How do we know what we know? How do we decide what knowledge to take and what to leave? What about the influence of others, of social constructs and of belief systems? And how does all this relate to our health? Join me and Zakariya Frank for part 1 of a light-hearted yet deeply thought provoking conversation on the acquisition of knowledge. Zakariya Frank: Insta/FB/Tiktok: @zakthehealthking. Twitter: @HealthKingZak Clare Moore-Hales: Insta/FB: @sapiocity
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Clare Moore-Hale hosts the show "Safely Over City" that focuses on psychology, history, and healing. In an episode, she discusses critical thinking and knowledge acquisition with Zachariah Frank. Zachariah talks about his work as the CMO of the Centre for Advancement in Cancer Education, educating people on holistic ways to prevent and heal cancer. He also has a personal brand in holistic health and wellness. They discuss the application of ancient knowledge in modern health and the importance of intuition in choosing what to believe. Zachariah shares his religious background and his journey from atheism to accepting the existence of a creator. Hello and welcome to Safely Over City, I'm your host Clare Moore-Hale. On this show I'll hold space for discussions aimed at helping people to understand the psychology of humans, how our history shapes the way we think and the way we behave, and what we can do to heal our current state as individuals and as a collective. If you want to get in touch regarding suggestions, feedback or features, you can email me at safelyovcity at gmail dot com, that's s-a-p-i-o-c-i-t-y at gmail dot com. In this episode Zac and I discuss the application of critical thinking to the acquisition of knowledge. Putting it simply, how do you know what you know, how do you choose what to know and what to implement in your life. We also discuss the things that we don't realise that we know, knowledge that we have possibly unconsciously absorbed. We talk about where we get knowledge from, asking critical questions such as how much of society informs our knowledge, how much of our spiritual beliefs inform our knowledge and how much free will do we really have. I come alive when I'm touched through the madness, no easy love could ever make me feel the same, make me feel the same. If you could introduce yourself, who you are, what you do and how you got into what it is that you do. Sure, I would absolutely love to. Let's jump into it. So I'm Zachariah Frank and there's two primary things that I do. Firstly, I am the CMO of the Centre for Advancement in Cancer Education. We're a 46-year-old non-profit organisation in the holistic cancer education space. So we educate people on holistic ways that they can prevent. So obviously that's what you want to do in the first place. If someone does come down with cancer, we can help them heal their bodies. And we do so through a variety of free programs. We have a personal in-house naturopathic doctor who we offer counselling with. We have free weekly group sessions. We have online educational avenues, as many places as we can put them. And then we also sell a course that we use to fund the free programs. Part of that course is separated into tiers, whether you're a patient, caregiver, family member, educator, medical professional. Or if you want to become a holistic cancer coach yourself, that course is designed to get you what you want at your level. So we have hundreds of certified holistic cancer coaches all over the world. And that's how we're able to maximally educate the world in different areas and as much as possible on how they don't have to suffer needlessly from cancer. On the flip side, I also have a personal brand in the holistic health and wellness space. I go by Zach the Health King, and I have a podcast called The Health King's Court, Ancient Wisdom, Modern Health. In that, I cover a variety of holistic health and wellness topics, everything from physical health to mental, emotional, spiritual, societal, familial, anything in between health. So my goal is to bring people actionable perspectives and long-form conversation that they can use and impact their lives in a positive manner in every different way. So I have a variety of guests on and talk about all different topics. And that's the two primary things that I'm into. There's always a bit more, but I can go into as much as you'd like. I'll be definitely taking a little bit of a deep dive into you as an individual, not just what you do, but how you ended up taking this path that you're on at the moment as well. So one of the things that you mentioned was bringing in ancient knowledge, and that's something that I really wanted to tap into. So the first thing that I want to ask you in regards to, I guess, playing devil's advocate, how do you know which ancient knowledge to take and which ancient knowledge to leave? Because when we look at certain ancient knowledge, some of it can be a bit ridiculous when we look at it with a modern mindset, or we've got science that has completely debunked certain things. So how do you go about navigating that to promote it in modern health? Yeah, you know, that's such an interesting question, and it's important for consideration. Because I think in today's age, there is a lot of glamorization of ancient this and ancient that, right? I'm someone who myself just doubts pretty much everything and anything. Any message I hear, I just automatically approach it with a bit of doubt until it registers on my inner intuition of, does this make sense? Is this logical? Does it sit right with my gut and my mind and my heart? Is this something worth thinking about more or applying to my health? You know, what is even history? What is even history? What is ancient? All the ancient cultures that we think we know could be entire lives and made up. Certainly a lot of history is lies and made up. So it's like, we've been around for who knows how long. You know, like, there's disagreements on whether or not humans are a new phenomena or, you know, million gazillion years old, you know, or somewhere in between. You know, so personally, what even is ancient? For me, I think there are some innate comprehensions if we look within ourselves of just more natural existence and the more natural way of being and respecting God and respecting our biological design. And to me, those are the things that we should gravitate towards. Not necessarily because something has been done for a long time doesn't make it valid. But in this artificial modern world, we've become so far off from a healthy natural existence that the older stuff that kind of coincides with or respects that more is the stuff that will resonate with our intuition if we have one. And that we should perhaps consider. