GROWTH

It's part of the human design to want freedom, and yet freedom cannot exist when you must waste energy on fear, anger, tension, insecurity and stress -- all the natural ingredients of living behind fences.

If you want to get beyond these negative aspects, it's a delusion to believe that fences must exist. Yet we all believe exactly that. Fences are erected first in the mind, and everyone's mind is compartmentalized. We shut out what we fear or don't understand. We shut out "them," the people who are unlike "us." We shut out the unknown -- a vast, one might say infinite domain -- and we even shut out the parts of ourselves we don't want to look at. All of this fence-building is delusional, however. The answer to all our fear and stress, our anger and conflict, could be amazingly simple: Tear down all the fences. If life were actually safe in a state of freedom, nobody would live behind fences. The only true security anyone can have is based not on strong defenses, but on knowing that you are secure in the first place, no matter what.

This point was quite clear to the ancient philosophers who set down the meaning of human existence thousands of years ago: They all believed in a state of enlightenment. Enlightenment is the general term for a mind that doesn't live behind fences of any kind, a mind that is free. What I'm suggesting isn't a return to Plato or Vasishtha -- we must build our own golden age with the tools of present-day reality. Which means, in essence, that we must expand the fence of science. Fences don't disappear by tearing them down. All kinds of fear and stress leap into the mind when you take away its defenses. Only by expanding your view of reality can you decide, in due time, that there's nothing to fear and nothing to defend against. Then the fences disappear as if by magic.

As it stands, science is obviously the most powerful tool in history for gaining objective knowledge. It has erected a fence so wide -- and so quickly-expanding -- that you might believe nothing lies outside the fence. However, science so far has excluded subjective experience. To be allowed inside their fence, any experience of love, beauty, truth, creativity or anything else that happens subjectively must be stripped down to the facts and nothing but the facts. As science expands, it casts light on many areas of ignorance. At the same time, the area that is shut out remains just as vast. Data isn't the same as human experience, and therefore data cannot explain who we are and why we are here.

Science isn't going to knock down the fence that separates subjectivity and objectivity. On a daily basis, gathering facts and data constitutes the working life of every scientist. Yet as the fence has expanded, the search for knowledge somehow found itself stuck. Every discovery opened up more unknowns, and most of the time the unknowns are so huge that they swamp the discovery that led up to them.

• The Big Bang was a great discovery, but it opened up the overwhelming mystery of dark matter and dark energy.
• DNA was a great discovery, but it opened up the mystery of the epigene, "soft inheritance" and the confusing dynamics of genetic interaction.
• Mapping the human genome was a great discovery, but it revealed that diseases like cancer involve up to 500 genes and mental disorders like depression may be just as complicated.
• Quantum mechanics was a great discovery, but it dissolved the physical properties of matter and therefore removed the stability of the physical universe.
• General relativity was a great discovery, but black holes revealed that time and space can vanish, while on the other side of the spacetime continuum, there is a void about which no evidence can be gathered.

If you are a hard-core materialist and believe in the reductionist method, you must pin your hopes on future discoveries that will resolve these mysteries. The problem is that in each case, there is a breakdown in the scientific method. Looking over the fence at religion and philosophy, science has had 200 years to feel secure and victorious. It has promoted the motto, "If it's not science, it's not real." Now that smug sense of victory is fraying around the edges, because a fence is still a fence, no matter how wide it gets. Telling philosophy and spirituality that they don't count was like whistling in the dark. As the physical universe dissolved, as spacetime vanished into the void, as the gene turned out to be fluid and dynamic, the very basis of materialism found its far horizon. At the same time, it hit a brick wall.

If we return to our original scheme that every question is based on an order of meaning, when materialism breaks down its questions turn meaningless. Just as it is meaningless to ask a scientist if an embryo has a soul, it is equally meaningless to ask if God provides data to prove his existence. What is needed, and very urgently, is a way to salvage the meaning of life, because materialism is fast petering out. Not just because there are big issues that cannot be answered by data, but also because science has led to disasters like chemical pollution and the atomic bomb. I don't want to indulge in science-bashing. A kinder way to put it is that the things we really need to know, right this minute -- how to live together in peace, how to save the planet, how to lift the well-being of every person on earth -- don't fit inside the fence that science has erected to divide human experience from objective facts.

