This comes from an excellent book entitled Path of the Just by Ramchal and is a quality piece of spiritual enlightenment:

As everyone knows, there are average people, bright ones, and then there are truly brilliant individuals. Bright people understand things well enough, intuit things fairly well too, and they can grasp new and even complex thoughts reasonably quickly. Brilliant people, though, understand deeply, intuit on an uncanny level, and they can fully grasp wholly new and intricate thoughts. And we’re duly enamored of brilliant people.

It’s also known that there are fairly “scattered”, inattentive people; focused ones; and then there are truly alert, attuned individuals. Focused people are not only bright and rigorous enough in their thinking, they’re also fixed onto a specific goal; and while they spend a good part of their time in achieving it, they also tend to concentrate on other, lesser goals which draw them away from their major one. Truly and fully attuned individuals, on the other hand, hone in on their primary goal and dovetail everything else they do into achieving it, until they actually and triumphantly realize that goal. But they’re rare, and sometimes their goals are far from lofty.

And then there are truly rare brilliant and attuned individuals with laudable goals. The truth of the matter is that while many of us are bright to one degree or another and focused to a point, we’re far-and-away not focused enough on ultimate goals. In fact, most of us couldn’t even enunciate ultimate goals. But we get ahead of ourselves.

Ramchal addressed the gist of this in his Introduction and indicated that a person couldn’t help but notice that there are a lot of “intelligent, enlightened, aware, and informed people” out there. And they seem to “expend a great deal of their energies on reflection upon and examination of” all sorts of things. Some concentrate on “the minutia of the various sciences, and upon subtle scholarship”, and “concern themselves with questions of cosmogony or physical science”. Others concentrate upon “astronomy or mathematics” or the arts. And some individuals focus upon “the learning G-d’s Word and also “involve themselves in the give-and-take of refinemnent of their understanding and argumentation (pilpul) to enhace their foundational beliefs.

The implication he’ll soon make, though, is that while they’re all concentrating on one thing or another, they’re all nonetheless somehow missing the point. None of them appear to be attuned to what matters most of all, no matter how brilliant and focused they are.

For as Ramchal put it elsewhere, what’s required of each one us is to delve into the depths of thing , and to realize that our goal is to draw as close to G-d and His wisdom as we can rather than to accrue knowledge per se, or brilliance and attentiveness unto itself.

Indeed, as he put it in this Introduction, “few of (us) concentrate” unfalteringly on what matters most (and here’s where he lays it all out): on “honing our Divine service, loving and revering G-d, clinging unto Him”, and on achieving holiness. And we have consequently paid a great price for our distractions from this most vital goal.

And in fact, the great and ominous notion that each one of us is bidden to achieve spiritual excellence by serving G-d in high love and deep reverence, by clinging onto His presence, and by practicing out-and-out holiness will prove to be the essential message of The Path of the Just.

From the trenches,

Celeste

Sorry y’all I have some testimony yet to write tonight so I am just going to post a few articles with little to no commentary. They are each excellent in their own right.

I could not believe how far nanotechnology is progressing! Makes me even more resolved to stay far, far away from the agri-grocery store.

Nanotechnology

From the trenches,

Celeste

In 2002 the World Health Organization defined who a terrorist is within the scope of agriculture.

This document is brought to you by the International Union of Food Science and Technology.

The following is a brief summary:

Food Defense

From the trenches,

Celeste

One of my memories as a youth growing up on the beach in San Diego was the annual Red Tide. The Red Tide is an overgrowth of microorganisms that would turn the sea red and choke sea life to death. Despite its fatal consequence the Red Tide had a glow about it. At night we would stroll down the beach and kick up the sand or watch the glowing waves crashing onto the shore. The organisms that created the Red Tide would produce a bioluminescence when disturbed that was actually quite lovely.

The same bioluminescence is used today as a marker in food of a successful transfer of genetically modified material into the next generation. When I first learned that scientists were using bioluminescence in food I heard the following story: A man in the south was eating some fast food fried chicken. When he was done he through the bones out for his dogs. When he did they began to glow and the man was so terrified he called the sheriff. The sheriff arrived but didn’t know what it was. Can you imagine glowing bones in the dark?

Fast forward a few years and this month comes a report about the application of bioluminescence in food defense. It is not a comforting thought that our food is being genetically modified and has this transfer marker. Will this application cause a similar fate as the Red Tide destroying the breath of life in sea creatures?

Bioluminesence in Food Defense

From the trenches,

Celeste

Will we be next?

“We apologise for recent price increases,” reads the sign over the bread
counter, “but they are due to global factors beyond our control.” This is
not a Third World food stall but an upscale supermarket in Brussels, capital
of the European Union, whose farming system was once notorious for the
mountains of surplus grain it produced.

Those mountains are now gone. The world is down to its lowest grain stocks
for decades, and food prices are up around the world.

There were street riots over the price of basic foods in Mexico and India
last year, and in Jakarta, Indonesia, last week. China and Russia have
slapped controls on food prices to prevent unrest and inflation. Low-income
Americans are feeling the pinch of 10 per cent increases for bread, 19 per
cent for milk. Italians boycotted pasta for a day last September in protest
at a 7 per cent price hike.

(Way to go Hispanic friends!!! Keep up the good work. CB)

NAFTA awakens the ghost of Pancho Villa

Convened two years before the 100th anniversary of the 1910 Mexican Revolution and the 200th anniversary of the 1810 War for Independence, Mexico’s latest farmer protest is now gathering force with strong historical and political overtones. Farmers intend to follow the same route that Pancho Villa took on his 1914 march into Mexico City, and on which an anti-NAFTA protest was conducted by protestors on horseback in 1999

Just when ya thought there wasn’t another survey headed your way:

Drum roll……..

Food Defense Survey

From the trenches,

Celeste

Take a peek and keep this as a reference, just in case:

Quarantine Contact Info

From the trenches,

Celeste

January 1, 2008 saw many changes. Our nation had a National Response Plan (NRP). The NRP has been transformed along with many other things into the National Response Framework.

This plan goes into effect March 22, 2008.

NRF 2008

From the trenches,

Celeste

Do you stay up at night wondering what the USDA will pull out of the hat next? Wonder what new regs are being drafted, as some sleep blissfully? Well instead of counting sheep, which may soon be required to be NAIS compliant sheep or depopulated sheep, now you can stay awake and view the 2008 training schedule for the USDA (at least it is not pay- for- view like some documents and sites):

http://www.aphis.usda.gov/animal_health/prof_development/

From the trenches,

Celeste