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. There's a few things there that I just want to dig into now, right? So the first thing is God. You mentioned God. Do you follow a specific belief? Do you follow a specific religion? When you're talking about God, what does that mean to you? Yeah, I don't follow a specific religion to the book, right? So a bit of my religious background. I was born to a Muslim mother, a Jewish father in a Catholic Christian community. I've seen all of the big three. I've read at least portions of all the three books and have experience with the cultures of each of them. I consider myself Muslim adjacent at this point in time. I don't call myself a Muslim out of respect, great admiration for Islam. And because I don't follow the tenets to the T, I think it would be disrespectful to classify myself. But I do feel most at home with the Islamic faith. And I will go to a mosque if I do wish to go to a house of God specifically. But if I'm in a church, I'm praying with Christians. If I'm at a temple for some reason, I'm praying with Jews. I think all of them have interesting elements in it. I think God itself or himself doesn't necessarily need that hard structure of religion to be implemented in someone's life in a healthy way. But yeah, you know, I spent a good amount of years as a stubborn, very certain atheist that, you know, thinking that I was too smart for the concept of God from the time I was 13 to the time I was probably about, you know, 1920. What changed that? In the first place, like that got me there or that got me back? That got you from an atheist, because I know exactly what you mean when you talk about a stubborn atheist, right? I know exactly what you mean. And I can imagine from the perspective I'm getting of you already, I can imagine you getting into some interesting debates about that as well as an atheist from an atheist perspective. So it must have been something quite profound for you to then have like an acceptance of a creator, even if we're not talking about Allah, even if we're not talking about a specific deity, a specific God that we can identify from religion, but just the existence of a creator, something must have happened to get you from there to there. What was that? Yeah, definitely. And I think for the sake of storytelling, I'll tell about what got me to this state of being atheistic in the first place, because I think it's a story that a lot can relate to, in that I was, like I said, brought up in a split household. My dad really wasn't practicing, so that wasn't really a factor. My mother was Muslim, she was more devout in her faith, and she, you know, raised me into that, and that was the agreed upon thing in the household that that would happen. And so I went to Saturday school, I learned, you know, the Quran, I learned Arabic, I learned the stories of the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him. And, you know, I just didn't, I was learning about religion and God, but I didn't feel God. I didn't feel religion and God. You know, my family had its level of turmoil, right, and ways about it that wasn't necessarily healthy. I would look around, and whether it was in Saturday school, or it was in my personal or extended family, or whether it was in the Christian community around me, I just saw the name of God being disrespected, and it just didn't make sense to me. You know, people were doing all these dumb things in the name of God, or just excusing it because God will forgive them, or just, you know, I just didn't see a healthy respect for God being demonstrated. And so to me, as a young man, or even boy at that point, it conflated with, okay, well, the people talking about God, like, that's clearly not the way, you know. So I just turned away from it all and thought it was illogical to think that there was anything beyond the physical in that way. What brought me back was when I had a bit of an awakening to the way the world works and just really started to dive into the ins and outs of our reality, both on the physical. Well, when you really dive into the physical, you really understand that there is the presence of the metaphysical. You can't understand the one without the other, right? I have my own personal opinions, but I'm trying not to lead in anything that's coming out of your mouth. So when you say that looking into the physical helps to show you the divine existence, how? Yeah, well, you know, it depends on which rabbit hole you're heading down, right? You can look around and see how much evil has clearly been going on for quite a bit of time, and if all things have their equal and opposite, surely there has to be a divine good as well, right? There's a lot of things out there that are downright, strongly, presently... Debatable. You know? But that is also debatable, you know? And then you start to get into things like the scientific and mathematical side of the physical reality, the Tibinaci sequences present in nature, the different frequencies, and all these things, and you realize, wow, how stupid is it to think that all of this beauty and all of this complexity that just works in synchronicity and harmony can just come from randomness and nothingness and some explosion happened and then it's here? It's just dumb. It's just honestly stupid. But then you have one of the debates, right, where people say that if nature and existence is so perfectly designed, well, why do we have disabilities, etc.? Why do we have certain things that seem to be out of sync or abnormal? You know, why are these things there if God creates such perfection? I think people have free will. And I think people have free will to alter not only their own life and their own timeline, but our actions could have ramifications on the collective and on others specifically, right? And so then we get into disabilities and how we see the rise of certain things that never existed in the first place and are new phenomena as we become more artificial and unhealthy and downright probably wrong in a lot of the ways that we're existing, you know? Perhaps man manipulation of what we were given. I was speaking to, I had a guest man come out and he was a Christian guy and we got into a bit of a discussion about this. And when we're talking about things that are hereditary, for example, and we say that it's genetic and there's this big scientific argument for that. One of the things that I find quite easy to throw back is how the environment, the external factors, they modify your genetic buildup anyway. So, you