Back in the mid 70s when I was eager to embark upon a spiritual path it was like going to a swap meet.
There were so many people offering so many paths that one had to really think deeply before selecting the path to travel.
Let me share some of my experiences:
First, I encountered the impersonalists. This was kind of a new age word for atheists.
They didn’t really believe in God as a Person that one could relate to but saw themselves as God and told me that I was God also but had forgotten who I was.
When I asked the question, if I am God, the One that created everything, how could the material world that I created somehow become greater than me causing me to forget who I was?
The answers that I received would fill volumes of mumbo jumbo all leading to “follow me and pay me and I can help you remember”.
Then I encountered the “All is one” philosophy. No beginning, no end, no differentiation.
One evening we’re coming back in a van from a spiritual gathering and I’m sitting next to an all-is-one-er rambling on and on. The guy was holding a papaya and I asked him if I could see it. He gave it to me. I then told him that I definitely believed his philosophy and told him that since it’s “all one” I would eat his papaya and he could eat my shoe. He couldn’t get out of the van fast enough, with his papaya of course.
A couple of days later while I’m working at a little vegetarian restaurant in Lahaina, an Asian guy in white robes with long black hair and a long black beard walks into the gazebo. I ask him who he is and he tells me he’s God.
So I ask him if I could come outside to see him better and he says, “yes my son”. So, standing next to him I ask him if he’s the one that created the heavens and earth and there’s nothing that he cannot do? And again he says, “yes my son”.
So being the jerk that I was back then I punched him in the nose. As he sat on the ground with his nose bleeding I told him that being God he should be able to do a really simple thing like stopping the bleeding. He created a dust storm as he left and we never saw him again.
Then I encountered the Buddhists. They were mellow and easy going but preaching that they and I did not exist. My question was simple: if I do not exist who are you speaking to? No reply and gone in a flash.
The best of the worst was a self-proclaimed Supreme Lord that mastered the art of kundalini yoga. In this process, one raises the life air up the spine through the chakras and out the top of the head. Once out, he merges in the “white light”, stays for a while and then descends back into the body, if he lucky. Once doing this he proclaims himself God and takes on followers.
While trying to recruit me I ask him if he knows the source of the “white light”. He stares at me blankly. I explain to him that if he could go beyond the “white light” to the source, he would learn that this effulgence emanates from God.
He looks at me and says, “What do you know”? Never saw him again either.
Then there was Christianity, which I came to learn the true essence some years later.
In retrospect this would have been a true path had it not been altered of for a few reasons.
Jesus was the true representative and the confidential servant of God and bona fide spiritual master on the planet at the time.
Due to his shortened mission due to envy, he became God. As such, that mission falls short.
We talk about the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. When Jesus was on the cross he said, “Forgive them father, they know not what they do”. He obviously and clearly was talking to Someone else. As noted earlier, the Son is God’s representative on the planet and the Holy Spirit is God in the heart of all living beings.
The job of the son is to enlighten, instruct and bring people to the point of developing a relationship with the Lord through teaching proper protocol, etiquette, service and the development of true love.
Unfortunately, because the life of Jesus and his mission were shortened due to envy and jealousy, truth gave way to speculation and for the most part that still continues today.
The major religions basically unite people. Unfortunately, none of the religions can bring anyone to develop a personal relationship with God because the pastors, ministers, rabbis, etc. are clueless.
So, still searching, I somehow wind up somewhere where a man is speaking about, what I considered, more acceptable ideas and I was all ears.
He said that humility, pridelessness, nonviolence, tolerance, simplicity, approaching a bona fide spiritual master, cleanliness, steadiness and self-control, renunciation of the objects of sense gratification, absence of false ego and envy, the perception of the evil of birth, death, old age and disease, even-mindedness amid pleasant and unpleasant events, constant and unalloyed devotion to God, detachment from the masses, accepting the importance of self-realization, and search for the Absolute Truth, was real knowledge and anything to the contrary was ignorance.
