© Michael Vincent Miller

Just watched the BBC Horizon’s “Playing God” all about genetic engineering. Although it didn’t cover all the horrendous stuff going on with our food, it did feature some other ways scientists are manipulating the genome for profit…

The spider-goat is one example. They’ve taken the gene that produces the spider web protein and inserted it into goats so that they produce this protein in their milk. The “benefit” is the production of incredibly strong web proteins that can be made into thread and have all sorts of potential applications…

Another disturbing development is using yeast to make diesel, yes that’s right. Instead of making alcohol from sugars the genetically modified yeast make diesel.

What is especially disturbing about genetic engineering as it plows forward unchecked, is the complete lack of ethical framework. Businesses can pretty much do whatever they like it seems and when profit is the sole motive, God help us…

The presenter of the program called genetic engineering “an uneasy bargain” or words to that effect — risk vs reward, the risk being that the genetically engineered life-forms will “get out” of the lab, or the factory and into nature where they can’t be recalled. Now call me crazy but anything above 0% risk is unacceptable.

And the uneasy fact is that they are already out. The GM food companies, the biggest being Monsanto have been playing God for a while now and the results of their meddling are being grown all over the place with blatant disregard for the potential environmental effects, not to mention the unknown health effects.

I think the most disturbing thing of all was seeing a bunch of enthusiastic amateurs, messing with genetics by using gene parts ordered off the internet. Very unsettling.

What stuck in my mind way back, was the line in Jurassic Park…

“Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could,
they didn’t stop to think if they should.“

New technology, businesses scrambling to get their piece of the pie, all unchecked, no ethical framework whatsoever, no one is asking “should we?”

I’m concerned.

It’s crystal clear to me that we urgently need a World Ethics Committee, agreed, empowered and respected by all nations to ask the “should we?” question — for genetic engineering, for trade, for lots of things. Because otherwise competition will drive businesses to continue to abuse technology, to abuse people, to abuse animals, to pollute the planet. There urgently needs to be a level playing field for trade that puts ETHICS FIRST.

Click here to help raise awareness of genetic engineering

Mike Kinnaird
Habit Guide: How to be Happy & Healthy

Multiple personality disorder is commonly called schizophrenia, although it’s not, and the error may come from the fact that schizophrenia is derived from the Greek words skhizein meaning “split” and phren — “mind.”

I have to say though, that in my opinion, mental illnesses do not fit so neatly into the boxes that science has defined. Science does this because there has to be a standard treatment, a drug to be prescribed or other “therapy.” There has to be some structure whereby mental illness can be understood…

But the truth is that when the mind goes haywire, there’s lots of overlap, lots of morphing as it progresses, and really, the idea that any specific set of symptoms fit into any box snuggly is generally false in my opinion.

Okay so Freda had multiple personality, actually two personalities, herself and a bully that made her life a living hell whilst at school — two voices in her head where one would sometimes be dominant along with its associated persona and at times, there would be dialogue between the two, all going on in one mind.

And as I’ve heard over and over with the whole spectrum of chronic illness, the treatment she was getting, really did not make a dent in her condition. Bottom line, the treatment — drugs and counseling — wasn’t working at all.

So, how did she get into such a state? What were the causes?

The main cause was this bully… TRAUMA. Trauma does things to the mind and intense trauma, repeated on an almost daily basis is enough to throw any mind into complete disarray and meltdown. Look at a similar situation with post traumatic stress disorder — same thing, repeated trauma — mental and nervous breakdown.

We break down under intense trauma because we are stuck, our natural instincts are squished. All that adrenaline fueled energy has nowhere to go and so it damages us. Look at any other animal in nature whether it’s a mouse, an elephant or a lion. If they sense danger, they will run away and if they can’t run, they will display a threatening posture and if necessary, fight. Basically they get the hell out one way or another. Their whole being and focus is all about getting SAFE. That is our instinct too, but it’s repressed — we have to stay in school, we have to stay on the battlefield.

The natural way this would have played out for Freda using her natural instinct would be; she spots this guy with a threatening demeanor from a mile away and goes in the opposite direction with all haste. End of problem.

So… we would all break at some point under this kind of mental stress but some are more prone to it, being more sensitive, but we’d all break sooner or later. Perhaps Freda was singled out because she was the easiest target, how brave is that?

A very sensitive person has a great gift, they feel everything very deeply and so are in the best place, all being well, to choose the right thing to do. But in the case of overwhelming emotion, overwhelming danger, overwhelming anything, they most easily break down.