For this, the final fence, to come down requires an expanded science. We are not going to be saved by a new religion or by philosopher kings. Science deals in solutions as well as knowledge. It aims to improve the quality of life and to give each of us more freedom. Yet when the time comes that science actually opposes those advances, intellectual honesty demands that a new way is found so that knowledge can do what it is supposed to do, advance the human race. In short, science must reinvent itself to take subjectivity into account, bringing reason and light where ignorance and denial has prevailed.

It takes leadership, creativity, openness and insight to expand science beyond mere data and raw materialism. In place of reductionism there must be wholeness. Shutting out love, beauty, truth and spiritual experience has to end. I know that countless scientists resist such suggestions, but no one is asking the confirmed atheists, skeptics, secularists and experimenters to change their colors. What is being asked instead is the expansion of consciousness. Consciousness has always been the province of philosophy; higher consciousness has been the province of spirituality. In order to defend its fence, science has excluded consciousness by calling it irrelevant or an illusion. Mostly, however, consciousness has been ignored. "They" -- those philosophers and religious people -- are interested in it, not "us."

Freedom, like wholeness, is non-exclusive. The fence builders forgot that reality is reality. There is not a separate reality for science and another for everyone else. Although people don't talk about it this way, the crisis facing planet Earth is actually a crisis over reality. In its separate version of reality, science dumps pesticides and genetically engineered seeds on the market, leaving out the dire consequences of these inventions because they aren't science. Religion fights wars over who worships the right God, ignoring the untold destruction that such divisiveness leads to. Philosophy, all but extinct, sits and sings to itself in an ivory tower, ignoring that the search for truth must exist in every human heart.

Only science has the prestige and power to change the situation and bring us into a better future. No other fences are expanding. If the expansion of science, which is unstoppable, can be merged with the expansion of consciousness, there is more than hope for the future. There is a foundation for a golden age. Once we realize that consciousness is the ground state of all experience -- after all, even data collection takes place in awareness -- we can step onto a higher plane of creativity and intelligence. Higher consciousness is just a term for the next step in human evolution, where we consciously guide our own growth, not by manipulating nature but by finding our source in consciousness.

We are meant to be co-creators of reality. This is one of the main conclusions of the world's wisdom traditions. However, as long as human beings seem to stand outside the universe pretending to observe it objectively, outside forces will dominate us. We will live, as we do now, in a state of separation and division. I realize that this argument sounds abstract. You can't get clean energy or the cure to AIDS by looking into consciousness -- not right away. The inescapable truth is that answers only appear depending on the kind of question you ask. The great quantum pioneer Werner Heisenberg declared that the universe presents a different face depending on how you question it. If you ask for data, the universe is a collection ground for facts. If you ask for consciousness, the universe becomes the source of creativity, intelligence and evolution.

HYPERTENSION-LIFESTYLE DISEASE

It took a while before lifestyle disorders were recognized for what they are, a product of "normal" living that turns out not to be normal so far as the body is concerned. To previous generations of doctors, a creeping rise in blood pressure, for example, was considered normal with each decade of life. It was overlooked, or shrugged off, that hypertension needs a long span of years to cause damage and that even marginal hypertension -- blood pressure on the border of being high -- threatens the body almost as much as the full-blown disorder.

Because every cell is affected by the fluid pressure inside your body, let's look at how a necessary condition turns damaging. Hypertension is publicized as the "silent killer" for its absence of symptoms detected by the afflicted person. The condition may go unnoticed for years, with few if any signs of discomfort -- unlike the cartoon character sending his blood pressure through the roof, steam doesn't come out of your ears, your face doesn't turn red and you don't swell up. Generally speaking, nothing hurts.

Hypertension often isn't seen as the culprit until a serious medical problem appears. It is a dangerous disease in its own right, however, with multiple complications. Hypertension can permanently damage the eyes, lungs, heart or kidneys. Malignant (i.e., highly elevated) blood pressure is deadly: Without treatment fewer than 10 percent of people with malignant hypertension survive for more than 1-2 years.