know, you can't just say that it's been there from the beginning of time, the beginning of existence and it's always came. There is a very reasonable argument that actually through time, because of how we are modernizing, because of the life that we have, the pollution, processed foods, the medication, the pharmaceutics, all these kind of things, they're impacting us internally. They're changing our DNA, they're changing these things, which could explain, as a theory, could explain why we are seeing an increase and a rise in certain disabilities or deformities. Yeah, absolutely. It's 100% correct. It's 100% correct. It's 100% in accordance with logic, with reality, with science. Any brain that you want to take is the only actual conclusion if we have a brain to us, right? There's genetics, but then there's epigenetics. And epigenetics is the scientific name for what you said, exactly, the altering of our DNA, the activating of certain things, the deactivating of certain things, the rearranging, whatever, you know, the physical processes are, changes our DNA based on what's going on and how we're treating our body and how our body is being treated. So, yeah, genetics is a cope. It's a cop-out, it's a cope, it's an excuse, it's a lazy man's cure-all for poor decisions, and it's part of the paradigm of health, or rather sickness, that has been purported as the standard for society that's responsible for a lot of the garbage and unhealthiness that we see today. Because if you tell someone genetics is just their destiny, well then their choices don't matter. And then again, this goes into the everything's random, everything came from nothing, it doesn't matter, whatever, it's all part of that same fundamental framework that's been built. So, God was the first thing, and then the second thing that I wanted to highlight there is when you were talking about intuition and what it is that drives your decisions on what ancient wisdom you incorporate and adapt to, the one thing you didn't mention was any empirical evidence that would support that. So does that imply that you don't rely on any form of science when you're making these decisions about what ancient wisdom you choose to take on board? Yeah, on a personal level, I don't give a shit because I understand the reality that science is bought and paid for. And I understand who has the funding and the reasons to fund and do a study. I understand who are the publication avenues that will even publish and allow certain things to be published. I understand the scientific flaws that can be present in certain models, and yet the paper still gets published with a certain conclusion, and that's all that matters because now that's the headline. It doesn't mean anything. It doesn't mean anything. I don't give a shit what some other man or some other group of dorks said and wanted to write on a piece of paper. I don't care, because they lie. They lie. That doesn't mean that there's not good studies out there. Absolutely there are, but unfortunately the majority are, one, done by people who have a vested interest in convincing you something, and if they have to convince you, it's probably because it's not true, or it's at least partially false, and they have to make this thing to try and prove it to you. But that's not the concept of science anyway. It has to be falsifiable. It has to be something that can be debated and can be argued against, otherwise it's not even considered science. Yeah, exactly, and the modern reality is that science is just another dogmatic religion. It's all garbage. People worship science and don't even question who the prescribed scientists that they're told to listen to are. Who are they? Nobody knows. Who funded them? The World Health Organization, for example. Exactly. They're not your friend. Always consider not just the message, but who's the messenger, and who sent the messenger? People don't think. They just see headlines. Ooh, it says doctor on their name, so listen to them. It's all garbage. When you understand the world's not your friend, and it's not set up to be in your favor all the time, especially the more official an avenue is, unfortunately, you understand none of it really means anything. Again, like I said, there are wonderful studies out there. There's always nuance. There's always gray areas. There's always exceptions. There's an abundance of good science that has somehow made it to publication and hasn't been blocked, because there's plenty of that as well. But I'm talking from a personal standpoint. On an organization standpoint, at the Center for Advancement in Cancer Education, everything that we do there, in all of our materials, everything is science-backed. Everything does have the formal science behind it, as an organization, to protect ourselves, but on a personal level, I don't care. I don't care. I'm my own scientist. I'm my own scientist. If I hear something, it makes sense, it seems worth testing, I'll test it myself. Different eating styles I've done to see what the results were, I've done them all. I'll test this, I'll test that, and I'm my own scientist, and more people should be. The more we outsource our thinking, the less connected to ourselves we are, because everyone's circumstance is a bit different, everyone's body's a bit different, and there's not necessarily a one-size-fits-all for perhaps a majority of things. Yeah, I agree with that, absolutely. So you apply critical thinking from an intuitive stance, not from a scientific empirical base. That's what I'm getting from you now, yeah? Yeah, but like I said, I'm not anti-science, I just like real science and good science, and I'm not a dork about it. I guess if there's a synchronicity, if the science feels right, if it's logic, if you've applied your critical thinking to the science, and you're like, okay, that's a fair argument, that's a reasonable argument, it makes sense to me, it feels right, so that's relying on your gut, on your intuition. Let's go into that when you're talking about gut, because I am a strong believer that we have multiple minds, we have our brain, we have our heart, and we have our gut, and these three things lead us and tell us, which is going to bring me into what we're going to talk about a little bit later, to do with the connection of mind, body, and soul, and where we're going with that. So when you're mentioning gut, what does that mean to you? When we're mentioning the gut, you know, it means a lot of things. We get scientific and talk about how historically the gut has been known to even be our second brain, and how it has certain elements to it that are similar to the brain, and what have you, that I'm