Category Archives: Raw foods

Return to the Garden – Part Five: Wraps, Rolls, Scoops, and Bowls

by Dreama Vance

(To review this series from Part One, go here.)

This is the new way to eat your sandwich! These are ideal ways to eat living food in a comfortable, familiar manner. You can buy coconut wraps and flax wraps online now. All the work has been done for you! Just like making a sandwich, pull out your wrap, add your filling, roll it up and enjoy.

There are many living food recipes that remind us of old favorites like tuna salad and egg salad. There are veggie burgers and “fish” sticks, all completely vegan and delicious. These are easy to make and great to throw together for lunch time. Pâtés like “not-tuna salad” will keep for a few days extra in the fridge, so you can make ahead and pull out your filling when it is time to make your wrap. Patties like veggie burgers can be frozen for future use. You can easily defrost them and use the same day.

Scoops are a vegetable that serves the purpose of and replaces bread. Things like romaine lettuce, a cabbage leaf, and my favorite, a napa cabbage leaf, all hold your filling and extras, just like a sandwich.

My very, very favorite way to eat a living food sandwich, though, is to make a SWITCH. I discovered this secret when we used to have breakfast burritos on the weekend. When I decided to eliminate wheat from my diet, I decided to put all of my breakfast burrito stuff in a bowl and eat it with a fork. It was sooo much better! You could really taste all of the ingredients. They came alive without being muted by bread or wheat flour. This is exactly what happens when you make your living food sandwich in a bowl. Stop and think about it. Really, what is the purpose of bread in a sandwich? Doesn’t it really just take the place of a plate? It just acts as a shelf for the filling of your sandwich.

The key is to put only the things you would normally put in your sandwich into your bowl. The good thing is you can put lots more of the good stuff in, like a thick Dagwood sandwich, and still eat it without making a mess! Plus, you can add those juicy tomatoes and not drip them on your shirt! Don’t you usually add lettuce and tomato to your sandwich? I always build mine with greens on the bottom, mix in your mayo, add your filling, top with tomato, sprouts, whatever you like, and dig into the super-good flavors.

You will be amazed at how good it is. It is so much better without the bread! I love cucumber and arugula sandwiches so I just scrunch up some baby arugula in a bowl, add my homemade nut “mayo,” stir it into the arugula, top with sliced cucumbers and sliced tomatoes and that’s it! You can do exactly the same with a veggie burger. You have to try it to believe it, but it actually does have more taste and flavor than it does on bread. The bread dampens the taste. Without the bread, those fresh veggies just shine with juicy goodness.

Don’t add any other ingredients than what you like on your sandwich. This is not a salad. It is a sandwich in a bowl. You can add more of what you normally put into your sandwich, but not a bunch of other things. You can load up on all of the things that go into a sandwich and eat as much as you want. There is no bread to weigh you down and your meal will leave you feeling light, satisfied, and refreshed.

It is so simple and easy to eat this way. I could feel a difference when I quit eating bread and wheat products. Many people who go gluten-free comment that they just feel better. That is probably because wheat processed into flour is a bit pro-inflammatory in the body.

Plus, did you know that wheat has 15 opioid elements that interact in a morphine-like manner with your brain?

Changing our habits takes effort. This Return to the Garden series of articles is designed to encourage you with simple ways you can begin to transition. When you begin the journey of making changes in the food you eat, you see from a certain perspective. Just like driving in a car when you start out on a trip, you are looking forward and moving toward a destination.

Once you get to where you are going, you see from a different perspective. The journey is behind you and your focus is now not on the trip, but on your destination. In other words, you have arrived. It doesn’t mean you didn’t enjoy the journey, because you should, by all means! But the point is that you want to get to where you’re going. It is here, when you arrive, that the blessings unfold like a bouquet of flowers.

Yes, you will experience many benefits along the way, more energy, balanced weight, better sleep, better concentration, less brain fog and many other physical, emotional, and mental benefits. All of these things can show up as you transition. But when you are no longer “working” to get there, when you have finally achieved your goal, that is when you can really notice the other wonderful things that take place in spirit.

It has taken me almost 18 years to discover the connection between raw, living food and spirituality. Almost from the beginning of my introduction to this way of eating I intuitively knew there was a connection. But how exactly did it work? There are many who talk about the benefits received physically, emotionally, and mentally. However, there just is not much information about the spiritual changes. People will tell you they “feel more alive,” or they feel “more connected.” Dr. Gabriel Cousens has a book on the topic, a tome really, that talks about our subtle energy bodies and 72,000 nadis. But what does all of that mean on a practical day to day level?

Here are the secrets I have discovered and want to share with you, for it is truly the spiritual benefits that make the effort to eat this way so worthwhile.

First and foremost, eating this way changes our consciousness. It took me 8 years after becoming a vegan to realize that veganism is about consciousness. Elevating consciousness is the reason spiritual teachings of old tell us to eat a vegetarian diet. Ancient teachings didn’t have to tell us not to eat processed food because there wasn’t any! But in today’s world, processed “food,” like the plague it is, must also be avoided. When you eat a primarily raw and living food diet even deeper changes happen in consciousness. It is your consciousness that transitions. You see life from a different level.

You experience a Freedom you weren’t even previously aware was missing. Once you reach this level of consciousness, one of the things you will be able to do is look back at your old self and see how you were bound to the miasma of 3D consciousness because of your food choices. It literally appears to stick to you, like stringy glue. You don’t see this when you are functioning at the level of 3 D because you are in it and experiencing life from that point of view. But as you rise in consciousness and are freed from those trappings, you can look back and see it. It is incredibly liberating.

Dreama, California coast

The second experience is Joy. This Joy, I think, comes from that higher state of consciousness as it resides with you no matter the outer circumstances of life. I have written about this Joy in previous articles and I know many of you know joy. I can only tell you that when I changed to a vegan diet, within two weeks that Joy descended upon me, almost like the descent of Grace, and it has never left me, not even in difficult and trying, soul-testing times.

The third thing is Communion. You begin to experience an actual communion with the food you eat. You will actually feel happy just by picking up your peach or your apple or cucumber. You will begin to “see” life in them. You will feel it, sense it. The life in the food begins to feed you in a totally different way. It is this experience, life communing with life, this opening to spirit that unveils itself when we come into harmony with nature with our food choices that I want you to understand.

This harmony begins to resonate within your being, connecting you to all life. You feel that connection all the time, not just once in awhile, or during deep meditation. Compassion, beauty, peace, these are the fruits of the spirit we receive when we eat the fruits and foods of the garden.

Tell a friend…

Return to the Garden – Part Four: What’s For Lunch?

by Dreama Vance

I don’t know about you, but for me when someone says, “What’s for lunch?” I immediately think soup and sandwich.