What struck me watching this documentary was that most people would clearly see that one of these personalities was real, the other made up, the “bully.” But in fact, they are both made up, one is just older — the original one, the one most people would call “me.”

Personality is a bunch of subtle habits, as subtle as your regional accent that you took on-board without even thinking. It’s subtle and we build our personality by taking on-board certain vibes that we encounter as we grow in our environment. My son would often almost become — mimic — certain people he admired and would be like a mini version of the other person for a few hours after spending time with them.

So over many years we build our persona by choice and by default by taking on-board vibes that come via our senses and via our attention. We build mind-body connections via speech, movement and so-on.

When the “other” personality appeared via trauma, the sensitive person has this vibe literally forced into them. Like if you watch a scary movie and for weeks after get fear-flashes in your mind. But Freda’s horror was every single day, no time to recover and so the horror embeds, surfaces, puts the mind into a more and more disturbed state until it’s becomes its own personality, with its own voice, behavior, moods. It can so easily happen, especially to sensitive people.

I’ve spoken before how sometimes I will get this horrible racist thought pop into my mind. This is exactly the same thing in miniature. This isn’t MY voice, my opinion, my personality. It’s something that got embedded in me by some neanderthal guys that happened to be there when I was growing up. And the verve with which these racist comments were made was enough of a trauma to drive it deep in me.

Now I can look at this and see it as garbage, but this is miniscule in comparison to what Freda suffers. Her horror and trauma has made the voice more and more present, more real, more indistinguishable from her own voice. It’s only a matter of degree.

And of course, as we feel more disturbed, more out of control, the whole thing continues to morph into more and more bizarre behavior, anxiety, controlling but dysfunctional behavior, self-harm perhaps, eating disorders and so-on. The poor woman is in hell.

Drugs can be useful to calm the disturbance to a level where other therapy is possible, but they are not a solution in themselves, the problem wasn’t caused by lack of drugs.

The solution is for Freda to fully understand how and why this terrible thing happened to her, the clear cause and effect of it all, and then to show her how to let it go, by starving the other personality of attention.

Then time will be a healer once attention is removed, and this other personality is not empowered with meaning or attention. It won’t go immediately but it will die away, the frequency and intensity of the other voice will lessen, more and more until it feels like a distant memory, like a lifetime ago. That takes time, but the important thing is to turn it around by understanding and not empowering it any more.

Essential is to feel safe, because danger and stress is likely to play out newly ignored thought-habits automatically; ramp them back up. We should all have a nurturing, safe environment. An environment of constant threat is really unnatural and leads to all sorts of problems.

So far so good. Now the next thing essential is to raise awareness of all thoughts, by remaining in a step-back position from thoughts, so that thoughts pop, they don’t run on endlessly. And the way to do that is to “listen” to thoughts, which means to be aware of them popping, and make this a constant practice so that you are never swept away. Only when thoughts are popping are you really in a place of choice. In-between there is peace.

And finally we have physical well-being. Long-term mental illnesses are compounded over time by behaviors that deepen the problem, like not sleeping well, poor nutrition, constant stress and so-on. For example, essential fatty-acids are known to be absolutely vital to mental health and yet are likely to be deficient in the long-term sufferer. Zinc is another nutrient that has been linked to mental illness when deficient.

But the truth is that EVERY single nutrient matters, and every single one interacts with all the others.

So the truth about overcoming schizophrenia, multiple personality disorder and actually, every other mental illness is that it needs a multi-pronged strategy. Lots of different tools working together that gently move us back to health and well-being.

For Freda, understanding very clearly what is happening and why, seeing clearly that a return to health is truly possible, and having the right tools for the job, can actually heal. Instead of the normal gradual decline, a turning point and a gradual return to health and sanity is possible.

If you or someone you know is suffering mental illness,  then please arm yourself with the tools that work together to create health and peace of mind. And work with your doctor as you improve, to reduce and eliminate dependency on medication. After reading Habit Guide, feel free to get back to me if you have any questions about how to put it into practice or how it applies specifically in your case.

All the best,

Mike Kinnaird
Habit Guide: How to be Happy & Healthy

The human mind is hyper-malleable and the most intelligent mind, the most malleable of all. I often think of this issue as the difference between driving a Ferrari and a Mini. The Ferrari is more powerful, can go faster, but is also more dangerous, harder to handle, and perhaps is tuned so finely that it’s prone to break down :-)

With more power under the intelligent bonnet, it’s especially important that such people have the right nurture and the right tools to know how to run their powerful minds. Unfortunately this information is missing from our education and missing from our culture.