not necessarily the most qualified to speak on, but there's a reason the term gut instincts is a thing, right? It comes from somewhere. Our gut, when it's healthy, that's the biggest caveat, because most people's guts are wrapped in their microbiome, so they're not healthy in the first place, they're not functioning in that way that they're supposed to, but when they are healthy, they are a guiding force. There is some built-in kind of second brain, as they've been referred to throughout time, that kind of helps us navigate the world, you know? The gut, it helps us digest food on the physical, and on the metaphysical, it helps us digest life and process it. So this is why, you know, when we talk about trusting your gut instinct and being able to rationalize and make certain decisions, we tend to see, I mean, again, not talking scientifically, but even if you look at your own past experiences, if you look at the experiences of people around you, and you'll see certain patterns of behaviors, or where people have broken those patterns of behaviors, there's a lot of times where you can look at basic things, like how is a person eating, what is their actual lifestyle like, and how does that impact, how does that correlate with their thought patterns, their repeated behaviors? You know, if a person is extremely negative, or things like depression or anxiety, is there correlations between the way that they care for their gut? And I do see this, I see this around me, I see this with people who eat a lot of processed foods, and even myself, if I go through a dump, and I'm like, you know, life is moving so quick, I'm eating more processed food than I would like to, I feel it, I feel locked up, I feel like my cognitive ability is just not as sharp as it would be when I'm drinking more water and eating fresher foods, I just feel that impact throughout my whole being. Yeah, absolutely, you know, it's so insane, the level that we've gotten to in society, where if people put, I don't know, ginger ale in their car's gas tank, and it didn't work, well they probably wouldn't be surprised. If they took their horse and gave it, I don't know, Legos to eat, and it didn't work, well they'd probably think, ah, that makes sense, let me stop doing that. And yet, their own bodies, which are biological machines, they just give incompatible fuel to, and because the bodies are resilient, and they'll take a lot of abuse, at least for a long time, they just keep doing it, and they don't think twice of it, and now you have people so stupid that they think, oh, the body doesn't recognize the difference, and all that matters is macros, and they're like, my God, what the... Yeah, it is insane to think about it like that. Yeah, I was just going to move on from that now, to modern health, you talked about modern health, what is modern health to you, and how would that differentiate to anything that came before now? Well, the way it differentiates most starkly is that now is not then. The environment is different, the conditions of the game are different. You know, it's like a game of chess. You can make certain moves, or certain moves are available to you at the beginning. The game's playing out, the game's playing out, and now you're in a different position. The moves that were available to you back then, or perhaps that were the optimal moves, aren't available, or are not the optimal moves anymore. So you always have to adapt based on the conditions of the game, the conditions of the board, the conditions of the environment around you. And in this artificial world that we live in now, not all of the natural super right options are available to us, and slash or, they're very difficult, or not necessarily optimizing of overall life to implement. So what does that mean? Well, vegetables and fruits at a baseline level, they're not the vegetables and fruits of yesteryear. They're all genetically modified. A lot of them aren't even real crops to begin with. They've been hybridized and man-made altogether. Then you get to the plumped up sizing of them and everything, and then obviously the soil's been depleted in most industrial agriculture. So it's like, okay, you could count on eating, I don't know, a bell pepper or a banana or whatever of long ago and get X amount of nutrients from whole foods. But you can't even do that today, unless you're growing your own crops and keeping it free from everything that's environmental. But can you keep it free from everything environmental because of the condition that we're in, even the air, the toxicity in the air, that's in the rainwater, that's in the soil. And that's why I said, perhaps it's possible, but wildly inconvenient. Maybe you could find some good fertile farmland on the top of a mountain and somewhere where they don't spray stuff and there's no neighbor spraying Roundup on their lawn so it's not washing away to your lawn because you're at the top. Maybe. But is that the practical solution or even feasible within all the other conditions that we strive for? Perhaps not. Yes. Is it possible to optimize it more than the average person optimizes it? Yes. But is there sacrifices that come? Yes, definitely, because you have to do the whole song and dance to work around the current conditions. And so in a further level, though, it's not just the crops that have been bred a certain way to be less healthy, it's our own bodies. Like we mentioned previously, genetics can be changed over time as we're alive. For the better, but also for the worse. So generations of poor health decisions have let our bodies, in many circumstances, be, at a starting out point at least, less healthy than they perhaps could have been. And that has all sorts of different implementations, whether it is certain ailments or illnesses that someone's born with or weakened and disposed to. It doesn't mean that has to be permanent within their lifetime, but, again, we can have DNA damage off the bat that's passed down to us. And so that's perhaps an internal thing. But externally, we have things like our underdeveloped jaws, which, again, are a lifestyle within our lifetime, but it is also generational. It's the reason that the modern world has seen generationally smaller jaws and smaller bodies and frames in general and all these things. And so we can optimize for what we were given as a starting point. Can we revert back to what we would have been if there hadn't been generations of unhealthy decisions in one lifetime? Perhaps not. Yeah, I don't think it's a one-lifetime thing. I think everything, as far as I'm concerned, my personal opinion, everything in the universe has balance to it. So if you're putting