So let’s look at the first half of that possibility. Let’s talk soup! Blended soups that are fresh and living food. Savory smoothies can fall into this category, but I like to call them raw soup because if I offer my husband a smoothie at lunch time, he turns up his nose, but if I call it a raw soup and serve it in a warm bowl, he slurps it up and asks for more! So, soup it is! Plus, after you blend up your recipe, you can dice some additional veggies into your bowl and it really is a soup.

Soup carries a different mindset. It naturally says lunch or dinner for most of us and so living soups that are blended and creamy fit right into our transition to adding more foods from the garden. After all, most of us grew up with tomato soup from a can and it is super easy and so much more delicious to make a raw tomato soup, particularly since tomatoes are now in season for us north of the equator! Add a bit of beautiful basil and oh, my goodness! That is exactly what it is: goodness. We are putting the good into our bodies.

These living soup recipes can also pack in the greens and you can use avocado to make them creamy or you can use nuts, seeds, or nut butters. Either way, you want them to be delicious. If you think of them as soups, then you can add pinches of spices like you would a cooked soup to flavor your recipe. Take your ingredients out of the fridge early and let them come to room temperature. That way you don’t have cold soup and if it is a good recipe, you’ll not even think about it being uncooked, it will just be good! You’ll be surprised at how filling they are, too.

Here are my two secret tips for when a raw savory soup recipe turns out to be less than you had hoped: Consider adding a bit of miso to your blender of soup. A teaspoon to a tablespoon usually does the trick. I usually use a chickpea miso that is unpasteurized. This adds that savory component that sometimes is missing in raw soup recipes. Also, consider adding a bit of lemon juice, about a tablespoon or two per blender of soup. Just like in cooked food, lemon juice “brightens” the flavor of food. These are tips I have used when my soup recipe didn’t measure up to my expectations. Let’s face it, some recipes are great and some are mediocre.

You’ll find favorite recipes, just like with cooked foods, and make them your own. When making living food recipes, listen to your intuition. You’ll find it telling you up front if it sounds like too much salt or too much chili pepper in a recipe! Learn to listen. Always go small to start. You can add more of an ingredient as needed. It is almost impossible to take it away!

Here is the thing about raw and living food: Each individual fruit, veggie, and herb is slightly different. For example, some lemons are more tart, some tomatoes are sweeter than others; some celery tastes salty and some has a sweetness to it. These differences are very noticeable in raw food dishes, unlike in cooked food where flavors tend to meld together and differences go unnoticed. It is one of the delights of living foods. Once you understand this, you’ll be able to modify your recipes accordingly.

Here is one of my most important tips: If a raw recipe calls for a clove of garlic, I often replace this with a bit of garlic powder. Raw garlic, as opposed to cooked garlic, is spicy hot and packs a punch that can be overwhelming. Garlic powder can add flavor without that pungency. I do this with onions, too, often replacing them with a bit of onion powder. Cooking onion and garlic softens and sweetens these herbs. In their raw form, they are much more potent and can easily end up being the only thing you taste in your raw spaghetti sauce! If it is a dish that usually has these herbs raw, like a salsa, then you may be on safer ground, but I would still start with a smaller amount than the recipe calls for and add as needed. These are tips I have learned and offer if you’re a newbie to this way of eating.

You want your food to be delicious. As your tastes change, as your taste buds awaken, you will discover all the vibrant flavors in fresh foods that have been hidden to you because we’ve eaten so much processed food. Your tastes will come alive, but this takes time. So it is important that you like your food; otherwise, you’ll stay stuck where you are on your journey. The vibrancy, good health, and realizations awaiting your discovery are too important. I don’t want you to miss them!

So, start small with one tiny habit. Make it yours. Hug it to you and guard it. Like a lioness guarding her cubs, don’t let anything come between you and your life-promoting habit. There are “thieves” and “robbers” out there waiting to pounce and steal your joy. Don’t let them. Guard that tiny habit and nurture it. It is precious. Here is a wisdom teaching:

When you make something a sacred part of your day, it moves up in priority. When this happens, it becomes important to you.

Make your tiny habit a sacred part of your day. Think about eating as a sacred act. After all, we are nourished by the Divine. Living foods connect us with that Light. When you begin to consciously eat living foods, at some point a shift will happen. It is like a door opens in consciousness. Think of what you eat as a doorway. When you eat living plant food, the door opens to more Light, to higher consciousness. When you eat cooked food, the light is gone out of the food and the door closes, leaving us as we have been, shrouded in the thick veils of illusion. The living food thins the veils of consciousness, revealing more and more our connection to all life.

We have talked about two major daily habits you can start using to move you forward on your healthy and conscious journey: the daily juice habit and fruit smoothies. These make great breakfast foods to start your day. Now you can add savory soups to your repertoire. At Rawfoodrecipes.com you can find lots of raw food recipes from many different chefs to get you started.

Here is one of my favorite anecdotes:

The teacher was explaining to John the difference between juicing and blending. She explained how juicing removed some of the fiber, but packed in the nutrients, and how juice was quickly absorbed into the bloodstream, requiring little expenditure of digestive energy. She explained that blending kept all of the fiber, was fast and easy to prepare, but still had to be digested. John listened, nodding his head as if he understood, and then said, with his brow furrowed, “Why don’t I just eat the food?” The teacher laughed and said, “I don’t know! Why don’t you? But you don’t. We have to find a way to get the real food into you. This is why we juice and blend.”

This story illustrates why daily juicing and daily smoothies and living soups are so powerful. This is how we get the living food, filled with light, into our bodies.

Next time we’ll talk about the other half of the soup and sandwich equation! But for now…

Eat from the garden. Eat real food. Juice every day. Have a smoothie or living soup every day. Eat some fruit every day. JUST START! You’ll be on your way, dancing with delight, and loving it in no time at all!

Tell a friend…

Return to the Garden – Part Three: The Royal House

by Dreama Vance

“I’m never going to juice!” she said.

“Never, never, never!”

Okay, no one is twisting your arm. You don’t have to juice to change your diet. Think of it this way, you can push your car up the hill, or, you can get in, start the engine, and drive up the hill. Driving is a lot easier than pushing. This is what juicing does. It starts the engine and powers your body up the hill. The hill is the change you’re making in your eating habits.

Part Two of Return to the Garden explained the whys of juicing. It is the King. It carries the power. It carries the power both nutritionally and energetically. It’s your choice.

There are still easy ways to add fresh, living foods to your diet. These foods add light and life to your whole being. Living foods from the garden are enlightening and enlivening foods. Of course we want to eat them!

This series of articles is not about medical advice or nutritional advice. This series is about awakening consciousness and what we can do to support this process. What we eat makes a difference. There is much controversy and confusion about diet today. My guiding principle in all of my studies and amidst the confusion has been Nature. What does Nature give us to eat? Fruits, greens, veggies, herbs, nuts and seeds, sprouts. Always, I let Nature guide me in my decision-making process. She is much wiser than most of us!

