis, hearing and vision disorders. This group accounts for one third of all health care spending, one third of prescription drug use and 40 percent of doctor visits.

Over 25 percent of those 85 or older require institutional care. Unless the economic structure of the nation is substantially re-vamped, Medicare will run out of funds by 2029. Suddenly, the idea of living 100 years or more loses some of its luster.

Unfortunately, health care in the U.S. is currently in crisis, and many people have lost confidence in medicine. Medical services are expensive, and insurance is becoming prohibitively costly. And with more and more doctors dropping out of one insurance plan or another, especially government plans, there is no guarantee that you will be able to see a physician no matter what coverage you have. Of course, we're promised by the Obama administration that universal health insurance will avoid all these problems.

Obamacare is facing a perfect storm. First, there is an ongoing court battle to determine the law’s constitutionality. This legal challenge, now at the federal appellate court level, is sure to reach the Supreme Court of the United States, the question being when, not if. The Obama administration is clearly in no rush to see this happen, because if the court rules against them, it will have a major impact on the 2012 election. By 2014, most of the features of the bill, including the individual mandate, will be instituted, the Independent Medicare Advisory Board will be in place, and millions more patients will be signing up for Medicaid or receiving subsidies for individual private policies or paying penalties. Once our health-care delivery system is significantly altered by these provisions, it will be much harder to repeal or remove them.

In terms of the individual mandate, Obamacare’s biggest deception remains the use of the term “health care” in place of “insurance.” For Obamacare is not only unconstitutional in compelling a patient to buy a product, it is also suspect from a public-health perspective since having insurance does not guarantee access to health care.

If the federal government believes it must ensure health care for all as a public protection, much as a mandatory vaccine protects the public from an emerging disease, then the government must do so by providing the doctors, nurses, and clinics to deliver this care. Doctors have long understood that health insurance of all kinds interferes with — rather than promotes or enables — the practice of medicine.

What may be an option to private insurance is getting beaten down by the White House. Health insurers are adjusting their financial underpinnings to guard as best they can against any major reduction in profits. The public needs to be aware of this and take what measures they can to offset the increases in premiums, co pays and deductibles.  Sadly, Congress is looking to limit rather than expand Health Savings Accounts and Flexible Spending Accounts, which if adopted by more in the middle and upper class could go a long way to easing the hikes being imposed on businesses and individuals by health insurers.  Expansion, not reduction of HSA and FSA accounts should be part of real health reform.  Sadly this Congress and President are not about limiting costs to tax payers, but increasing those costs unnecessarily .

Keep your eyes and ears peeled for more information over the upcoming 6-9 months. Educate yourself. Read about your options. Take a stance for YOUR health care. Vote in 2012!