something negative and toxic in, that's what you're going to get out. If you're putting something clean and pure in, that's what you're going to get out. But however long you put something in, that's how long it's going to take for it to get out. So if it's taken generation after generation to get us to this point where we are modified to the degree that we're born at a disadvantage, we're born with our DNA leading to disabilities, et cetera, it's going to take time and it's going to take that effort to slowly reverse that generation after generation. So maybe there's something I can do in the environment that I have now with the resources that I have now that just slightly bring us a little bit back, but then I need to depend on or just trust that hopefully the next generation that follows me, they're going to continue that work. If I have, for example, my own kids, if I've taught them certain values about how to eat right, positive thinking, the impact of the mind on the body, society, being careful about who they gel with and who they let in their mind, what they read, what they watch, what they listen to. And it can sound really extreme, but to me, this is what's needed. If you're going to reverse the damage, you need to be aware of what the damage actually is first and have a goal of how you're going to reverse that. But the problem is a lot of people seem very, very distracted. And I don't think that's a coincidence and I don't blame people. I think even you and I can admit we've had our own play in that as well. You know, I can look back at my past and be like, I was so delusional at certain points. I was following things and into things that I thought were my own decisions, but they weren't. I was conditioned to want that and to strive for that. It wasn't really what I had found from within myself. So we need to undo that and we need to separate ourselves from those things, just find out again what's important and then start that process. Yeah, absolutely. At a societal level, I think we've already seen the pendulum start to swing back in the other direction. I think we have a great footing and are applying pressure collectively in a positive direction. At least a large majority, I wouldn't say majority, but at least a large horde of people. Significant amount. What's that? Significant amount. Yeah, I think we've reached critical mass in the awakening process of people understanding, even if they haven't figured out the details, that something has to change, right? That the way that things have been going is not the way that they can continue to be for any longer. And certainly there's things that I look back in my life and say, ah, I certainly would not do that again. But I've always been stubborn. I've at least tried not to succumb to the programming from an early age. And I was kind of the mold breaker in my family, in that when I was a child, I just knew the world wasn't right. Just knew it. I went to school. I saw everything that was going on. Always was like a social observer. It was just all wrong. That intuition for the education system failed to stamp it out of me. But I always knew it was wrong. And I think like a lot of people who didn't have guidance in the exploration of the world beyond the usual presented surface of it, you know, what do you do? You just get on with it. You're like, okay, this is all F'd, but I'm just going to get on with it. I'm going to make the best I can out of it. And, you know, you just try to resist at least and try to stay authentic. But as a young person, you are certainly malleable. And without guidance, that's the biggest thing. Of having like a calibrating figure to help you figure it out, yeah, certainly some constructs do seep in that you don't even realize are constructs because on the surface they're always presented as seemingly good, right? Whether that is relationship dynamics, whether that is overall philosophies, whether that is, you know, different things, they're all presented as, you know, positive things, even though they're often wolf in sheep's clothing. I guess that kind of would bring us back to the concept of free will because you mentioned earlier about free will. So do you really believe in free will? If everything, like, if there's so many constructs and so many things that we're still not even aware of and like how you talked about the body being a mechanical, you know, it's something that's working. It's got its own individual pieces that has its own individual purposes. Everything is doing its job for you to survive. That's the main goal of your body is for you to survive. So are then not our choices pre-programmed to just choose what we think is best for our survival and especially with the constructs and all the influences that have come on us and we think that we have free will. We think that we're making those choices. Are we really though? Okay, so there's three things going on. I think one, we do have free will but I think simultaneously there is divinity and either divine plans but also divine intervention and divine signs perhaps sent our way that our free will can then choose to act upon or not and perhaps that cognition is at a conscious level or a subconscious or even maybe unconscious level. Then I think there is also certainly the programming and I think there's a spectrum of programming, divine plan or whatever it is and then our free will and I think everyone's free will and the way that they operate is perhaps somewhere along the spectrum and I think the closer it is to this direction, the more enjoyable and optimal and beautiful your life is going to be and the more you get in this direction, it's going to be chaos and disharmony and not so enjoyable. I think there's room for all of the above. Yeah, I feel like it's not an end goal. If you believe in free will, get into that point where you're like, yeah, I have free will, I know I have free will. It's not something that you've then accomplished. It's something that you're constantly flowing through and constantly practicing because these constructs are always there. We're influenced from other people. According to science, when we're in certain social situations, the front of our brain is more active because the part that makes us, that builds our self-identity relies heavily on what's happening socially to build who we are within ourselves. The way I like to think of it is the old concept of the straight and narrow path. We all have before us a straight and narrow path. Perhaps it's not straight, but let's call it that. What I mean by that is we have perhaps the optimal and correct or most divine or whatever pathway that will take us to what we