Before I go on, let’s take a moment to clear up a myth about fruit. I don’t know where it started, but there is an idea that fruit is bad for you. Well, I would not recommend a fried apple pie from a fast food restaurant. But, once again, I look at Nature. What does she tell us about fruit? It is abundant! She gives us abundant fruits throughout the different seasons. This is all I need to know.

However, if you need more confirmation, Dr. Michael Greger of NutritionFacts.org says we should stuff ourselves with fruit. He says, “The two most prominent dietary risks for death and disability in the world are not eating enough fruit and eating too much salt.”

Hmm, I told you Mother Nature knows best. As you start eating more real food from the garden, you naturally eat less processed food. Thus, a lot of that salt and sugar that is hidden in processed “food” goes away, too. This is also how your tastes will naturally evolve and come alive.

By the way, if you have trouble digesting fruit, eat fruit first. It digests quickly. If you are used to eating fruit for dessert, eat dessert first! You know what they say about life being short! Food combining rules are a topic for an entire article, but eating fruits alone or with leafy greens is easier on the digestive process.

So, who is Queen of the Royal House? Smoothies, of course! Why? Because they are so fast, convenient, easy and… delicious! Smoothies got boosted into the limelight when Victoria Boutenko discovered she could get more greens into her diet by blending them with some fruit and water. Thus, green smoothies were born and became a revolution.

Most people find it easy to eat a banana, not so much a head of kale. So when you can combine them and they taste like a banana, but have the nutrient density of kale, you have a winner that just about everyone enjoys.

Remember to rotate the greens, both in smoothies and in juicing. It is important that you do this. Variety is important. Each type of plant offers a different nutrient profile. Also, each individual plant can have slight variations. I often buy the same type of vegetable from different farmers at the market because they are grown in different places, and thus have a slightly different nutritional profile for the body. With variety, you offer the body a smorgasbord of nutritional choices to meet its needs.

Note: Unlike juices that remove most of the fiber, smoothies keep the fiber. This is one of the benefits because we need fiber in our diet. However, you still have to digest this even though most of the chewing has been done for you by the blender blade. Therefore, it is wise to only blend up the same amount of food you would normally be able to chew up and eat. In other words, you’re not going to be able to blend up those 11 carrots and think you can consume them that way instead of juicing. That is a sure way to a tummy ache. So keep that concept in mind when you start blending smoothies.

Most people think about a sweet flavor when they hear the word smoothie, so let’s talk about sweet fruit smoothies.

You can vary the recipes by changing your fruits and greens. I like to keep mine simple, so here is my go-to recipe: fresh or frozen bananas, frozen berries, greens, and water or fresh orange juice. This is my staple recipe and then I can add other fruits as I desire.

I usually use bananas because they are widely available, inexpensive, easy to cut up and freeze to keep on hand, and they give your smoothie a creamy consistency. You can also use mango, peaches or avocado for that creamy consistency. I use frozen organic berries because they are readily available all year. They are usually frozen quickly after they are picked, thus maintaining their powerhouse of antioxidants. If you are new to green smoothies, you could start with spinach or even romaine lettuce for your greens as they are very mild in flavor.

I started drinking green smoothies when I had orange trees in my backyard, so I would quickly hand-squeeze the juice and use it in my smoothies. Yum! It makes the smoothie a little sweeter than when you use just water as the liquid. I found this was delicious and I didn’t need to add sweeteners like dates. As your tastes evolve, or if you already don’t like too much sweet, you can just use water, or mix it half and half. You can then use the whole peeled orange as one of your added fruits or not. No cheating with pasteurized orange juice! Use only fresh juice! Always!

When making your smoothies, put your liquid in first and add enough to start things blending, about a cup. Add about 2/3 fruit and 1/3 greens when you first start and you can add more greens as you get used to the taste. Be sure you have enough liquid to get the blender moving and you can then add more liquid if needed to get the consistency you like in your smoothie.

So here is my secret tip for all of you devoted smoothie fans. This will take your sweet smoothie recipe to a gourmet level. I add a few fresh leaves from my rosemary plant, not too many, just enough to add an interesting note to my Banana Blueberry O.J. smoothie. Use about an inch or two of one of the sprigs of the plant, and just use the leaves. You can also do this with fresh basil. Use a small handful of basil leaves. Add one or the other to your blender full of green fruit smoothie and enjoy!

Does it have to be a green smoothie? Of course not! Who doesn’t love the beautiful pink of a strawberry banana smoothie? There are a gazillion recipes to try.

One of my favorite snacks is a “chocolate milkshake.” It is just water, frozen banana, 2 or three dates, a tablespoon each of carob and mesquite powder, a teaspoon of tahini and a few ice cubes. It has no dairy and no chocolate. It is delicious and easy and I always have these ingredients on hand. This is living food. It nourishes your body, delights your senses, and you feel happy when you eat this way.

The only reason we focus on green smoothies is because it is such an easy way to add greens to your diet. Remember, greens are your mineral storehouse.

One of the reasons my green fruit smoothies are routinely bananas, berries and greens is because I prefer to just eat other fruits that are in season! I love to eat and totally enjoy whatever delicious fruit is in season. I don’t want to blend it with other things. I want to eat my juicy mango just as it is, or my peaches, or my cherries, or watermelon…. Yum! This way of eating doesn’t have to be complex. It can be simple and easy. In fact, the simpler it is, the easier your body likes it.

Before I forget, let me just say that a high-powered blender works best for smoothies and also for making nut milks and other goodies in a living food lifestyle. I’ve had a Vitamix for years and years, the same one, and use it all the time. There are other brands out now, too. They are more expensive than a regular blender, but worth it if you want to pursue this lifestyle. I’d much rather have a smoothie than a chunkie! Once you start blending everyday, often multiple times a day, the high-powered blender will more than pay for itself.

Next time, we’ll talk about “What’s for lunch?” and how you can add more food from the garden in the same simple and easy way.

The daily juice habit, a daily smoothie, and fresh fruit are ways to start your day with the light of the Sun. They empower your spirit, nurture you, and connect you to Life. Choose one and make it a conscious daily habit. Start to consciously add light to your life and body.

No matter where you are on your journey, you can begin. Come alive in a totally new way! I have so much more to share. But you only experience the change when you decide to implement it!

Tell a friend…

Return to the Garden, Part Two: Dietary Magic

by Dreama Vance

Changing to an unprocessed plant-based diet rich in organic, fresh, uncooked fruits and veggies is transformative and powerful at all levels of our being, not just physically and mentally, but emotionally and spiritually, too.

Can you just start eating from the garden? Of course! You can start by just eating an apple every day! But there is a powerful way, I think it may be a secret many people don’t know, to start you and keep you moving on your journey to eating those fresh, living foods that are full of light and life.