Needless to say I needed further explanations so I humbly inquired.
I was told that humility meant that one should not be anxious for the satisfaction of being honored by others. He said that the material conception of life makes us very eager to receive honor from others. But a person in perfect knowledge – who knows that he is not the body but the person residing within the body – anything, honor or dishonor, pertaining to the body is useless.
Nonviolence is generally taken to mean not killing or destroying the body. But actually, non-violence means not to put others into distress. I raised the question of eating plant foods and causing violence to the plants. The answer was simple: offer your fruits, grains and vegetables to God and He will purify those foods by removing the karmic reaction.
Tolerance means that one should be practiced to receive insult and dishonor from others because when one is engaged in the advancement of spiritual knowledge, there will be many insults and dishonor coming his way. Despite this, we should remain tolerant and continue or progress with determination.
Simplicity means that without diplomacy one should be so straight–forward and still disclose the real truth even to an enemy.
With regard to the acceptance of spiritual master, approaching him with simplicity and humility is essential because without his instructions and guidance one cannot progress on the true spiritual path.
Cleanliness was a two-fold process: clean the external body by bathing regularly and internal cleaning by thinking of and relating to God (more about this at the end).
Steadiness means that one should not waiver to make progress in spiritual life and not accept anything, which is detrimental to the path of spiritual progress.
Renunciation means rejecting anything, which is against the path of spiritual progress.
The senses are so strong that they are always anxious for gratification and one should not cater to these demands, which are not necessary. Rome wasn’t built in a day and true spiritual progression can take lifetimes. The good news is whatever progress one makes in a given lifetime carries over to the next and you pick up where you left off.
But it has to start somewhere! The first point is to try to control the tongue. Once doing this there is every possibility of controlling the other senses.
False ego means seeing oneself as the vehicle (the body) and not the driver (the soul).
The cycle of birth, old age, disease and death is endless unless one seriously considers making advancement in spiritual life. Without that, one’s desires have a strong influence in one’s next life.
To put it another way, every living entity eats, sleeps, mates and defends. It is the human form’s ability to approach God that enables him from acquiring the body of a lower form in the next life.
Happiness and distress are a given in material life. One has to view their comings and goings as normal and not react with excitement or depression. It happened because it was supposed to. Oh well.
What came next was something that I never ever had a clue about. It had to do with the make-up of a spiritually advanced person and the qualities that he exhibits. Some were new and some were repeated.
Fearlessness, purification of one’s existence, cultivation of spiritual knowledge, self-control, performance of sacrifice, austerity and simplicity, non-violence, truthfulness, freedom from anger, renunciation, tranquility, aversion to fault finding, compassion and freedom from acquiring more than one needs, gentleness, modesty, steady determination, vigor, forgiveness, fortitude, cleanliness, freedom from envy and the passion for honor, belong to godly men endowed with divine nature.
Growing up I learned about the 10 Commandments and though that they were the only requirements to follow to remain sane and have some sense or morality, I was mistaken.
As I walked this path I was exposed to four more standards to follow to achieve true spirituality.
There are three modes of activities in life. We can live in the modes of goodness, passion, or ignorance and for most of us all three are a part of us.
In the mode of goodness, all of the above qualities are prevalent.
In the mode of ignorance drinking, night-clubbing, and having an unlimited passion for sex are key.
In the mode of ignorance, being dirty and living like a bum sums it up pretty well.
But in the mode of goodness on the road to true spiritual growth these four standards came my way:
NO GAMBLING: Gambling creates agitation and affects whether one can be at ease in his/her mind.
NO INTOXICANTS: We usually turn to drugs and/or alcohol because we cannot face the austerities of life. They serve no other purpose other than to cloud our minds and take us away from reality.
NO ILLICIT SEX: If you are not married sex does not happen. Yes, people live together without going through a “marriage” ceremony and that is considered a marriage.
