I grew up on municipal water with fluoride. My toothpaste was fluoridated until my early 40's. Was fluoride a factor in my struggle to wake up consciously? It doesn't seem it was, frankly. Could it be a factor for someone?
Perhaps, and here's how: You discover that fluoride isn't very safe or good for you and you discover it's in your water AND your toothpaste, and you now walk the planet "fluoride afraid". You believe in mankind's limited mind view of what it sees as it studies the effects of fluoride from the outside in (effects seen on an unaware population who also places its faith in science and the human mind, I might add). As a result, each instance of encountering fluoride knowingly or unknowingly is a hit against your health now. Why? Because you attract the damage through your fear. You believe it is harmful to you, so it is.
You've literally disempowered your body's natural ability to meet that contaminant with the inherent strength of its natural integrity by believing your body cannot handle it. Your fear of the fluoride is a belief that it is more powerful than your own inherent health that's built right into your body's cells. Your body complies with your choice because you became conscious of something and made a choice. And that choice was to fear. Freewill is upheld here. By all other intelligent life, including body consciousness.
You can also choose to empower your body by having faith and trust in its inherent ability to face any contaminant with whatever it needs to neutralize that substance's toxicity, if indeed the body even finds it toxic when left alone to deal with it. What I'm implying there is being open to the possibility that your body and that substance know each other well, and already are in harmony as their natural state of being, because THEY don't believe in separation. That perhaps they already know that your body, spirit and all matter are ONE. It is only your mind that isn't aware yet that there IS NO ENEMY except your own choice to fear.
This does not mean that you wantonly consume fluoride once you are aware it is not exactly the best thing to take in, no. But you also don't unduly disrupt your life in order to accommodate a false need to avoid it at all costs. Or start a cause and disable others by instilling fear in them as well.
Trust in life and nature. Once you are aware of something, it is important to understand how to properly apply the knowledge gained. This is wisdom. Choosing to fear the knowledge you acquire, or the implications of that knowledge, is not applying it well. This is not how knowledge empowers. In fact, choosing fear is indicative of still having enough ignorance surrounding your knowledge to render that knowledge harmful. You're not complete, in other words, with that particular lesson yet. You will know you are when you no longer fear.
And in using the word fear, it appears that a great many people don't understand what is meant. Or assume they do know, and discount the discussion because they aren't "afraid". As used here, it doesn't mean shaking in your boots, can't sleep at night, or even feeling a need to warn the world (though all of these are a certain level of fear). It means the very simple, base level of choice that goes against trusting you are always well, safe and supported.
Fear in this sense is that nitty-gritty level assumption made that there is something you are encountering (or could ever encounter) that is greater than what you're made of that causes you to feel a need to protect yourself against it lest it "win" your life away from your sovereign domain. As if... that's even possible. This is fear at work.
It is completely understandable to take that stance in this world, of course. But if you're on the path, if you're seeking truth... it behooves you to reconsider that choice at every turn. Unfortunately fearing is quite embedded in consciousness here, and often goes unquestioned, labeled "common sense" or is even championed as "thinking with a hammer".
What's real and true is that whatever you are encountering is for your benefit, and your only "job" in the face of it is to discover how that is so. "How does this experience benefit my total self?" "What is the value of encountering this idea/thing at this time in my life? What have I been focusing on in my thoughts? How have I been feeling recently? How does this encounter relate to my energies as I've been experiencing them?"
If probed honestly, we inevitably - eventually - come to realize that what we encounter outside us is a result of what was going on inside us at some level for a while. The outer encounter is a reflection for us, to learn from. Not a causal factor in our life but a result of our consciousness. The causal plane exists at the unseen level. What's seen is the result of consciousness causes. *
So you can switch to non-fluoridated toothpaste, drink filtered water, but also trust that should you consume fluoride knowingly or unknowingly, your body knows what to do so that it isn't an issue for you or your health. And most knowledge about the dangers of this or that substance is minor in importance on the path once trust in life and nature is firmly established. You literally become impervious to much.
This is so simply because you now understand the value of dangers in a physical universe. They bring about dilemmas of consciousness. They insist that you consider many possibilities, engage yourself, choose something. Through this process you are given the opportunities needed to awaken to the truth of who you are.
You needn't be constantly at their whim or mercy, however. You can master the awareness needed to be in harmony and cooperation with life in this regard. Life will watch out for you just as you watch out for your own well being. This occurs through frequency resonance. All of your exploration, discovery and choice-making alters your frequency. All life is intelligent. Everything that exists resonates to certain frequencies. You simply won't encounter what you do not and cannot attract, once your awareness is such that those lessons are complete.
Most of the fears mankind lives with daily and thinks are "common sense" are rooted in a fear of death. Face that, and you will come to understand much of what I offered here in this thread. When you have no fear of dying, you suddenly look at all of life in a very different light. You become free to finally live.
I realize that many are not up to living by these ideas put forth, but some of us do, and do quite well. They are tested, tried and true for many years. Not just theories. And if one can accomplish something in this world through self-empowerment, all of us can. It's a choice, however. A choice that demands a great deal of self-responsibility and diligence of a different order than the norm.
And so I offer them simply for consideration. Only you can say what's true for you anyway, but now there's another direction for exploration and discovery of your truth, perhaps. Take or toss, of course.
(Must be the retrograde, I've suddenly found my voice again.
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* NOTE: For those who often cite painful or traumatic experiences in early childhood before beliefs and prejudices could have formed as reason not to buy into the premise above, bear in mind that the "consciousness" of a human being entering this realm is predicated on many factors, for the purposes of learning. There are indeed "pre-sets" that produce experiences as fodder for growth. There is also the mass consciousness influences and spectrum of frequencies, which are limited, to appreciate. Once here, however, the "I" has free will to choose how that consciousness, at whatever level it may be, is utilized. Most children cannot do this as children here, no. But once they become adults, if they realize there was a set up for the specific purpose of their growth and learning, they can look back upon their childhood experiences and discover the truth of self and sovereignty just as much as they can from their current adult experiences. Once again, to do so requires making a choice to invest faith in fear or in trusting life and nature to be inherently supportive of our growth at the onset of the discovery process. In other words, choose to explore from an open stance, or choose to explore from a closed one. And realize you made the choice you did, because the results of your exploration will be based on your initial intent for discovery.
"The most important decision you have to make is whether you live in a hostile or friendly universe."
~ Albert Einstein
The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes. ~Marcel Proust
The evolution of humanity is an evolution of the heart. The path is through the heart.