Replying to LO25493 --
Dear Organlearners,
Gavin Ritz <garritz@xtra.co.nz> writes:
>I am very sad to hear that you have diabetes and now I
>understand you so much better now.
Greetings Gavin,
Thank you.
I will make, for now, this one exception to my suspending the LO-dialogue
between you and me.
You and fellow learners ought to be able to discern just how much this
diabetic condition influenced my thinking. It swept over me in March 1999
as a result of influenzia, tooking me by surprise I even became so blind
that for two months I could not write anything to the LO-list. You can
easily observe this period of silence. You can easily compare my thoughts
before and after this period of silence, finding differences and
correspondences self.
>In another life that seems so distant now, I used to have
>a healing practice. I also understand why you feel that
>your energy drains away. I am also beginning to understand
>why you have mentioned certain things, and why I felt that
>you were often trying to control. Hence my last note in one
>of the threads.
I have stressed right from the beginning of my contributions to the
LO-list that I do not want to control any person. Obviously, it even
includes controlling how other people interpret my assurance. I have also
stressed that many of my writings will be complex and that the complexity
in them is a controlling factor. I have indicated by means of the Digestor
how fellow learners can avoid the controlling effect of any complex issue,
even mine. Obviosuly, it took me many moons to create a context in which
the Digestor can be understood.
>And there is a reason you do not have free energy. I am not so
>sure it is as complex as you think.
Well, I took the first four days of this week for holiday leave to mix and
settle eight cubic meters of concrete. Apart from being older and thus
physically weaker, I had ample opportunity to observe once again my
present physical free energy (based on protein catabolism) to that of
three years ago (based on carbodydrate catabolism). The differences are
indeed complex rather than a mere degradation.
Since my mind relies on the physical operation of my neurological system,
my mind is operating differently too. Perhaps the most important
difference is that I cannot afford "mental idling" any more. When I was
younger, I merely became frustrated with wasting mental opportunities. Now
I do not become frustrated any more. I simply pass into a "deep sleep".
Strangely enough, of all people my three daughters become most frustrated
when I pass into a "deep sleep".
It is almost like an engine with cannot run idle. It stalls when the
throtle is not open. In the case of a normal engine it requires an
adjustment of usually two screws -- intake fuel and intake air to set up a
Bernoulli homeostasis. But when both these two screws have broken off, one
has to forget about keeping the engine alive at idling speed.
Dialogues keep me mentally alert, but superficial discussions now put me
into "deep sleep" within minutes. I am actually becoming an embarassment
to my family.
>This is what one of my teachers said about diabetes and
>its causes and new thought patterns that one needs to
>create, visualize or repeat.
>
>the probable causes:
>The Longing for what might might have been, A great need
>to control, a deep sorrow and no sweetness left
>
>new thought patterns that one needs to create, visualize
>or repeat: This moment is filled with joy. I now choose to
>experience the sweetness of today.
It is one thing to teach based on suspicions and another thing to teach
based on self experience.
I tried to follow a reduced carbohydrate diet on medical advice, using
several kinds of pills to force my pancreas to produce insulin. It was a
complete mess. The diabetic symptoms worsened (increasing blindness, loss
of other sensory senstaions and blackening of lower legs) and my pancreas
send me into bouts of diahrea. I barely managed to keep the glucose level
of my blood lower than 10 mmol/liter. The doctor had only one option left
-- direct injections of insulin.
I then decided to take take control of myself in terms of what I knew of
chemistry. I wish I had focussed more on biochemistry since I could not
read any more what I actually wanted to know. So I decided to replace my
carbohydrate catabolism as far as possible with a protein catabolism like
in many kinds of fish. (Perhaps some of my "fishy genes" would "switch
on" again ;-) Within two months I have regained much of my eye sight, my
legs turned into a normal colour.
I also stopped testing the glucose level of my blood because it was then
often so low (less than 1mmol per liter, the limit of detection) that IN
TERMS OF carbohydrate catabolism I ought to be in a constant coma. Each
such a low value would flung my dear wife into a fright, having studied
diabetes 1 also since my affliction. I tried to explain to her that
diabetes 1 (too low glucose) make sense only in terms of carbodydrate
catabolism and not in terms of protein catabolism. Her answer to this is
that the medical and physiology books claim that the liver does the
neoglucogenesis so that my blood still has to carry the glucose to the
rest of my body. How can I argue with such claims?
The only carbohydrates which I could consume without major ill effects are
that in green food low of like young beens, peas and spinach. Obviously,
my doctor washed his hands like Pilate when learning what I was doing to
myself.
A few times I tried to explore what would happen if I would eat one slice
of bread or one scoop of ice cream. I would lie if I said that there was
not some longing for past delicacies. But I would also lie if I denied any
scientific curiosity about changing back some degree to my past diet. The
subsequent rise in the glucose content of my blood and its immediate
effects (dry mouth, lack of eye focus, irritated bladder, immense feeling
of tiredness, lack of body coordination) were horrible. It made me
realise that my change to protein catabolism was irreversible.
I had far more difficulty to convince my family, friends and medical
acquaintances that I had to change my eating habits irreversibly from
carbodydrate to protein catabolism. My family and friends believed that I
still had a craving for sweet things and that I was simply lying by
denying such a craving. So they tried all kind of "diabetic" delicacies
(costing them a fortune) to let me enjoy the "sweet taste" of food.