The rise in childhood obesity, lack of exercise and poor diet, the age at which blood pressure begins to rise has gotten younger. (There isn't a simple target blood pressure reading that indicates high blood pressure in children, because what's considered normal blood pressure changes as children grow.) About half of adults with hypertension don't have their blood pressure under control.

Blood pressure is the force of circulating blood against the inner walls of blood vessels. The amount of pressure is determined by how much blood your heart pumps, how forcefully your heart is pumping and the amount of resistance to blood flow in your arteries. Arteries are flexible, capable of narrowing or expanding. This isn't the same, however, as the flexibility of a plastic hose, which responds mechanically to pressure inside it. Arteries are living tissue, and they can expand or contract due to stress or changing emotional states. Blood pressure isn't steady, either -- it normally fluctuates throughout the day. Hypertension is diagnosed as persistently high pressure in the arteries.

Measurement

Blood pressure is generally expressed as two numbers. The first or top number represents the pressure when your heart contracts: the systolic pressure. The second or bottom number represents the pressure when your heart rests between beats: the diastolic pressure. A single high reading isn't enough for a diagnosis of hypertension. Health care practitioners will generally take a number of readings over several different days before making a diagnosis. Normal blood pressure is considered to be <120 systolic and <80 diastolic. Prehypertension is 120-139 systolic or 80-89 diastolic. High blood pressure, stage 1, is 140-159 systolic or 90-99 diastolic. Stage 2 is >160 systolic or >100 diastolic. Pressure of >180 diastolic or >120 systolic is a hypertensive emergency. This level of hypertension can permanently damage organs, so medical help must be sought immediately.

Three types of hypertension

Before considering prevention and treatment, one has to look at the three types of hypertension that exist, since they aren't all alike. Primary, or essential, hypertension accounts for 90-95 percent of all cases and doesn't have a specific medical cause. This is the type almost all of us must pay attention to in our lifestyle choices. Secondary hypertension, on the other hand, is caused by an underlying condition, for instance, kidney disease. If the underlying condition is corrected, blood pressure usually returns to normal. A third type, pregnancy-related hypertension, may occur in pregnant women who already have a predisposition to hypertension.

Primary hypertension may have no specific cause, but still there are a number of factors that put you more at risk for developing it. Most can be managed while a few cannot.

Risk factors that can be managed include:

• Obesity (a primary risk factor)

• Smoking or using tobacco in any form

• Drinking too much alcohol

• Lack of exercise

• High levels of fat and cholesterol in your blood

• Too much salt (sodium) in your diet

• Too little potassium in your diet

• Too little vitamin D in your diet

• Oral contraceptives

• Stress

• Certain chronic conditions, like diabetes and sleep apnea

These risks all imply positive changes to reverse them. Before going into that area, let me finish with the medical details.

Risk factors that can't be managed include:

• Age. The risk of hypertension increases as you age.

• Race. Hypertension is more common among African Americans.

• Genetics. High blood pressure tends to run in families.

Hypertension and atherosclerosis are intimately related. Hypertension can cause atherosclerosis, or hardening of the arteries, when the walls of the arteries try to defend themselves against high blood pressure by becoming stiffer, thicker and narrower. On the flip side, atherosclerosis can raise blood pressure when arteries become stiff and choked by plaques, impeding blood flow.

The complications of atherosclerosis are many, and they can be very serious.

• Heart disease. Reduced blood flow to the heart can cause angina (chest pain). Heart attacks can result when coronary arteries are completely blocked. Uncontrolled hypertension is one of the major risk factors for heart disease, the leading cause of death in the U.S.
• Stroke. People with even prehypertension have a greatly-increased risk of stroke. Atherosclerosis can cause blockage in the arteries that feed the brains as well as weakening of the smaller blood vessels of the brain.
• Enlarged heart. Narrowed arteries make it difficult for the heart to move blood through them. The heart overworks and in doing so becomes both larger and weaker. This can lead to congestive heart failure.