One of the best ways to start increasing your intake of fresh fruits and veggies is through the daily juicing habit. Make fresh juice. Remember in Part One we talked about how you now have to eat 11 carrots to get the same nutrition one carrot provided your grandma? I don’t know about you, but I don’t think I could sit down and eat 11 carrots. This is one of the perks of fresh juice! You can shovel in those carrots and greens.

Make your own fresh living juice everyday. It is a game changer!

There is something magical that begins to happen as you develop this habit. First, your body gets flooded with nutrients. You start to get those nutrients that have been missing from the other 10 carrots you weren’t eating! See how it works? It isn’t just carrots, of course, that are missing the nutrients they used to have, but all of our foods that are not grown in fertile, rich soil.

Something starts to happen when your body gets flooded with nutrients that are alive and full of life. Nothing packs in the nutrients like a fresh juice every day. Don’t let anyone tell you differently.

Let me take a moment to say this again. NOTHING packs in the nutrients like a fresh vegetable juice. The reason should be obvious. By removing a lot of the fiber, you can consume more, like the other 10 carrots. You cannot do this with a smoothie. I love smoothies and they have a wonderful place in the living food diet. But they don’t replace the daily juice habit.

I know this from my own experience. Sometimes life happens, you aren’t able to juice and smoothies are the next best thing, primarily because they are fast, easy, and convenient. Before I ever started the daily juice habit, for 10 months I made daily green smoothies when I was taking care of my sister. They were quick, filling, and kept me going. Often, that is all I would have in the morning until dinner because I was very busy.

After I started daily juicing there was another period in my life for about another 10 months when I couldn’t juice. So again I had a daily green smoothie. I still do smoothies. They have a definite and beneficial place in adding living food to your diet. Twenty months of green smoothies and no juice…good health and benefits for sure…

However, it is juicing on a daily basis that causes the magic to happen.

When you start the daily juice habit it is like some part of you has been sleeping all these years and now it awakens and starts to take over, demanding real food and choosing it. I have experienced this and I have heard this from many others. Magic starts to happen.

Daily juicing naturally, almost effortlessly, leads to choosing other healthy food options. Your taste buds will change. The daily juice habit supports you with powerhouse nutrition and it also helps keep you on your journey.

Once you develop the daily juice habit, if you miss a day, the next day when you juice, you will “hear” your body sigh with delight. After one summer of being on the road most of the time, I finally got home and made a green juice, sat down to enjoy it and literally heard my body say, “Thank Goodness! She finally fed us.” Communion between the consciousness of the body, the intelligence and wisdom of Nature and your own awareness begins to happen. Magic!

A second beneficial factor in juicing is the rapid absorption of nutrients into the blood stream, requiring little digestive effort. Think of eating as putting, let’s say 100 bucks worth of energy into your energy bank account, which is a primary reason to eat, to give us energy. However, that food requires energy be spent in the digestive process, so you have to spend energy in order to get energy from your food. You may even end up spending more to digest your food than you actually get from eating the food! With juicing this doesn’t happen. There is practically no energy spent in digestion.

This is why you drink your juice all by itself and on an empty stomach. You get all of the energy from the juice without spending any money from your bank converting it. Ka-ching! Juicing puts all the money in your energy bank.

These two factors are what make daily juicing such a powerhouse: 1) The ability to consume large amounts of nutrients that you would not be able to eat in a whole food form and 2) the ability to absorb those nutrients with very little energy expenditure.

Notice I am talking about daily juicing. It is the everyday habit that packs the punch, not just an occasional juice. Also, it is fresh, living juice, not bottled, pasteurized juice. I’m also talking about 24 to 32 ounces (up to a liter) of juice a day, mostly veggie juice, and most often green juice. Why? Most of us would rather eat our fruits and juice our veggies rather than the opposite way. Isn’t it easier to eat some oranges or apples rather than 10 carrots? I rest my case.

Why green juice? Greens are your mineral storehouse. Juicing is a great way to package dark, leafy greens so we are actually getting them into us, rather than just looking at them and thinking about how good they are for us…and still not eating them!

You can start slowly and build up the amount. Begin with a juice you like. It is the habit we want to create first. The point is to start juicing. If the thought of green juice makes you flee in terror, then start with something like carrot/apple juice, for example. Then you can add a little parsley. Then you can add celery and cucumber. See how it can evolve? Please start with a recipe so you don’t end up adding everything but the kitchen sink into your juice! A good juice book will teach you the “rules of juicing” so you don’t accidentally end up with terrible concoctions!

By the way, some “rules” are begging to be broken, so don’t be afraid to add apple to your green juices. I don’t know where that idea started, but there is this idea that green juice can’t have something like an apple or carrot for flavor. Who says? It took me years before I could like a green juice without apple. Look at all I would have missed in health benefits had I not added apple! I can guarantee you will not continue to juice if you do not enjoy the juice. It is just that simple.

Once you start juicing every day, it will become a habit, rather than a chore. At some point, you will even enjoy prepping your greens and washing your juicer. I know, it’s hard to believe, but this actually happens as a result of your change in consciousness.

What you eat affects your consciousness. It is one of the most deeply hidden understandings.

I would like to spend just a moment to talk about quality. Remember those 11 carrots to replace the one grandmother ate? We want to be eating the best fruits and veggies we can. Organic, fresh from your own garden would be superb. I don’t have a garden, so I go to the farmers’ market every week. I love to shop this way. I can get fresh, local, organically grown produce. I love supporting these small farmers. When we eat locally grown food, we are connecting to the energy of the land where we live. We are feeding our immune system with local microbes that Nature gives us to support life in the very place we are living.

Eating plants that are fresh, organic, living food leads to greater sensitivity. You will actually feel the energy coming from those greens from the farmer. You can sense the life force. You will feel vibrant just looking at them and touching them. This is when gratitude begins to blossom. You don’t have to think of things for which you are grateful; you will just be grateful. This is when you actually start to enjoy washing your juicer! You will love making your juice. The daily juice habit makes you feel vibrant and alive!

You will be so happy, grateful, and joyous for life. You will feel connected to everything. You will start to awaken on so many levels. So much joy is right there, once we align with our being, once we come back into the wisdom teachings of the Mother. We are designed to eat this way, to be a part of the whole, to be connected, conscious and awake.

We are designed to be in love with Life! All of this from changing our diet! Who knew? Well, the ancients knew, and that is why the teachings have been hidden except for small groups that have carried this wisdom through time for us. Now all we have to do is start putting these teachings into practice.

Eat from the garden. Eat real food. Juice every day. Love will bloom.

Tell a friend…

Return to the Garden – Part One

by Dreama Vance

Do you know it takes 11 carrots today to provide the nutrients your grandmother got from one carrot?

Do you know that diet affects your consciousness? It affects your mind. It affects your thoughts. It affects your actions. That’s pretty scary when you think of coffee and a doughnut. Wonder what those things are doing?