NOT EATING ANYTHING THAT HAD A FACE OR A MOTHER AND EGGS: Nature provides enough plant based and organic dairy foods to sustain life and to remain fit and healthy. Eat what can be offered to God and refrain from what cannot. Understand that there are scriptures out there that go well beyond the Bible and present more of what you have just read.
In Psalms it states that the connection with God if manifested by praising Him through chanting His names. Bear in mind that His names refer to different aspects of His personality and I covered that in my last article, “A Spiritual Perspective”.
Here are a few more.
Gauranga means The One With The Golden Effulgence.
Hari means The Personality of God
Bol means chant
So try this;
Gaur-ra-un-ga Ha-ri-bol
Literal translation: Praise the Holy Name of the One with the Golden Effulgence.
The good news is that it can be done silently within you anywhere. It will bring peace and start your sincere connection to Him. And, if you add music when you are at home it gets better.
If you would like more information please feel free to contact me.
This path, to say the least, was a difficult one to embark upon due to the fact that it went against everything I had been doing my whole life. But, when you realize that the world is not centered around you and arrogance and doing whatever feels good isn’t always the best way to go, change comes when it must. I have no regrets.
In accepting a bona fide spiritual teacher I soon learned that among many thousands of saintly teachers, hardly one perfect teacher or spiritual master is to be found. There are numerous individuals qualified to teach certain aspects of the Absolute Truth, but there are few individuals who are truly conversant in all aspects of spiritual understanding.
Those who are serious about realizing and experiencing the Absolute Truth in total as opposed to merely being content or satisfied with a limited or partial spiritual understanding are advised to seek out such a spiritual master and learn from him. The easiest way to find this person is to pray to the Lord in your heart to let that person enter your life.
The one thing that my spiritual master emphasized from day one was as follows:
One should chant the holy name of the Lord in a humble state of mind, thinking oneself lower than the straw in the street; one should be more tolerant than a tree, devoid of all sense of false prestige, and should be ready to offer all respect to others. In such a state of mind one can chant the holy name of the Lord constantly.
In essence, the pleasure that comes from having this binding, internal relationship with God makes it so that despite being IN the world, one is not OF the world.
Haribol!
About Hesh:
I have been doing a radio show in Honolulu since 1981 called “Health Talk”. To listen to the show please go to www.kwai1080am.com on your computer at 8am Hawaii time. FYI, 8am Hawaii time is 11am on the West coast and 2pm on the East coast. See you on the radio!
In 2007, I was “forced” to get a masters degree in Nutrition to stop all the doctors from calling in asking what my credentials were. Besides that, they never liked it when I asked them what their credentials were that would enable them to treat an illness without drugs or surgery.
If you go to www.healthtalkhawaii.com and click on Podcasts, there are years of shows there as well as hundreds of health related articles.
I am an activist. I am vehemently opposed to GMOs, vaccines, processed foods, MSG, aspartame, fluoridation, and everything else that the “pimps” (big pHarma, Monsanto, and the large food companies), and the “hookers” (the doctors, the government agencies, the Public Health officials, and the mainstream media) thrust upon us, the “tricks”.
At 75, I am in 3 softball leagues, racewalk, do stand-up paddling, hike, swim, do weights and cardio, and teach women’s self-defense classes based upon 20 years of Wing Chun training. I have been a vegetarian since 1975 and a vegan since 1990, have no illnesses and take no meds.
After being vaccinated with the DTP vaccine as a child, I developed asthma, which plagued me until 2008 when I learned about and started taking the organic sulfur crystals. My asthma was reversed in 3 days and has not come back.
So far, 22 cases of autism that we know about have been reversed, as has cancer, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, asthma, osteoarthritis, joint pain, gingivitis, and erectile dysfunction. The sulfur has increased sexual activity, eliminated toxins, heavy metals, radiation, and parasites. It speeds up athletic recovery time, increases blood circulation, reduces inflammation, increases resistance to the “flu”, reduces wrinkles, allergies, PMS, monthly period pain, migraines, nausea, and way more, because the oxygen that the sulfur releases floods and heals the cells in the body.