are meant to do in life or whatever, and that brings up a whole other question as well. Basically, we have a path that brings us closer to God and closer to wellness and closer to overall fulfillment. We have free will to take those steps, but we also have free will to deviate off the path, and the modern world pushes us far off that path as much as it can. I think that the farther you get off that path, whatever that path is for you as an individual, then one, the more confusing and chaotic and not fulfilled your life is going to be, and then two, the harder it is to find your way back. I think that there's people that get lost in the woods and will perhaps never find their way back, and then so just they spend the rest of this lifetime at least in confusion and suffering because they got lost in the woods. They deviated from the path. Now, what is that path? It's hard to say. There's many false paths out there, but there's probably usually one good decision, or that's not one good decision, but there's usually overall themes of things that we could be doing that could probably be bringing us into a better spot and then probably bringing us into a worse spot. You know? You kind of remind me of a couple of Islamic sayings. So the one is in Islam when we talk about a straight path, that off this straight path there are branches, and at the end of each one there is a devil calling you to it, and that's always fascinated me because it's not two separate paths. It's branching off the straight path. So you're trying to walk that path, and you've got all these other things that are quite interesting, and they're fascinating, and you might want to dip your toe in here and there, and it can be really hard to stay focused and to keep going down that one particular straight path. Another thing I did want to touch on is when you're talking about purpose, talking about everyone having their own purpose, but then in the same breath you're talking about getting closer to God. For me, I am a spiritual woman. I am a Muslim. So for me that main goal is getting closer to God. That is the purpose. That's the purpose of my existence, and everything I do on that journey there is supposed to be refining who I am according to the teachings, and it doesn't mean to be perfect, and this is one of the issues that I've had with a few people around me. Your story reminded me of this. I embraced Islam in 2006, so it's been nearly 20 years now, and I've sat with my mum, for example, and her opinions in the beginning weren't so great, and I sat her down, and she took this little book of Hadith, and she started reading 40 Practices of the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, and she was like, I like this. I like this, and I like this. She kept saying it, and she's like, so why don't you do it? So why don't you do it? I had to keep explaining to my mum, and I've done it with many other people as well, that the faith and the teachings within the faith, and the people are two different things. Don't look to the people for the guidance. I feel like to an extent, we're all hypocrites, because knowledge is a burden once you know something. You're a hypocrite if you don't implement it. From the second you know it, you're a hypocrite if you don't implement it. But that puts a lot of pressure on us. I used to hold classes in my home, where people could come in, and we would open all sorts of books, and that scared a few people. But I was like, I don't mind. I'll open any book, because my intention is to get closer to God, and I trust God. It doesn't matter where I look, so long as I know my intention is pure, and I sit comfortably in that, I know if it's bad for me, He's going to remove it. And it just dawned on me, I had this horrible dreadful feeling, that I'm learning so much, and implementing so little. I need to stop learning. I need to focus on what I know now, and start implementing that, because I don't want to be a hypocrite. But I feel like there's also, especially now that we've got social media and everything, there's also this thing that's happening, where everyone's watching what everybody's doing, and if you say something, and don't live up to it, it's like there's no room for you to fail, there's no room for you to slip, and that for me, goes completely against human nature. We have to go through our journeys, and learn through trial and error, and take that bottom-up approach. None of us are born perfect. None of us can just, as soon as we've read something, and again, when we're reading something, it's, in my opinion, unless it's the Quran, it's another person's perspective, it's another person's opinions, and outlooks that we're taking on board here, and it takes time to break patterns, it takes time to fight against constructs, and the way that you are programmed, and to really change your behaviour, and make it a part of who you are. So therefore, maybe we need a little bit of grace towards each other, when we know one thing, but we're seeing the opposite. You know? Wow, there's so much there. Alright, let me try to remember all the points I wanted to make. So at the beginning, you mentioned saying that, pretty much exactly what I'm saying, in the Islamic faith, and I just think it's funny, but certainly not a coincidence, because the more I learn, so-called independently, and then the more I learn about Islam, the more someone really figures things out in life, in a healthy way, the more they're just going to align with Islam, if they're able to remove their programming, about the religion and the concept. You know? And a lot of people are finding that, and that's why it's the fastest growing religion. Right? It's not a coincidence. You know? And especially, I think a lot of the programming, that's in a lot of Christians, specifically, about Islam, is, it's not like a different thing, altogether. Right? The way I see the three major religions, it's like they're software updates on each other. They're like iterations of each other. Right? And Islam is the latest firmware. It's the latest model. You know? And that's why the core, the core beauty that's present in all of them, is also in Islam. But I think Islam has maintained its purity, in the most pure way. And that doesn't mean that the others are impure by nature, but unfortunately, as time progressed, they've deviated themselves from being, even being able to be followed, in the sense that, even their books are only existent through translations, and this, that, whatever. Again, that's not to harp on other religions, but, you know, it's just a fact, that the Quran is the only one that's been memorized, cover to cover, and is able to be