Into the Woods

Here I am.

So much has been happening and so little. I am getting married in roughly 90 days and spring is here and we had our first official thunderstorm and downpour, last night! And yet...

Something is amiss.

I feel completely unwound by it all. I can't seem to get my head clear, I feel like I have a lot of repenting to do -- and so I am going to begin my own little Juice Feast beginning today, I will finish up with the March 92 day-ers and may go a bit beyond them. We will see how the body fares, but I really regret not starting the feast; considering the emotional download I was dealing with I didn't know if it (at the time) more detoxing was something I could handle. But I am having non-buyers, no -- coward's remorse. And so I posted this lovely little bit of Art by Alan Lee, mostly because I can't tell where I am in the picture -- am I still in the tower? Am I the tree encircle by the salamander? (Heaven forbid, the Old Man??)

What's that line in the Torah, where God asks the whereabout of Abraham? And he answers: Here Am I. Here, no where else. I want to be Here. Even whern there is fear. And there is fear in me absolutely. I have been told that t age 27, I still don't know who I am. My rabbi says I am on a Spirit Quest... Oh! I almost forgot: I have started taking Hebrew classes. That's new. So is the fact that my doctor told me that my health issues stem from a waaa-aay (!) under-active thyroid and the fact that my adrenal system is taxed out; that I have been surviving basically on adrenaline fumes for the past six years. No wonder I feel stressed out. So I am taking things to remedy that. Other than that -- he says I am in great health; I have a fantastic heart (as in organ)!

But back to Being. I have a problem with being Present. I have heard it as a mantra almost my entire life, and I often espouse the benefits of Being there... But I rarely make time to do so myself. I rarely pay attention to my breath any more -- I call myself a spiritual person and rarely make time for being in Spiritual practice. Oh shame, shame, indeed. What I am learning in Hebrew (besides the alphabet) is the metaphorical complexity of an ancient language and it takes my breath away. It's beautiful. Besides Sanskrit (at least in my opinion) there is no language I have encountered that has anything on Hebrew. The actual relationship to God is powerful and there is a concept within the language that has me reeling... that is HaMakom, which is a title for God (like Hashem, Adonai) but it means The Place. God is a place. A landscape of Being. And for some reason, that has really put me into a perspective I can experience. Its not any place I can go -- but it is somewhere I can arrive. Here Am I.

So today, I am packing my bags; going on a Juice Feast. I start today! Hurray! Thanks in advance to David & Katrina Rainoshek for their bountiful information, check them out here!

What do you all do, to regain your sense of "Here Am I?"

P.S.

I have finally bought a 9-tray Excaliber Dehydrator! I already own an Omega juicer (the good kind) and a Vitamix (all purchases since October of last year). I have also purchased books for recipe ideas, including: Rainbow Green Live-Food Cuisine, Ani's Raw Food Kitchen, RAWvolution, I Am Grateful: Recipes and Lifestyle of Cafe Gratitude, & Everyday Raw. (I am a very good Amazon customer *wink).

I am finding it hard to transition slowly in Raw. I find that I keep backsliding and am notoriously hard on myself -- any tips for someone looking forward to high-100% raw?

I'm Back, Baby!

I'll explain that title later, but I do feel that I must pass on what We Like it Raw has already posted this morning -- the Truth. Now in a new documentary called FOOD MATTERS.



On the We Like it Raw site, they write (and thank you for doing the work for us about this):

What is Food Matters?
Food Matters is a documentary film informing you on the best choices you can make for you and your family's health. Helping you save time, money and effort.

In this day and age with so many companies interested in profiting from our misfortune and ill health this film will help keep your money in your pocket and your health in your hands

In a mission to uncover the truth we have tracked down several of the world’s leaders in nutrition and natural healing from around the globe in order to provide you with the most up to date information on curing disease naturally.

When can you watch it? The film is coming soon and will initially only be available through foodmatters.tv so make sure you’re the first to know by registering your name and email address here

The World Should Take Sips

In addition to being Easter Sunday, yesterday, it was also World Water Day 2008. And as I was looking through my RSS feeds this morning I found this article on Treehugger.com

And I suddenly found another instance where my life is at odds with the day to day experience of most of the world. Case in point: as I was reading the article at 8:20 this morning, I did so as I was feasting on a breakfast of leftover meringue cookies, fruit salad and custard. Whew. Yeah.

So if you can't read the little color key (as it is in French) the orange means that less than 65% of the population has access to drinking water... How's that for perspective?

The Last Bite (From the Body-Life)

I have become very annoyed by seeing that every cookbook on health begins with Hippocrates. “Let Food Be thy Medicine and Medicine, Thy Food…” It always appears somewhere, usually in the first twenty pages, if it wasn’t the opening quote. This concept attributed to Hippocrates, was what drew me into food and nutrition long before I knew who spoke the words. This goes to show how true and natural concepts become pervasive, especially when one is looking for it. And I know that this is a truth. That food heals. But so do our thoughts… and it has gotten to the point that no matter what I put into my mouth, I am in judgment about it. I rationalize, polarize, and vacillate into extremes out of the need to control something! Let me have control over one tiny part of something… let me get out of this fear that unravels and twitters behind every thought, every action: nothing is sincere anymore, or at least, sometimes, it feels this way.