Ancient teachings like Ayurveda, Yoga, and the Essene teachings lead us to foods that I like to call “return to the garden” foods, fresh, live fruits and veggies. These are foods that help you turn within and create calm, peaceful thoughts. These are the foods we want to be eating to enhance our consciousness.

Changing our diets to achieve these goals is a journey.

There is, however, an actual path that makes it easier to achieve than what most people are doing, which is wandering aimlessly, following one fad after another, claiming it to “be their truth.” Really? There is only one Truth, and it belongs to everyone. If it is “your truth,” it is a belief. It is your belief. People believed the Earth was flat. It didn’t make it true. People believed the Earth was the center and the Sun revolved around it. Didn’t make it true.

Your beliefs are part of your journey and as they evolve, you evolve and so does your consciousness. We call it awakening. It is an ongoing process. We are in the time of The Shift when people are awakening faster and faster and awakening to greater and greater understandings.

In my own experience, I like to say your knowledge (of whatever topic) moves from the solar plexus center, which is our mental chakra and the lens through which most people view the world currently, to the heart center. When this happens, you see in an entirely different way. It is as if you never really understood the topic, even though you thought you understood it completely and thought you knew it all when you were functioning at the level of the solar plexus!

This is what happens when you change to a plant-based diet. Let me first say that there are three primary doors through which most people will come into a primarily vegan diet. One door is concern for their health, one door is concern for animal welfare, and one door is concern for the environment.

All three doors will open into a room where all these different people mingle and learn about each other and the door they each entered. Thus, you learn over time that your reason for changing your diet has a much broader impact than you first realized. Eventually you will see in a bigger way. Your heart will open more. You become more conscious.

Please be aware that this changing consciousness does not necessarily happen overnight. You grow. You can change your diet overnight, but the results take time to manifest. Be patient, with yourself and with others.

Changing to a plant-based diet, is only one step. There are many steps that lead away from the Standard American Diet (SAD), which is now, unfortunately, worldwide. The SAD is where most of us start our journey and is the extreme end of the spectrum that has lead us to chronic disease. This type of diet leads to sluggish thoughts, lack of clarity, and cruel behaviors. At the other end of the spectrum, which is the journey, we have fresh live plant foods that lead to a vibrant health-promoting, spiritual awakening diet.

To begin with, the SAD is full of processed food and rife with junk food. Really, it is a misnomer to call it food. How can you call something a blueberry muffin when it has no blueberries in it? And… what are those blue chemical blobs anyway? Do you really want to eat them? My point, of course, is that one of our first steps must be to eliminate those non-foods. Moving to plant-based is beneficial, but we also must eliminate those toxins of artificial everything found in processed and junk “food.”

With the trend in “veganism” hitting mainstream it is easy to fall into the junk food vegan diet, thinking you are making progress. I remember when I studied at one of the raw food institutes, the director held up a huge pair of “before” jeans that she used to wear and told us she had been a junk food vegan before changing to a raw food diet. Her previous vegan diet did not keep her from getting very ill or from gaining a lot of weight, as we could tell from the jeans.

Another step that must be taken on the journey that very few of the plant-based doctors are talking about is fresh, live food, the “return to the garden” food. This is the food you want to be eating. If it isn’t at least half of your diet, then you want to move in that direction. The more, the better. That is just the way it is. We are a part of Nature. We like to think we are separate from her and superior to her; but alas, we are not.

You may find this interesting. Fritz Popp, PhD. found that people who eat a live food diet (fresh raw fruits, veggies, nuts and seeds, sprouts) had an expanded living field that offers the highest level of biophoton energy. Biophoton energy is light that is emitted from a person and can be measured with a machine. People who eat a lot of junk food have about 1,000 biophoton units coming off them. People who eat primarily cooked vegan food have about 23,000 units. Newborn babies have 43,000 units. Live food eaters have 83,000 units. Talk about being the light! You can see how eating fresh live plants make a huge difference.

Really though, do you need science to tell you an apple picked from a tree grown in your own backyard is a better choice than a fried apple pie from a fast food restaurant?

Eat from the garden. Eat real food. Eat living uncooked fruits and vegetables. As we begin to align with the truth of our being, amazing, sustaining joy opens to us. Epiphanies will start occurring. You will begin living at another level. This information can only point the way. You must travel the journey

Continue to Part Two here.

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Winter Solstice

by Dreama Vance

December 21st is Winter Solstice for the northern hemisphere. It is my most favorite day of the entire year!

Yin energy is at its peak and calls us to settle down with a warm cup of herbal tea and reflect on the past year. It calls us inside ourselves to contemplate, meditate, and rest in the reassurance of the Presence.

You can feel this energy pulling you. The energy calls you inward. It is one of the reasons we experience so much stress during this time of the year. We are running around madly, busy as can be, exactly opposite of what the energies of Nature are calling us to do.

When we are in harmony with the Earth and her energies, we move into flow and grace. Stop and rest today. Be still and quiet your mind and allow reflection.

For several years now, I have been reflecting during Winter Solstice. As I reflect on the past year, a single word will come to consciousness that identifies the energy of the year just lived. It will be the theme or topic of experience that life has given me in my journey.

This year the word is Simplify.

This has been the theme running through this past year and indeed, continues to be a beacon of light for the time ahead. The energies are never discarded in the new year, but instead, they add to the wisdom of our experience of life and continue to light our way.

For one thing, we downsized. Less really is more! More time to enjoy life instead of maintaining stuff! Before you move, you go through your stuff and get rid of a bunch of it. Then you move and wonder why you didn’t get rid of the rest of it! We still have some of that to do, but already life is easier because burdens of responsibility are lifted.

The process of simplification of your mental atmosphere brings clarity. With clarity comes the ability to focus. With focus comes action!

When our minds are cluttered with too much stimulation, we become overwhelmed. I don’t know about you, but when that happens, I just sit down and don’t do anything! When we get rid of some of the mental noise and chatter, we can think straight again. We become calm and collected mentally. Then we can move into action and accomplish our goals. Priorities line up automatically and effortlessly.

Simplification has been the theme running throughout our year, not because we decided at the beginning that it would be, but because our intuition and spiritual wisdom guided us in this direction.

As we returned to the garden in our food choices, our meals became much less complicated. As this happened, our taste buds came back to life! Who would think that straight celery juice would be delicious?

Fruits and vegetables made into smoothies, juices, and salads comprise the majority of our meals. They are delicious. We feel lighter, brighter, more energetic. Raw fruits and vegetables are alive with life energy. When you eat them this way in there uncooked form, you become alive with this energy. You awaken with this vitality. The cells in your body want to sing and dance when you begin to feed them this way. Life just gets easier and more enjoyable. It becomes more real.