And so very sensitive and very intelligent people often suffer from their gift which is a crying shame.

So what to do? — it always boils down to that. A massive help is meditation, in fact I would say that if you’re having any trouble with thoughts at all, then meditation is a must. And I don’t mean play around with it, or dip your toe in the water, I say dive in, make it a top priority.

The benefits of meditation are incredible and are especially needed for sensitive and intelligent folks as I said. It’s about driving your own mental car, your Ferrari brain, learning to go left, right, brake, stop, go faster… being the boss.

Thinking has become over-dominant  and so we lose our selves, in the process. We can easily trip up and make a self out of thinking, by identifying with thoughts and incorrectly calling them “me.” This can happen to such an extent then there is no true sense of self left at all, just a bunch of mislabeled thought habits and that spells hell and misery.

So meditation means you’re the boss again and also means a return to your true sense of self. That’s why it must be a priority. And there’s also the “sins of the father” that we have to undo, all the well-meaning advice we took on-board as children and never questioned that can cause so much pain down the line.

One wrong idea believed and invested in can cause a lifetime of misery.

So, meditation is number one and very very powerful. But everything affects everything else — that means that your whole lifestyle plays its part. Simply put, a happy mood = happy thoughts. So how to get a happy mood?

The six lifestyle elements of Habit Guide all tied together by the powerful way of good habit creation (which is the way you’re wired; for habits), are the causes of “happy mood.”

And what makes you happy, will also make you healthy and that means preventing all sorts of potential illnesses down the line which may have become reality if you’d not changed your ways.

Bottom line is that it all boils down to living right and thinking right; living the lifestyle that you’re tied to at the level of your genetics… a natural lifestyle.

All the best,

Mike Kinnaird
Habit Guide: How to be Happy & Healthy

We get a lot of questions about this one via our unwanted thoughts post, so I thought it would be a good idea to address this issue specifically.

What I’ve been finding with the questioners so far, is that for them at least, this is purely about paying attention to a silly thought, giving it meaning and so, making a big deal out of nothing. Here’s why this is so common…

We have this idea that we are normal raving heterosexuals and then for whatever reason — and there are usually a few factors that cause it, we get an idea “What if I’m gay?”

The idea shocks, and then our minds start reeling, and we fear this idea. Shock and fear rapidly cause your mind to behave in a certain way, so that you begin to see it everywhere.

So, then you start to notice the same sex, question their attractiveness, play with the “Am I gay?” idea more and more and so it rapidly builds.

And you may try to push this idea away, fight it, hold it down, repress it and that only fuels the idea even more because you cannot tell your mind not to think about something. This is a really common pitfall that is soooo easily overcome.

What you need to do to forget something is remove meaning and attention from it — pay attention to something else, essentially ignore every thought to do with the unwanted thing, consistently, because ignoring has “don’t care” built in, and “don’t care” tells your unconscious mind “This is not important, stop telling me about this.”

Now another pitfall that’s really common is the frustration that the unwanted thought is still there. That’s a lot of meaning and attention, and you know what that does. Unwanted thoughts die away when ignored, they don’t disappear like switching off a light, so please don’t fall into that trap.

So, most of the nightmares caused by the “Am I gay?” thing are nothing whatsoever to do with the actual reality of your sexuality, which is a biological fact, but simply caused by the shock and fear of an idea which can grow by means of unwitting meaning and attention, into something that can be a massive problem.

So, if you have been a raving heterosexual, and started thinking “Am I gay?” then it’s simply a load of rubbish that you’ve trained yourself to notice everywhere. Reverse, by ignoring every occurrence of every thought to do with it. See what happens.

And don’t forget to look after your whole lifestyle, because you simply cannot separate how you think from whether you are sleeping well, how many coffees you drink, how many worries you have, what you eat and so-on and so-on. Everything affects everything else.

All the best,

Mike Kinnaird
Habit Guide: How to be Happy & Healthy

To heal, the conditions must change and for conditions to change, habits must change because habit is the root cause.

To change habits, you must be exceptionally clear about what to change, and exceptionally clear about how.

Except for accidents and illnesses that we’re born with, the causes of illness and health problems are always sub-optimal lifestyle over a long time frame. And lifestyle has many factors.

To be well, to heal, there is no true cure other than to live right and think right, to put the conditions in place that your genes expect because genetics and environment are exquisitely balanced. And because the root cause is your habits, to stop getting worse, to turn things around and get happy and healthy, you have to change your habits.

All the best,

Mike Kinnaird
Habit Guide: How to be Happy & Healthy