The sulfur, as proven by the University of Southampton in England, enables the body to produce vitamin B12 and the essential amino acids.
You can find out more about this on my website under Products.
My book, “A Sane Diet For An Insane World”, which has been published, can be viewed and purchased at www.asanediet.com. The book clearly explains why what you eat, for the most part, is designed to keep you in a state of declining health.
I have recently discovered an amazing super food – Zeal – that contains 42 amazing probiotics, anti-oxidents and more, all designed to build and strengthen the immune system. For more info about this please email me.
Hesh Goldstein, MSNutri
“Health Talk” Moderator, K-108 Radio
POB 240783, Honolulu, Hi 96824
(808) 258-1177
www.healthtalkhawaii.com
www.asanediet.com
[email protected]
Just to put things in perspective, after I graduated from Weequahic High School and before going to Seton Hall University, I had a part-time job working for a butcher. I was the delivery guy and occasionally had to go to the slaughterhouse to pick up products for the store. Needless to say, I had no consciousness nor awareness, as change never came then despite the horrors I witnessed on an almost daily basis.
After graduating with a degree in accounting from Seton Hall, I eventually got married and moved to a town called Livingston. Livingston was basically a yuppie community where everyone was judged by the neighborhood they lived in and their income. To say it was a "plastic" community would be an understatement.
Livingston and the shallowness finally got to me. I told my wife I was fed up and wanted to move. She made it clear she had to be near her friends and New York City. I finally got my act together and split for Colorado.
I was living with a lady in Aspen at the end of 1974, when one day she said, " let's become vegetarians". I have no idea what possessed me to say it, but I said, "okay"! At that point I went to the freezer and took out about $100 worth of frozen, dead body parts and gave them to a welfare mother who lived behind us. Well, everything was great for about a week or so, and then the chick split with another guy.
So here I was, a vegetarian for a couple weeks, not really knowing what to do, how to cook, or basically how to prepare anything. For about a month, I was getting by on carrot sticks, celery sticks, and yogurt. Fortunately, when I went vegan in 1990, it was a simple and natural progression. Anyway, as I walked around Aspen town, I noticed a little vegetarian restaurant called, "The Little Kitchen".
Let me back up just a little bit. It was April of 1975, the snow was melting and the runoff of Ajax Mountain filled the streets full of knee-deep mud. Now, Aspen was great to ski in, but was a bummer to walk in when the snow was melting.
I was ready to call it quits and I needed a warmer place. I'll elaborate on that in a minute.
But right now, back to "The Little Kitchen". Knowing that I was going to leave Aspen and basically a new vegetarian, I needed help. So, I cruised into the restaurant and told them my plight and asked them if they would teach me how to cook. I told them in return I would wash dishes and empty their trash. They then asked me what I did for a living and I told them I was an accountant.
The owner said to me, "Let's make a deal. You do our tax return and we'll feed you as well". So for the next couple of weeks I was doing their tax return, washing their dishes, emptying the trash, and learning as much as I could.
But, like I said, the mud was getting to me. So I picked up a travel book written by a guy named Foder. The name of the book was, "Hawaii". Looking through the book I noticed that in Lahaina, on Maui, there was a little vegetarian restaurant called," Mr. Natural's". I decided right then and there that I would go to Lahaina and work at "Mr. Natural's." To make a long story short, that's exactly what happened.
So, I'm working at "Mr. Natural's" and learning everything I can about my new dietary lifestyle - it was great. Every afternoon we would close for lunch at about 1 PM and go to the Sheraton Hotel in Ka'anapali and play volleyball, while somebody stayed behind to prepare dinner.
Since I was the new guy, and didn't really know how to cook, I never thought that I would be asked to stay behind to cook dinner. Well, one afternoon, that's exactly what happened; it was my turn. That posed a problem for me because I was at the point where I finally knew how to boil water.