SPIRITUAL CLARITY MADE SIMPLE

When you go back to the beginning teachings of your spiritual understanding, do you remember how simple they were? You had great insights and intuition. You really didn’t know enough to make up any of your experiences, so your consciousness was picking up on the underlying qualities of Spirit.

When we simplify our spiritual practice, like we are doing with the chakra meditations, we unclutter the mental process and that uncluttering opens the path for the qualities of Spirit to be seen, felt, and experienced, just as they were when you first began to awaken to the Truth of your being.

Simplicity paves the way for clarity. Clarity opens understanding. Understanding creates the desire for deeper connection and that is how we arrive at the dwelling place and maintain our abiding place in the Presence.

Simplify. You can see how it has been the word of the year in our family and the benefits it has provided. If you live in the northern climes, I hope you will take the time this Winter Solstice to go within and allow Spirit to reveal your word of the year so you may explore what you have learned and the wisdom you have gained.

As we reach the tipping point of Yin energy, it begins to flow into Yang. May your word of this past year be a light to the new active energies beginning to flow as we move toward the New Year.

Many, many blessings to you.

Announcement: Our Mastering Higher Energies course is beginning soon. If you haven’t already registered for this groundbreaking course on higher energies, be sure to check out the full details at:

http://www.spiritualdynamics.net/energies/

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Arise and Shine

by Dreama Vance

A couple of years ago when we first moved to our new place, we popped into the brand new big chain grocery store that had just been built in our tiny little town, which is basically out in the boonies.

We stopped to get some organic apples since we were getting ready for a car trip. I stood in the checkout line and observed the woman in front of me. Her shopping cart was full of boxed and bottled items. The bottles were full of neon-colored liquid. I have no idea what was actually in those bottles, but she did have two boys with her that looked to be about 15 and 12, as well as a little girl in the cart. I can only assume those bottles of something that could not possibly have been grown in nature were for the kids. The two boys were busy raiding the candy trays on display at the counter and holding bottles of soda pop. I don’t really know what was in the boxes in her cart, either, but they, too, had bright colors and “grab your attention” packaging.

There was not one item of LIVE food in her cart. Not one piece of fruit, nor one vegetable was to be found. As I stood and watched the tableau of this family, my heart actually hurt for them. This picture has stayed with me and still weighs heavy in my heart.

Believe it or not, our food choices are closely tied to consciousness. Dead “food” promotes a “culture of death” as Dr. Gabriel Cousens calls it. Live food promotes life and feeds our spiritual awareness. Dr. Cousens is a well known advocate of a raw vegan diet and the spiritual enhancement that comes from this diet and lifestyle. He has several books out about the topic, including “Spiritual Nutrition,” where he specifically talks about how our food choices effect the subtle energy bodies, kundalini, and ultimately our spiritual path to God.

Processed food is, quite frankly, killing us. No matter how much good stuff you put into the body, if you are still polluting your system, you will simply be treading water, not making headway.

Think of your body as a pristine pool of water. When we start adding a drop of black ink to the pool, at first it is hardly noticeable. The more we add, however, the murkier the water becomes. If we decide to clean up and restore our pool to its pristine state, we can eventually do that by adding clean water, but only if we stop adding the black ink.

Improving our own well being and therefore increasing our spiritual awareness must involve the two steps of 1) eliminating the bad stuff and 2) increasing the good stuff that we eat.

I’ve often wondered which comes first, a change in diet, or a change in consciousness. I think perhaps they dance together with one taking the lead first and then the other. One thing that happens for sure is the cleaner you eat, the more aware and conscious you become, the more emotions will arise to the surface for you to become aware of and that you will have to handle.

Food and emotions are intricately linked in all of us. In fact, it is one of the main ways we are socialized into our culture. The sooner we see this food and emotion connection and begin to understand it, the easier it will be to make our own changes in diet and the more tolerance we will have in understanding others.

I’ve been involved in the raw food movement since about 2002. How that happened is a story for another time. I have watched many come and go in the movement. I’ve watched many leaders change their tune. Although I am not 100% raw, I am always moving in that direction. It stands as a guiding light in front of me, beckoning me on to better wellness and higher consciousness.

Recently I was talking a friend through prepping a raw dish and she looked at me and said, “You like doing this.” I stopped and realized, it brings me joy. Eating this way brings be joy. Somewhere in my journey during these last 15 years, the decision to eat more raw and living foods went from an intellectual decision to make good choices to one of wanting to make choices because they make me happy!

Before this realization, I often said I am in the “want to want to stage.” Many of us live in this stage for a long time, whatever the subject matter, be it doing daily exercise, starting a yoga practice, learning a new skill, or eating healthier. We live in that “want to want to stage” thinking about it, maybe even doing it, but if we are actually doing it, it is our willpower and discipline that carries us. When we finally reach the “want to stage” it is like finding freedom! Now we are doing whatever it is because we want to do it. Just like if you want a glass of water, you get up and go get one. Now you are motivated by the experience itself, and the joy and happiness you feel with the practice.

We all make choices everyday. We all do the best we can with what we know at the time and with the circumstances we encounter. So always love yourself. Always love the real food you eat and be most grateful for it.

Soon, I’ll talk about how I got started on this branch of my journey and share some tips for adding more living food to your lifestyle.

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Spice Up Your Life

by Dreama Vance

It has turned cold and gray and rainy where we are in Colorado. When the weather turns cold, cooling raw foods lose their appeal. The last thing I want in the morning is a cold smoothie!

There is hope, however, for those of us still aspiring to increase our raw food intake. It comes in the form of additions to our fresh juices and at the top of the list is fresh ginger. I rediscovered this spice last year at this time and I have been adding it to my green juices and my carrot-based juices for over a year now.

Using fresh ginger warms you all the way through your body and keeps you warm long after the juice is gone. It has amazing health benefits which you can research yourself.

In the last Juice Cleanse event with Jason Vale, we started each day with a Ginger Shot. Just before you start to juice your regular juice, juice half an apple and half an inch (1 cm+) of fresh ginger root. You can pour this into a shot glass and drink it in one swallow, but I like to just drink mine normally. As you get used to ginger, you can add more. If you are timid, you can start out with less ginger. This is a great wake-up in the morning. It is particularly good to replace caffeine. It also gets you started until your normal juice is ready!

Here is another one of Jason Vale’s recipes from a previous cleanse, Lemon/Ginger Zinger. Juice 2 carrots, 2 sweet apples, 1-inch (2.5 cm) of lemon (with peel if organic,) and a quarter-inch of fresh ginger root. I like to add about an inch of ginger. It’s delicious.

My last recipe is a green juice and an adaptation of Lou Corona’s Lemon Ginger Blast. Juice 2 sweet apples (such as Fuji or Gala,) 4 sticks of celery, 1 cucumber, some greens such as Swiss chard, kale, or spinach, 1 lemon (with peel if organic,) 1 inch of ginger root, 1 inch of jalapeno pepper. This is spicy hot and delicious. If you aren’t accustomed to heat, start with less ginger and jalapeno. I like the fresh jalapeno pepper much better than dry cayenne powder. This juice is a power house. Once you have the basic recipe down, then you can add and subtract to it or swap out your greens. You can add dandelion, fennel, and mint or cilantro or parsley. Each ingredient has its own healing properties.