recited. It still exists, and its current language is its original language, so there's no room for, you know, misinterpretation, or mistranslation. But, yeah, you know, I certainly think there's a reason why it's the fastest growing religion, and I think it's a beautiful thing. You mentioned the sense of purpose, right? And that's an interesting thing. It's like, who decides our purpose? Is it God, that has assigned us our purpose? Is it ourselves, before this lifetime, did we have a sit down with God, and say, hey, I want to fulfill this, I want this to be my test, you know, in this lifetime, and then he sends us here, and says, alright, let's see how you go at it. Is it, you know, universally and karmically, do we have some sort of function or purpose that was destined for us by some third party? I don't know, you know, but I think the closer we get to God, the more we will inherently find ourselves fulfilling a purpose, and finding our purpose. And then I think the more we are finding and fulfilling our purpose, the closer we will feel to God. I think they're the same. Yeah. I think they're the same thing, you know? I mean, in regards to the being perfect point, yeah, I mean, it kind of goes, perhaps it is human nature to want to have calibrating figures to reference, right? Yeah. There's that concept of, wow, there's that person, and they're so great, and it could be implemented in a healthy way, where it's like, okay, wow, that person's doing well in whatever genre of life, let me take some tidbits of advice, or points of reference to implement in my own life, but then I think today, I mean, I don't want to say today, because perhaps it's always been a thing, it is easy to kind of fall into the idolizing of figures that we admire for one reason or another, and then form this illusion that they are perhaps perfect, because that's a nice thought. It's a nice thought to think that someone has it all figured out. It's not fair, though. You know, it isn't fair, but, you know, I think it comes from both directions. I think certainly that, you know, modern culture, especially celebrity culture, has established this concept of expert worship, I call. And this goes back to the point about, you know, scientists, and the prescribed authority figures, or so-called authority figures of the modern world, whether that is doctor, teacher, lawyer, police officer, judge, you know, like all these people that have, but then also celebrity, that have also been constructed to be better than you, more important than you, the lay peasant person, so listen to them, because they are better than you. And that is kind of the framework that a lot of people are operating within, and that's one that's always just disgusted me. People just put people above themselves for no reason other than being told to, and that's happening from that side, from above, but then I think from within and from below, we do have a desire for guiding figures, and because so many people lack healthy iterations of guiding figures, that should most ideally, of course, be in your parents, but then also perhaps community leaders, religious leaders, I mean, whatever. You should have some sort of healthy guiding figures or reference figures in your life. Yeah. But the lacking of that leaves a void that the celebrities or influencers or whatever can fill, and it's not necessarily inherently unhealthy, but I think it's often gone about in an unhealthy way. You know, I think it's happening from both directions. People want guidance, and manipulation can set in for that, or we can manipulate ourselves just by looking for it. There's a lot going on. Okay, what you're saying about these figures, because I've always seen it as, do you know about the ecological systems theory? Have you heard about this? Not that it comes to mind. Okay, so if you take, for example, I'll just give you a quick, brief breakdown. So if you take the individual, from the individual, you then have the home and the family. From there, you then have the school, then you have the society, then you have the nation. So there's all these things that will trickle down to influence the self and who that individual is, or what their circumstances are, what opportunities they have in life, inequalities they might face. So it's all part of this system. So we need certain things from certain places, and one of those is, I'm going to assume, and forgive me if I'm wrong, I'm going to assume you know about Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Yeah. Yeah, so this is a basic formation of what humans need, and when we start at the basic level of, you know, food, shelter, and we progress all the way up through social needs, and love, and self-esteem, all the way up to self-actualization, where one could say you're, you know, at self-actualization, you're grounded in who you are, you know who you are, you know what your purpose is, and you're in the stage of fulfilling that purpose and being content with yourself. So there's all these things that we need around us, and there's all these needs that we need in order to progress. And when you're talking about these figures, it reminds me of these two theoretical perspectives, because I feel that most of what we authentically need in a natural world is not there. It's been deliberately broken so that these substitutes can come in place, because these substitutes keep us in a certain frame of mind of servitude. And, you know, from my perspective, I believe that everything in this world can be broken down as simple as there's a war between good and evil, and there has been from the beginning of time. So it's either on that side or it's on that side. So when I think about our basic human needs and these, the ecological systems that we need innately, that there's a natural way that if we had that, if we were living tribal and, you know, we were living on grass and around animals and as proper collective communities, I feel like a lot of that would be fulfilled. It's not to say that evil would be eradicated, but that's fulfilling a lot of our needs, whereas the state we're in now, especially with individualism, it's taking us away from the collective, you know, with how education is, how it's so structured and rigid and forced down your throat as literally as programming. The way the whole system is, it's just a substitute that's not quite meeting our needs. It's not. And I feel like that's where a lot of the depression and a lot of these negative choices can come in as well that just lead us down this negative trap, I guess, because that to me is a trap. It's just to lead you into servitude. This is what the evil cohort are, you