Among other complications, hypertension damages tiny capillaries as well as arteries. This can cause:

• Kidney disease. The kidneys are densely packed with millions of capillaries whose job it is to filter waste from the blood. Hypertension gradually destroys these capillaries, which are replaced by scar tissue.
• Vision damage. Hypertension can cause the capillaries in your eye's retina to rupture and also damage the capillaries that supply it with blood to your retina. The results may be blurred vision and even blindness.

Lifestyle change

Doctors should advise patients with rising blood pressure to make healthy changes in their lifestyle before prescribing any medicine. Many times these changes are all that is needed to bring pressure down to a normal level. But the key is to make them yourself before symptoms arise or pressures elevate. A conscientious doctor may give you an early warning, but realistically, the responsibility lies with you, and the earlier you adopt a positive lifestyle, the greater the benefits decades from now. Last-minute intervention is the worst choice, since it usually sentences a patient to prescription drugs for the rest of his life.

Exercise

Exercise, and particularly aerobic exercise, lowers hypertension as much as some medications. Exercising regularly, for a minimum of 30 minutes a day, five days a week, lowers pressure by an average of 5-10 mm Hg. This can allow you to lower the amount of medication you take or even do without it altogether.

Being physically active:

• Strengthens the heart so it pumps more efficiently and with less force
• Increases production of nitric oxide, a naturally-occurring substance that induces arteries to dilate
• Reduces inflammation, a major cause of artery-hardening plaque
• Improves cholesterol and triglyceride levels
• Reduces stress

Remember, exercise doesn't necessarily mean running on a treadmill or swimming laps. Anything that increases your respiration and heart rate counts, from raking leaves to going up and down stairs.

Diet

Lowering your salt intake and eating whole foods that are high in nutrients and antioxidants are seen as keys to lowering your blood pressure through diet. But you should pay specific attention, because most people, up to 80 percent, are not salt sensitive; that is, their salt intake doesn't immediately translate into higher blood pressure. That's not the same as saying that our national habit of overdoing on salt is healthy, since other considerations, such as putting stress on the kidneys, come into play. There is no "blood pressure diet" that resolves hypertension specifically, as long as you aren't gaining excess weight or eating too many fats.

DO EAT

The following foods are rich in inflammation-fighting antioxidants, fiber, and essential nutrients:

• Whole grains, such as oatmeal, whole wheat, and quinoa
• Colorful vegetables, like dark leafy greens, tomatoes, sweet potatoes, and carrots
• Dark-skinned fruits, including black grapes, cherries, and plums
• Lean protein, such as fish, chicken, and vegetable protein
• Nuts, seeds, and legumes
• Canola oil and extra-virgin olive oil

AVOID

• Salt.  Sodium (salt) causes some people to hold extra water, putting additional stress on their heart and blood vessels and causing blood pressure to rise. Watch out for processed food and restaurant food, especially fast food, which tend to be high in salt.
• Alcohol. Having more than two drinks a day raises the risk of hypertension by 1.5-2 times. The more alcohol your drink, the greater the risk.
• Caffeine. Caffeine can cause brief but dramatic increases in blood pressure.
• Sugar. There's growing evidence that eating a diet high in sweets may lead to hypertension.

Quit smoking

If you smoke, quit. Smoking raises your blood pressure from 5-10 mm Hg or more every time you light up. Quitting smoking reduces inflammation and greatly decreases the chances of having a heart attack and stroke.

Reduce stress

Unmanaged stress increases blood pressure because stress elevates levels of corticosteroids, the "stress hormones." Corticosteroids increase blood pressure, among other physiological effects.

Lose weight

Being overweight or obese makes hypertension worse. As your body weight increases, your blood pressure goes up, too.

The reverse also holds true: as you lose weight, your blood pressure goes down. Losing as little as 5 lbs. can reduce hypertension. The more weight you lose, the lower your blood pressure can go. In one study of over 1,200 people, those who lost 10 lbs. (4.5 kg) or more had reductions in diastolic and systolic blood pressure of, on average, 5.0 mm Hg and 7.0 mm Hg.

Get enough sleep

There's a link between hypertension and not getting enough sleep. In a recent study, both systolic and diastolic blood pressure were higher in people who slept less than 8 hours a night. Sleep helps to regulate stress hormones and maintains the health of the nervous system. It's possible that stress hormones that are unregulated due to lack of sleep could contribute to hypertension.