You may never do a complete cleanse and you may never do a juice fast or a water fast. However, if you juice everyday, with your own fresh juice or fresh juice from a juice bar, you will start on a path of good health.

Green juices don’t have to taste yucky. Two sweet apples make just about any green juice palatable. For hardier fare, carrot juice combinations work well.

If you start your day with fresh juice, when the stomach is empty, the juice is quickly absorbed right into your system. You will begin to alkalize and hydrate your body. You will begin to nourish your body with easily accessible nutrients. It is one of the best ways to take charge of your health.

Jay Kordich, a Master of Juice Therapy recommends 32 ounces (equal to one liter or one US quart) of fresh juice a day. I like to get mine done first thing in the morning so I am finished for the day; otherwise, one excuse after another gets in the way. You will be surprised at how nourishing, filling, and long-lasting those 32 ounces of juice are.

If you haven’t made daily juicing one of your steps on the journey of good health, I hope you will be inspired to start!

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.

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It’s a Matter of Mind

by Dreama Vance

Change is an ongoing constant of the Universe.

Think not? Take a look at a picture of yourself ten years ago and then look in the mirror! Better yet, get an old movie of one of your favorite actors and look at how young they were back when the movie was made!

Yep, change is a constant.

You, however, have in your hand a great deal of power to determine how change happens. Will it be for the better or for the worse? If we don’t make conscious decisions for the better, then by default we choose the latter. If we don’t make the positive choices and enact them, time takes care of it for us and we have ultimately chosen entropy.

Focus on the Positive

The past couple of weeks we talked about removing processed food from our diet. At first, this seems like our focus is on what not to eat. However, I hope you can see how tremendously positive this one step is in moving you forward on your journey. It really doesn’t matter how much good stuff you eat, if you continue to eat the junk. You are basically just treading water to keep your head afloat.

Consider an injury that is related to repetitive motion, such as carpal tunnel syndrome or tennis elbow. You can put on oils, creams, salves, and whatever else the doctor dishes up; but until you stop doing whatever is causing the problem, the injury is going to stay irritated and inflamed, no matter what you put on it; no matter what good things you say about it or how much you love it. See what I’m saying?

So often I have heard raw foodist Dr. Fred Bisci say, “It is what you leave out of your diet, completely, that matters.” Even though I have heard that a gazillion times over the last decade, I didn’t really get it until several months ago. I understood it intellectually, of course, but it didn’t make the shift from the intellect (solar plexus chakra) to the heart chakra until just recently.

When this happens with any type of intellectual knowledge, an entire field of understanding opens up at a different level of consciousness. It is literally as if you never understood it before, even though we think we do. Leaving the bad stuff out of the diet is like resting the elbow or wrist. The body has the opportunity to start healing. The internal terrain changes, the tissue itself changes, and the energetic picture changes.

Okay, now I want to continue with the focus on the positive. It is the focus on the positive that enables you to make changes. If you see it as easy, it IS easy. If you see it as hard, it will be difficult. Your mind plays an important role here. How you view what you want to accomplish makes change enjoyable or a hardship that you struggle against every step of the way.

Let’s take a look at what I call the “Happy Shoulds.” Maybe these will dislodge some of the misperceptions we have all been saddled with from the get-go.

I always laugh when people indignantly say, “I don’t like to be told what to eat!” We’ve always been told what to eat! As a babe in the womb, you drew nourishment, or the lack thereof, from your mother. As a wee babe, you ate what she fed you, till you got big enough to spit out food you really didn’t like. Then, you were conditioned to eat what your friends were eating, what the television told you was good, what you saw on commercials in between cartoons, what the family ate, and on and on it goes.

Food is how we are indoctrinated into our society. If you go to a foreign country, you will immediately notice how they eat differently from what you are used to eating. Even different parts of the same country have their own cuisine specialties.

The Happy Shoulds

#1. Food should be delicious. I don’t know about you, but I want my food to taste good. If you believe “health food ” is boring, bland, and… well, awful, sometimes it is! But it shouldn’t be! So kick that idea right out to the curb. There are many, many delicious vegan, vegetarian, and raw food dishes that absolutely shine! And everyone can enjoy these foods. Everyone eats vegetables, whether they are vegetarian or not! Everyone can eat live, fresh food whether they are a raw foodist or not! My husband is always telling me to teach how to prepare tasty vegan cuisine because I have learned how to make food taste good. You can, too!

I will tell you in advance that when you begin removing processed foods from your diet, your tastes will change and foods that you thought were rather bland begin to reveal their true colors. Who would have thought plain celery juice was delicious? Ironically, processed foods that you thought were a real treat will begin to taste like cardboard. Isn’t that interesting?

Your green juice, smoothies and “good for you” superfoods should taste delicious, too. With very few exceptions, you should enjoy these. Why? If you don’t like them, you won’t stay with the practice for very long.

#2. You should eat when you are not yet hungry. What? Everyone says, “Don’t eat until you’re hungry.” I say, if you follow that advice, you’ll eat everything in the refrigerator when you come home. I say, never wait until you are really hungry to eat. Plan to eat on a schedule, that way you are never starving and your body gets used to having food in a timely manner. There are energy systems inside the body that follow the clock of the sun. The more we can follow a schedule of eating, sleeping, arising, and so forth, the more in harmony we are with the wisdom of the body.

#3. You should eat enough so you aren’t still hungry. This “happy should” takes care of the misconception that you will starve to death on a vegan, vegetarian, or raw food diet. Not gonna happen. Eat and be happy with your food. Eat enough to be fulfilled.

Somehow when I first studied the raw food diet, a sense of “don’t eat too much” got hammered into my brain. It finally dawned on me this past year that I had somehow bought into this sense of lack as being beneficial. That idea is really a disservice, particularly when it comes to a mainly raw food diet.

The flip side of that is eating until you are stuffed to the gills and that is just as miserable in the other direction. I think the best way to phrase it is, “Eat in balance and in harmony with your body.” Enjoy your food, take your time dining, and allow your body time to signal you when it is full. This takes about 20 minutes. The rule of thumb is, “Stop when you are 80% full.” So how do you know when that is? For me it is when I would like to have a second helping of something… just one more scoop. If you stop without indulging, you give your body the time needed to send the message, “That’s enough!” Pay attention to what your body is telling you when it is happy.

#4. You should eat a wide variety of food. Eat good-for-you fats such as avocado and raw nuts and seeds. Eat raw fruits. You should eat greens. You should eat vegetables. Most of your food should be plant-based and you should eat as much raw, living food as you can. You should keep your meals simple. That way they are easy to prepare and easier to digest.