The first one to realise that my change was indeed irreversible and that I
did not have a longing for "sweet taste" was my dear wife. I was very fond
of "baked potatoes" (outer skin baked into a crispyness), "putu pap" (very
firm porridge like putty made of coarse maise meal which you perhaps
tasted during your South African years), freshly baked bread and pizza.
These tasty carbohydrate dishes have nothing to do with sweetness!! When
she observed time and again that not even these dishes could make me
change my new eating habits, she realised that the change was indeed about
reducing carbohydrate intake to the bare minimum and not at all avoiding
sweet tasting food.
Since then the gradual demise of a number of friends and acquaintances who
also have diabetes 2 ( too high glucose level in blood) have opened her
eyes to the mentally controlled course which I have taken compared to the
medico-technological controlled course which they are taking. One woman in
our parish have lost the use of both her legs, the bottom of one recently
amputated and the other one soon to be amputated. Her suffering is beoynd
description. Another man with whom I am well befriended through succulent
plants is now more in hospital than out of it with all kinds of failures.
But he believes blindly in medico-technology despite all his mishaps.
My greatest mental anguish was in December when I visited a friend living
in the Namgorab desert of Namibia. His sister had contracted diabetes 2
too and her condition was deteriorating very fast. She was under
professional care of doctors, but such care meant nothing. Both her farm
and my friend's farm were some 500 km away from professional care. Her
condition was so bad that she could not even walk 5 meters to the toilet.
After some two days I decided to tell her how I took control of myself
despite the contary advice of my doctor. I warned her that should she do
the same, it will not be based on my advice and me taking control of her,
but on her own understanding of what is happening to her body.
I began to explain to her the chemistry involved as best as I could to
someone with no knowledge of chemistry at all. Her sister in law, my
friend's wife who is self a trained sister, listened also. She asked most
of the questions because she had to care for her sister in law. The
unfortunate lady decided to act on her new understanding. She is back on
her own farm, living a "normal" life, but now in terms of the new norm
"protein catabolism". My greatest sorrow now is that she, her brother and
his wife think that the sun sets when I sit down -- something which I
wanted to avoid and which caused me such mental anguish before I decided
to speak for her benefit.
Yes, I indeed have a deep sorrow for people who allow their lives to be
controlled in many different ways. This sorrow has been with me since the
day when I realised that my mission is to help others to learn
authentically -- to be in control of one's own learning rather than
letting others control it. My past sensitivity and studies into
irreversible self-organisation prepared me to free myself from becoming
controlled by others as a result of my diabetic condition -- disability of
maintaining a glucose homeostasis. I have now a far better understanding
of physically disabled people in terms of how their disability is misused
by others to take control of them.
Sweetness of taste is but one case of sweetness. I had to let go of
tasting sweetness. This loss had given me a considerable gain. I have
become much more sensitive to the "sweetness" of smell, sight, touch and
hearing. To see and hear a kid singing with laughter and dancing with joy
have become much sweeter than all the sweet tastes I can remember. I have
never practised any fast. I believed that it was an ancient ritual without
any bodily or mental value. In a sense I am now practising a "restricted
fast" by avoiding all food rich in carbohydrates, not because I want to,
but because I have to. I have learned much from this. I suspect that
somewhere in future I will experiment with a fully fledged fast too so as
to learn authentically by experiencing it.
>In our dis-ease lies the answer to our personal life our
>unique experience of the world. It is our algedonic signal
>that tells us what is "going on" for each individual. It is
>where I found my pain and faced it that liberated me, but
>that is me.
As for myself, I am today convinced of only one kind of "algedonic
signals" (to use your terminology), namely signals which emminates from
systems following the path of destructive creativity in conjunction with
constructive creativity so evident in their surroundings. To put it in
other words, it is signals which arise whenever a system reverses the
course of evolution.
I can explain it, for example, with general Jan Smuts original concept of
holism. (Holism and Evolution -- 1926). He later defined holism for the
Oxford Dictionary as the understanding that the whole is more than the sum
of the parts. Thus "algedonic signals" come from a system following a path
which avoids making effective contacts with other systems so that a new
system with a higher order of complexity cannot emerge. It is signals from
a system which ignores absent mindedly or denies deliberately its field
affording it the potential to heal itself. It is signals from a system
which is following the course of apartheid in whatever walk of life.
Jan Smuts was very sensitive to such "unholistic" signals. For example,
soon after the treaty of Versailles putting an end to WWI, he warned other
leaders of western countries about the signals which he was becoming aware
of. He predicted a WWII. As you can imagine, they scorned him coming from
a third class country like South Africa. Even after the publication of
"Holism and Evolution" which eventually earned him dozens of honory
doctorate degrees all over the world, they peristed in denying his
warnings. Only one political person took him seriously, that person
himself not taken seriously untill WWII began -- Winston Churchill.
Holism is based on wholeness as essential to evolution. Bring another
"essential" property into play and the complexity more than doubles.
Bring in six other patterns "essential" to creativity and the complexity
of the task is almost beyond comprehension as I have experienced on this
very list.
Perhaps this is why Senge put the discussion of the eleven essentials of
an LO into an appendix of the Fifth Discipline.
With care and best wishes
--At de Lange <amdelange@gold.up.ac.za> Snailmail: A M de Lange Gold Fields Computer Centre Faculty of Science - University of Pretoria Pretoria 0001 - Rep of South Africa
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