Good Health, Intelligence and Smoking

When we first try a puff of a cigarette it makes us want to vomit. We get lightheaded and dizzy. Our lungs feel like they are being scoured by wire wool. Yet we persist, we keep puffing. Do we take the massive hint our body is giving us and stop there and then? No.

We can find all sorts of ways to hurt ourselves. Very popular at present are over-eating, living with self loathing, taking drugs, alcohol, losing ourselves in work, pushing our body in work or sport and pushing so hard we can’t feel anymore. All of these have a devastating impact on our bodies. Yet we pride ourselves on our intelligence as a species.

If we are so intelligent, why would we wreck the body we have to live in for the rest of our lives?

With smoking, what happens to these terrible signal’s from our body? Do we tell ourselves that they disappear as we get used to the smoke? The body’s response to toxic poison remains, but we override it and keep overriding it with every puff. The reaction becomes normal.

We simply make it normal to poison ourselves. 

When are we going to start asking questions that lead to the truth of this shocking fact? Every time we reach for a cigarette, why don’t we feel what we are doing with our actions? We know deep down that what we are doing is killing us and wrecking our body. We all think we are ‘smart cookies’. We pride ourselves on our ‘intelligence’. We are not wanting to accept what the statistics show us:

• 1 person dies every 6 seconds from smoking. (1) (2)

• Unless urgent action is taken, the annual death toll could rise to more than eight million by 2030. (1)

• More than 600,000 deaths are the result of non-smokers being exposed to second-hand smoke, 300,000 of whom are children. (2)

• Tobacco is a global epidemic that is getting rapidly worse as the tobacco industry penetrates the developing world. (2)

If we know that smoking kills one person every six seconds, why do we choose to do it?

How does this sit alongside our claims of being the most intelligent species on this planet?

How does true intelligence use a poison repeatedly?

That doesn’t seem so smart. We think we are so great, can use our ‘great mind’s’ to solve complex problems, to think our way out of anything, when in reality – 

We can’t actually think our way out of a paper bag.  

If we can rationalise self-poisoning, which we do, how can we possibly trust the source of such rationalisation? How is this okay? 

The nonsensical nature of the choice to smoke is just one example of a massive variety of self abuse. All make a mockery of plain ‘common sense’ and ‘intelligence’. If we had sense we would not choose any such torturous way to devastate the body. We would not choose to die from lung cancer. We would choose good health, vitality, really deep self-care and regard. We would love our body so deeply we would adore feeling what it is like to live with it in each and every moment. The fact that we are not choosing these options tells us what a lie our intelligence is.  

The choice is ours.

We can choose the lie and a long slow death…

Or health and vitality.

You would think this would be a no-brainer – surely any intelligent person would make the choice of health? It seems not.

Q. So what kind of intelligence do we really have here?

A. The kind that is ready to kill us.      

So what if the intelligence we have pursued in life has narrowed us? Where we can be ‘smart’ in one or a few areas, but, and as this article reveals, very ‘not smart’ or, ‘not wise’ in other areas? Do we get taught to study, acquire knowledge AND how to love ourselves, each other, self-care and nurture our bodies? No, far from it, self-abuse has become so normal we don’t even consider it as abuse. 

I have been one classic case of being an intelligent person capable of smoking, binge eating and drinking, choosing deep self loathing and self disregard all in order to avoid feeling, I was intelligent and yet would attack and abuse my body like there was no tomorrow.

I would rally against the world and blame everyone for my life and got sick as a consequence. When I smoked I got bronchitis regularly which put me in hospital; I gave up smoking and became so heavy my knees could not carry me up the stairs without giving way. The bigger I got the more I had an excuse to deeply loath myself and hate my body.  

This is the kind of intelligence we have that is capable of crushing ourselves, the kind that keeps us blaming others for our woe’s, the kind of intelligence that is bent on destroying the body while arrogantly fooling ourselves we are the superior species.   

I used to think I was so smart while I was living like this, but how smart is it to destroy and harm the body we will live in for the next 40, 50 or 60 years? What kind of quality of life do we smart guys think we are setting up for ourselves here? 

Meeting Serge Benhayon was a defining moment for me, I was presented with the possibility there was another way to live that did not involve self-loathing but self-love and self care, a way that did not put sole focus on my ability to be ‘intelligent’ and ‘do’ life, but embraced my deep sensitivity and that I did not need to shut down in order to live and do my work. Seeing the way Serge lived allowed me to realise how much I had been fooled by my own intelligence which had got me nowhere but sick.  

This narrowed form of intelligence is leading us by the nose, it plays us for the greatest fools in the Universe.  

References:

1. The World Health Organisation 2014 statistics http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs339/en/
2. ASH (Action on Smoking & Health): http://ash.org/resources/tobacco-statistics-facts/

By Ariana Ray, Professional Registered Social Worker, England

Further Reading:
Heart disease – is it all about love?
World no tobacco day – May 31st 2015
Why Do We Smoke?