Treatment with medication

If lifestyle measures don't lower blood pressure sufficiently, one or more medications may be prescribed.

• Thiazide diuretics dilate blood vessels and decrease fluid volume.
• Angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors dilate blood vessels.
• Angiotensin II receptor blockers (ARBs), like ACE inhibitors, dilate blood vessels.
• Beta-blockers slow heart rate, decrease cardiac output, lessen the force with which the heart muscle contracts, and dilate blood vessels.
• Calcium channel blockers decrease the pumping strength of the heart, slow the heart rate, and relax blood vessels and muscles.
• Renin inhibitors cause blood vessels to dilate.

Self-monitoring

It's a reasonable idea to self-monitor your blood pressure, keeping track of your readings in a blood pressure diary. Self-monitoring shows you if your treatment is working and how well your hypertension is being controlled.  But be aware that your readings will go up and down, with daily highs and lows along with weekly variations. That means monitoring your blood pressure at various times during the day so that you can see if there are times when your pressure spikes.

Ask your health care practitioner when and how often you should check your blood pressure. In general, it's the low number that is significant since it shows the pressure of a body at rest, which is the pressure your cells and organs must live with.  The higher number fluctuates, usually over a short period -- only if it is persistently high, along with a bad reading of the low number, should you consider yourself at risk. Also, "white coat syndrome," which causes many people to get an abnormally high spike because of the stress of visiting a doctor, can extend to home monitoring. Worrying about your blood pressure tends to make hypertension worse, so if self-monitoring is an extension of worry, reconsider how good it is for you.

There is no escaping that high blood pressure, like every lifestyle disorder, poses two choices that many people find unpalatable: live with positive habits or resign yourself to taking medication as you grow older. We live at a time when prevention has proven itself over and over, while the general population becomes more sedentary and obese.  In the end, all lifestyle options are a matter of personal choice. Moving in the right direction doesn't need to be drastic if you start early enough. Stay in your comfort zone while reassuring yourself that the zone can expand until you reach your ideal goal.

LIFE FUNDA

he Four Noble Truths represent the core of the teachings of the Buddha, and are as follows:

The First Noble Truth - dissatisfaction and suffering exist and are universally experienced.

The Second Noble Truth - Desire and attachment are the causes of dissatisfaction and suffering.

The Third Noble Truth - There is an end to dissatisfaction and suffering.

The Fourth Noble Truth - The end can be attained by journeying on the Noble Eight-fold Path.

THE NOBLE EIGHTFOLD PATH: Right Understanding, Right Thinking, Right Speech, Right Attitude, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, Right Concentration.

1. Right View: See things as they truly are without delusions or distortions for all things change. Develop wisdom by knowing how things work, knowing oneself and others.

2. Right Intention: Wholehearted resolution and dedication to overcoming the dislocation of self-centered craving through the development of loving kindness, empathy and compassion.

3. Right Speech: Abstinence from lies and deceptions, backbiting, idle babble and abusive speech. Cultivate honesty and truthfulness; practice speech that is kind and benevolent. Let your words reflect your desire to help, not harm others.

4.Right Action: Practice selfless conduct that reflects the highest statement of the life you want to live. Express conduct that is peaceful, honest and pure showing compassion for all beings.

5. Right Livelihood: Avoidance of work that causes suffering to others or that makes a decent, virtuous life impossible. Do not engage in any occupation that opposes or distracts one from the path. Love and serve our world through your work.

6. Right Effort: Seek to make the balance between the exertion of following the spiritual path and a moderate life that is not over-zealous. Work to develop more wholesome mind states, while gently striving to go deeper and live more fully.

7. Right Mindfulness: Through constant vigilance in thought, speech and action seek to rid the mind of self-centered thoughts that separate and replace them with those that bind all beings together. Be aware of your thoughts, emotions, body and world as they exist in the present moment. Your thoughts create your reality.

8. Right Concentration: Through the application of meditation and mental discipline seek to extinguish the last flame of grasping consciousness and develop an emptiness that has room to embrace and love all things.