Food has become so many things for so many people. It is not merely what provides sustenance, for many it is comfort, love, acceptance, a drug, an obsession, another means of control, another way to abstain from any sense of being, a numbing shot against pain or grief, pornographic gastronomy... of which, all I am guilty of, I'm sure. And then there it was, on the top of page 30 in Sally Fallon’s Nourishing Traditions: my ultimate issue.

“The desire to abstain from animal products, found so often in those of a spiritual nature, may reflect a longing to return to a former, more perfect state of consciousness that was ours before our souls took embodiment in a physical material plane […].”

I find myself in this struggle of what I relate to in my spiritual sense and my fear and buffering against the joy and the sorrow of the physical body. The compassion for all living creatures, the love in their eyes and innocence, mixed with my craving for animal protein. Most of the time, meat tastes dead to me. But then I can remember a bacon-wrapped date that dissolved in my mouth with such exquisite sweetness, such tender, melt in your mouth, salty, crispy sublimity, it had a density which made the tongue giggle all on its own. And I don't even like pork. But there was such attention put into that meal, that night, in Marin County, under palm trees and lanterns, sharing wine amongst friends.

It’s not that I think raw food is not of benefit to my body, but I have developed so many food-rules for myself, that I feel like I am just using raw as one more way to control what goes in my mouth. I have a very bizarre eating disorder. I’m not bulimic, although I have made myself throw up …more in the last 2 years than ever in my adolescence. But I definitely have a binge-purge pattern going on, especially when I look at my food journal. I didn’t think I starved myself… but some days, I eat hardly anything at all… and wonder why I am so maniacally famished into downing too much pasta or potatoes the next: my body is screaming for quick glucose. I am realizing that I have royally screwed up my relationship with my body. I stopped seeing it as sacred: it was the enemy.

Whenever it comes to food, thoughts about said bacon-wrapped bounty are always essential (in what way, who knows?) … But I think it is also what thoughts and intentions I use in preparation. One of spiritual my teachers, a small Indian man with a gravelly voice would stand over his pot of rice or sautéing ginger garlic onions, and say: “You are so beautiful. You are the most wonderful onions. Look at you, look at how beautiful you are.” The tomatoes blushed in response. The same man also said that whenever you truly enjoy something… not out of craving-aversion-lust-compulsion: but genuinely enjoy – it all turns to soma. And no matter how healthy something else is, if your body is in judgment or in fear-hate-compulsion about it, it becomes ama … undigested matter = dis-ease.

Somewhere between nineteen and twenty-six years old, I had developed a love-hate relationship with food. A need to stuff myself with the most sublime things, coupled at other moments with anything that would do to make me numb, send me into a carbohydrate induced coma, just anything to not feel. Now, to be clear, this was not fast food or ice cream. I was a health foodie, all-organic everything. Whole grain, (spelt, buckwheat, barley, brown rice, quinoa) what’s-it and every manner of vegetable. I had an adventurous palate, within reason (no chicken feet stew or sweetbreads has made it past my lips, and I’m pretty sure that won’t change). But then again, organic pasta was always enough to send me down that dark spiral, where the fog rolls in on the east coast of consciousness and nothing but the blur and heft of fullness can be felt. Here, I didn’t have to think about school or sex or the unfairness I always associated with be female, I could just disconnect from any sub-sensual method of being alive and slip away into a useless stupor; a drug just as powerful as anything you could inject into the bloodstream, by needle, and almost as fast. I was addicted to not feeling. But like any addiction, it never really makes you feel good for very long, and when the fog cleared, the sun always rises the next morning and the pain (which I had pushed so deeply into my sinews, my feminine parts, places I knew that at least, I would never look, into cavernous brokenhearted hotels, muscles, curvaceous fatty deposits that I had never had before) was still there. I am a self-admitted food snob Spiritual egoist, South beach (tried it), Zone (tried it), Macrobiotics (tried it), Ayuveda, Vegetarian, Vegan(tried it), Raw food(tried it): glutton(tired of it). And am so sick of all the labels.

Someone recently asked me, have I ever tried just letting my body have whatever it actually wants? No judgments no second-guessing and after really thinking about it… no I haven’t. I have never actually let my body, not my neuroses, pre-programmed food-abridged rule induced conceptualized intellectualized rationalization, make a single decision in my life. I am beginning to suspect (har) that my issues with food will not go away with being thin or healthy, because they are 100% of the mind.

M has been on this wonderful kick of picking “intention” cards for the week – one of these for me was : I Love My Body.

…maybe I should just try that for awhile. And talking to my mom, she says: wow. I think you think too much. And she says, whenever I start to think too much, I should just breathe. Whenever you see yourself spiral into old thoughts, trying to find someplace in the head where its safe... just breathe. Ok. I will. I'll breathe. Love and Breathe.