know, intently producing. And it's not something that's happened overnight. It's something that's been planned meticulously for a very long time. And, it does baffle me when people say, oh, the government said, trust the government and, you know, the government wouldn't want to hurt people and the government would. And I'm like, even though we can debate history, have you not read any history book? How many times have we seen leaders just deliberately do these things? And even in modern day, how many times do we have things leaked and then the government has to apologize for them? Yeah. You know, so really, if we just stop for a minute and take a look around us and why are we, why are we struggling with certain things? Usually it comes back down to have a look at your systems that are around you. Do they align with what you believe is natural? What it naturally should be? What's good? And how do you know what is good? You know, you said a couple of minutes ago that we could debate, you know, when I'm saying that certain things that are just flat out evil and non-debatable, you're like, well, you know, we can debate it. And in certain, especially in certain cultures, that is debatable. And there are certain beliefs where there is no such thing as good and evil at all. Therefore, if that's the case, where do you get your moral compass from? How do you know what's natural and what's good for you? What's, what's guiding you in that? And I feel like these are the critical questions people need to ask themselves. You're going to, if you really want to figure out what's going on in your own life and why, you know, you might be stuck in a cycle or why you might be getting sick. You know, even if we delve back into cancer, you know, we can, we can do that. We can look at how, how are you thinking? Where are you getting those thinking patterns from? What's your household like? Everything around you, your basic human needs. What is it that's fulfilling them? Is it the authentic, authentic things that are supposed to be fulfilling them? Or is it all these substitutes? You know? Yeah, absolutely. And I'm a hundred percent with you, both conceptually and even in specific verbiage that you use in that this reality is, and this existence and this whole plane and this whole world is good versus evil. Always has been, always will be. The power structure or kind of who's winning the game at the moment or in the, you know, has the leg up, shifts collectively throughout time. And yeah, I mean, I think anyone that denies that is by proxy on the side of evil because, you know, all it takes for evil to proliferate is for a good man to do nothing, right? That's an old saying and it certainly rings true. And the evil or that can be referred to as evil have relied on separating people from comprehending that there is this fight going on in the realm of making everyone think that everything's random. You come from a random speck or a monkey or this, that, the other, and you don't matter. And you're just a little dot in the Milky Way and all this garbage, you know, it's all designed to make you think that you don't matter. This is random. You're just going to be in the ground and you die. So it doesn't even matter what you do now. You know, your genetics are controlling your life, you know, and it goes back to the beginning of what we said in that you have to always consider not just a message, but who is the messenger? And then who sent the messenger as well? Right? Like you were saying, the messenger is a good messenger. I think. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Who's the messenger themselves and who sent them and then who's their boss? You have to work your way up, right? And that's not doing that is what allows these systems to be followed that have been created, not in the favor of those within the system, but for those who created the systems, you know, it's on every single level, whether, whether that's government or every single institution that we see in the world, that at a large scale, every single multinational, every single, everything, you know, it's not set up in favor of the end user. And it's easier to ostrich and stick our head in the sand and pretend that these things aren't going on. It's easier on the mind, the soul, the body, even to not think about these things. And just. No, we think, so we think it's easier because it's surface level. Yeah. It's surface level in the moment easier, but then on the other side of that, you're absolutely correct. In the longterm, that will only lead to suffering. You have to pay. Life is hard and it's meant to be. You're either going to pay now or you're going to pay later. And if there's interest, right, you can think about these things and implement solutions, which takes effort and takes time and takes energy. And it might come with some tribulation or you can ignore them. They're only going to compound. You're only going to be sent down the wrong path or the path that's not in your favor and you're going to suffer later. So, you know, it's hard either way. Pick your pick your battle. Yeah. I'm aware that we're going over time now. Are you good for time for carrying on or? Yeah. Yeah, I'm good. I'm good. I'm good for a while. I have, I have, I think I have a few hours, but I could go for a good amount of time now. Yeah. I feel like I could go on for infinity with these conversations. Life must occur as well. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So I wanted to bring in collectiveness because that's something you mentioned earlier as well to do with consciousness. So firstly, I'm going to ask you, what is consciousness to you? Right. And then if we can discuss where you stand on the viewpoint of collective consciousness, because we're talking about the awakening that's happening at the moment as well. And there's a lot of talk about this is a, there's a collective energy. There's a collective. Wow. As you can tell, the conversation did not end there. So if you want to hear what came next, you can check out part two, which is called the consciousness and cautiousness of energy and how it relates to wellbeing. If you're interested in learning more about the services available from the center for advancement in cancer education, you can contact Zach directly at zfrank at beatcancer.org or for personal and podcast related inquiries. It's zachthehealthking at gmail.com. If you wanted to get in touch with me regarding suggestions, feedback or features, you can do so at sapiocity at gmail.com. Thank you for listening. And until next time, take care of you and yours. Some people. No.
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