The Canola Update

In our last edition of Kindred Spirit we featured a piece on canola oil called What is Canola Oil? It then came to our attention that some of the assertions made in the piece were false, especially with regards to the fragile area of genetic modification. We’d like to clarify those points so that your information about canola oil is as up to date and correct as possible.
The article mentions that all canola is derived from genetically modified rape seed plants. However, this is not the case. Canola oil comes from a hybrid plant developed from using traditional pedigree hybrid propagation techniques (this is not genetic modification) involving black mustard, leaf mustard, and turnip rapeseed. The original rapeseed plant was high in erucic acid, which is an unpalatable fatty acid having negative health effects in high concentrations. Canola oil has been created from specially bred plants to have low concentrations of erucic acid and contains less than one percent.

With that said, much of the canola now coming from North America has been genetically modified. GM Canola has all kinds of ethical, economic and health issues separate to conventional canola due to the fact that it is GM, not because it is canola. GM canola is also about to be given the go ahead to be planted in Australia, and there is a fierce campaign operating to try and prevent this from happening.

We’d also like to point out that the article implies canola oil is used as a poison to get rid of insects (such as aphids), even though the author mentions that she drowns them using the oil. Other oils can do the same, not by poisoning insects, but by suffocating them. It's a kind of factual sleight-of-hand that undermines true research behind the subject.

We at Kindred would apply the Precautionary Principle when considering canola oil for topical or internal use. Given that a there remains wide debate about its safety, and that there are other healthier alternatives, it would be wise to exclude it from one’s lifestyle. While it is important to keep the issue of canola free of fear-mongering and fact-twisting, consumers do have a reason to use caution.
With thanks to Jane Thompson

Building Lifeboats

Is it me, or has life become busier and busier? My friend and localisation expert, Helena Norberg Hodge, says it's not me, it's globalisation. She says we're forced to work harder for less, and the collective struggle to make ends meet is felt by everyone, and the by-product is rush, haste and stress. So if she's right - and I think she is - then there's not a whole lot I can do to remedy the external frenzy that seems to be creeping, or rather rushing, into my daily life.

So I've decided to work at it from another angle - from inside. In response to the external speed that attempts to have its way with me and my family, a curious invitation has arisen. I call it 'curious' because it could have arisen any time, any where. But it has arisen now. Now, when it seems that many others are being met with the same invitation, in response to similar external challenges. That invitation is a summons to come home. To turn within and navigate my life from Stillness, rather than mind-driven haste. As the gathering clouds of peak oil, climate change and diminishing democracy threaten on the horizon for all of us, perhaps we are all being called - on a collective level - to create internal lifeboats to see us through.

Living from Stillness is not a new concept to me. I've spent precious time with teachers, mentors, friends-of-good-company, and sages around the world since my twenties - Sri Poonjaji, Byron Katie, Wayne Muller, Alan Clements, Steve and Ondrea Levin, Andrew Harvey to name a few. This includes many other deeply profound friends and colleagues, people that remain anonymously folded into every day life without much fanfare, but whose wisdom continues to humble and inspire me. So with so many years hanging out in the awakening scene, what is new about this 'invitation'?

If I were to define the difference, I would put it this way - though words prove highly inaccurate when trying to speak of such things. It would seem that before now, awakening was a bit of a lifestyle choice. It was an 'option' and it was also, of sorts, a love affair - a love affair with something sublime and real. But now it is more pervading than that, more near, more insistent. Now, it seems, it is an imperative. Even more, it is what is true, and therefore the only thing worth aligning with. My guess is that the seemingly dark times ahead are pushing all of us in this direction - deeper, deeper inward.

As a result of this invitation, life continues to speed by, but I have become more still. Not to become anything; not to become 'enlightened', or 'more awake', or more or less of anything. But just because it is what is true. That's all.

So on that note, to aid us in our little lifeboat building, I've posted a couple of my favourites. This first video is of a sage in India named Poonjaji (Papaji as his is affectionately known) with whom I spent many years:





And this one of Byron Katie, who developed what she calls The Work - simply a series of questions that you ask yourself in the face of your ideas, thoughts, troubles. When these questions are asked sincerely, and with a true desire to end one's suffering, the impact is profound.




Also check out the new book (and you can download a free copy) Thank God for Evolution! How the Marriage of Science and Religion Will Transform Your Life and Our World.