I was desperate, clueless and basically up the creek without a paddle. Fortunately, there was a friend of mine sitting in the gazebo at the restaurant and I asked him if he knew how to cook. He said the only thing he knew how to cook was enchiladas. He said that his enchiladas were bean-less and dairy-less. I told him that I had no idea what an enchilada was or what he was talking about, but I needed him to show me because it was my turn to do the evening meal.
Well, the guys came back from playing volleyball and I'm asked what was for dinner. I told them enchiladas; the owner wasn't thrilled. I told him that mine were bean-less and dairy-less. When he tried the enchilada he said it was incredible. Being the humble guy that I was, I smiled and said, "You expected anything less"? It apparently was so good that it was the only item on the menu that we served twice a week. In fact, after about a week, we were selling five dozen every night we had them on the menu and people would walk around Lahaina broadcasting, 'enchilada's at "Natural's" tonight'. I never had to cook anything else.
A year later the restaurant closed, and somehow I gravitated to a little health food store in Wailuku. I never told anyone I was an accountant and basically relegated myself to being the truck driver. The guys who were running the health food store had friends in similar businesses and farms on many of the islands. I told them that if they could organize and form one company they could probably lock in the State. That's when they found out I was an accountant and "Down to Earth" was born. "Down to Earth" became the largest natural food store chain in the islands, and I was their Chief Financial Officer and co-manager of their biggest store for 13 years.
In 1981, I started to do a weekly radio show to try and expose people to a vegetarian diet and get them away from killing innocent creatures. I still do that show today. I pay for my own airtime and have no sponsors to not compromise my honesty. One bit of a hassle was the fact that I was forced to get a Masters Degree in Nutrition to shut up all the MD's that would call in asking for my credentials.
My doing this radio show enabled me, through endless research, to see the corruption that existed within the big food industries, the big pharmaceutical companies, the biotech industries and the government agencies. This information, unconscionable as it is, enabled me to realize how broken our health system is. This will be covered more in depth in the Introduction and throughout the book and when you finish the book you will see this clearly and it will hopefully inspire you to make changes.
I left Down to Earth in 1989, got nationally certified as a sports injury massage therapist and started traveling the world with a bunch of guys that were making a martial arts movie. After doing that for about four years I finally made it back to Honolulu and got a job as a massage therapist at the Honolulu Club, one of Hawaii's premier fitness clubs. It was there I met the love of my life who I have been with since 1998. She made me an offer I couldn't refuse. She said," If you want to be with me you've got to stop working on naked women". So, I went back into accounting and was the Chief Financial Officer of a large construction company for many years.
Going back to my Newark days when I was an infant, I had no idea what a "chicken" or "egg" or "fish" or "pig" or "cow" was. My dietary blueprint was thrust upon me by my parents as theirs was thrust upon them by their parents. It was by the grace of God that I was able to put things in their proper perspective and improve my health and elevate my consciousness.
The road that I started walking down in 1975 has finally led me to the point of writing my book, “A Sane Diet For An Insane World”. Hopefully, the information contained herein will be enlightening, motivating, and inspiring to encourage you to make different choices. Doing what we do out of conditioning is not always the best course to follow. I am hoping that by the grace of the many friends and personalities I have encountered along my path, you will have a better perspective of what road is the best road for you to travel on, not only for your health but your consciousness as well.
Last but not least: after being vaccinated as a kid I developed asthma, which plagued me all of my life. In 2007 I got exposed to the organic sulfur crystals, which got rid of my asthma in 3 days and has not come back in over 10 years. That, being the tip of the iceberg, has helped people reverse stage 4 cancers, autism, joint pain, blood pressure problems, migraine headaches, erectile dysfunction, gingivitis, and more. Also, because of the detoxification effects by the release of oxygen that permeates and heals all the cells in the body, it removes parasites, radiation, fluoride, free radicals, and all the other crap that is thrust upon us in the environment by Big Business.
For more, please view www.healthtalkhawaii.com and www.asanediet.com.
Namaste!