There is probably at least one expert out there in disagreement with at least one of these recommendations. If you are following a specific protocol, then by all means feel free to ignore whatever is not applicable to your protocol.

My goal here is to empower you in making your own decisions. No one knows your body better than you do. By the same token, no one is responsible for what you do to it but you.

If you listen and just pay attention, you will find your higher self communicating with you. Back around 2000, tofu was all the rage. So I would buy boxes of tofu thinking I would make things with it. The expiration dates would come and the boxes would get thrown out and I would buy more the next trip into town. After about three trips of this happening, I finally got the message… maybe this wasn’t for me. The same thing happened with cacao beans. Raw cacao beans became the rage in the raw food movement, so I bought a bunch thinking of all the wonderful desserts I would make. I think they are still in my cupboard, several years old. Your higher self will either let you know what is wise for you, or just take care of it for you!

#5. You should use your common sense. Be smart. Personally, I am never going to eat 30 bananas in one day. I am also not going to eat three cups of nuts in one slice of raw cheesecake. My point here is for you not to get hung up over labels or someone’s indoctrination. Do your own research and also realize that just because some study “proves” something, that doesn’t mean it is “true” and it doesn’t mean it carries the message the proponent wants you to think it does. It doesn’t mean it is necessarily for you, specifically, either.

Listen to your higher wisdom. There are no food police. There are no wagons from which to fall; there is no failure.

There are only good, better, and best decisions to be made. Keep your goal in mind and enjoy becoming more and more conscious!

Tip of the Day

Here is my favorite tip for you to include in your healthy journey. Soup is one of my favorite meals. It is easy to prepare ahead of time and I usually fix enough for several meals and to freeze some. This tip works great for just about anything chunky: vegetable soups, bean soups, spaghetti sauce. Here it is.

Gather a bunch of raw spinach under your hand on a cutting board. Make thin ribbon slices by cutting across the board (not your hand!) to produce a chiffonade, which is just shredded or finely-cut vegetables. Place a handful of the spinach in a bowl before adding your soup or beans, or on top of your pasta before adding sauce. This is a great way to add some fresh raw food to your dish and to boost the nutrient content of your meal. The heat from your soup or sauce will wilt the spinach just enough to soften it and not cook the life out of it. Chopped, fresh baby tomatoes work nicely as an addition, too.

Next week we will cover more about your soul. Although we did talk a bit about the wisdom of your higher self in this article, there is still a little more information I want to give you. The bigger picture includes quite a bit of information, so we will see how that spans out in the next article or two.

Happy Eating!

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Take It Slow and Easy, but Run as Fast as You Can!

by Dreama Vance

Evolving our diet is a process. It goes hand in hand with our spiritual growth.

As part of your path of spiritual evolution, it is best to take the evolution of your diet slow and easy, but keep moving in the right direction in a determined fashion.

The path of dietary evolution typically begins where a majority of people are, which is eating a Standard American Diet (SAD). Even other countries are now consuming this diet because Americans have managed to export it around the globe, thanks to the fast food chains and mega food companies.

The Dietary Spectrum

So, we have the SAD diet at one end of the spectrum, which promotes large quantities of meat, dairy, and packaged products that have a long shelf life, and are loaded with sugars, salt, preservatives, dyes and artificial flavorings. At the other end is a live food or raw vegan diet, which has finally, at least, hit the mainstream news, and is about as far from SAD as one can get.

In the middle of this path are terms such as the paleo diet, vegetarian diet, vegan diet, and macrobiotic diet. This is a broad overview. These are stations that people explore, usually in search of a healthier lifestyle, and/or for ethical reasons. These are usually lifestyle changes. These are the steps we explore as we evolve.

Within this spectrum are sprinkled various “diets” that people go on, usually to lose weight, such as the South Beach Diet. These “go on a diet” choices are not intended to be lifelong, but rather short term to achieve a desired effect. These short term diets are not really the topic of this article, but I will say they only work short term, and that is because people revert back to their original eating style, rather than making a lifestyle change.

So I hope you have a pretty clear picture of the spectrum with the SAD at one end and the living food or raw food diet at the other end. You can see now how we evolve the diet. You can see that it is a process. Most people do not go from a SAD to a raw vegan lifestyle overnight. In fact, it is not even something I recommend.

Many people may never want to go as far as that goal of a raw vegan diet. It is, however, a bright star to hold in your consciousness as a goal. It serves as the anchor point for your direction. It keeps you on track and it keeps you moving, at your own pace, toward improvement and toward spiritual light.

A solid starting point

Out of the picture that I have just painted for you, I want to lift out a starting point for anyone wondering how to begin the journey and, for those of you already on the journey, I want you to realize that what I am about to say applies across the spectrum.

The number one thing you can do to start and to move forward no matter where you are on the path, is to eliminate processed food. I like to say, “Eat real food.” Real food is what you find on the outer edges of the grocery store, labeled Produce. It is what you find at the farmers’ markets. Processed food is all of the other stuff in the center of the grocery store, along with the paper products and soap powders!

It took me 30 years of study to figure this out. But, the first thing to do and the best thing you can do is this one step – eliminate processed food. Begin with the most obvious things – fast food and junk foods – and then move forward from there to the “convenience” foods. Advance as quickly as you can.

Now, for those of you who think you are already beyond this point, let me just suggest you take another look around your kitchen. You may be surprised at what you are holding onto in your life. Like I said, it flows across the spectrum; there are many processed foods in the vegetarian movement and in the vegan movement, too. When I went vegetarian back in the 1970s, there were no fake meat substitutes available. Consequently, and fortunately, I never made a switch to those products.

Like I said, the key is to “Eat real food.” You will find people now making reference to this way of eating as a whole foods diet and, when animal products are also eliminated, it may be called a whole food plant-based diet. These are relatively new terms that emphasize the importance of eating whole foods and eliminating most of the processed foods.

Out of this decision to eliminate processed food, come two results. 1) You have to prepare your own cooked food and/or 2) you have to eat live food, otherwise known as fruits and vegetables. Fresh fruits and vegetables as a meal help save time and also add tremendously to your health, vitality and spiritual light.

Connecting with the light

You will find that when you move into this way of living, particularly when following a plant-strong whole foods diet, you become very conscious of what you are eating. Awareness begins to penetrate your food preparation and when you begin to honor all who have brought this bounty to your table – the Mother Earth, the Sun, the people, the bees – then you begin to prepare food with such love and gratitude.

You will be filled, not just with nourishing food, but with peace and beauty and harmony. These qualities will come through your food to bless those you serve. We have, to a very large degree, lost this in our hurry-up, grab-it-and-go, eat-on-the-run world.

Next article: We will look at one of my favorite teachers and discover how healing Real Food can be for the body in Take It Slow and Easy, but Do It!

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