What do you eat?

• Raw food is more than just a village salad: it’s the extraordinary range of fruit (even if you tried to eat a different fruit every day until the rest of your life, you still will only have covered a small percent), luscious leafy greens, a myriad of vegetables, algae/, superfoods, seaweeds, flowers, nuts, seeds and those powerhouses, sprouts. It’s about creative colourful food and nature’s crispy, juicy, sweet, exotic and zany flavours! The combinations you can make with the above are infinite and rainbowotic; we just need to re-train our taste buds after years of processed, pasteurized and sugary foods.

BENEFITS:
 

People who dance 'high-raw' speak of the glowing benefits. Here are some:

• abundance of energy/vibrancy – lethargy after eating goes
• clarity of  mind
• sharper concentration
• strengthen body/organs
• clearer skin
• proper bowel movements
• brighter eyes
• detoxing of old waste naturally
• calm, brighter  attitude (especially if lots of green salads and green juices are consumed)
• loss of fat/cellulite(Yes it does go!)  and body attains natural weight
• when ill, people have seen immense healing with raw – even cancer patients
• zest for life!
• eating raw is creative and fun!

7 Tips on Getting Started & Staying Raw:

Where do I begin?' is  common question we get asked. Here are some useful tips that have helped us:

1) Only eat what you love. Eat fruit, vegetables, greens, seeds, nuts, superfoods and sprouts that you truly enjoy and work with recipes from those.

2) Introduce 1 recipe per week

3) Learn and educate yourself on the raw lifestyle. 

4) Keeping a journal of your physical, mental and emotional changes is also a good idea

5) Avoid setting rules and being fastidious - be gentle with yourself.

6) It is true, some days are very long and we cannot be bothered to make anything. To be prepared, scout your local area and find restaurants that can make you a raw take way based on the ingredients they already have.  You'll be surprised at what's out there. Don't be afraid to ask them to mix and match the raw items from various parts of the menu. Japanese restaurants can make great raw salads as we have discovered. 

7) If you love avocado, then always have some in the fridge. They save the day for many raw foodists!  ( See our 'Avocado to the Rescue!' in the recipe section).

Rather than super-size me, here at Raw Journeys we prefer Super-Strength Me!

Eating truly well leaves you feeling energized and light - and super-sizing your meals, especially with junk food, certainly doesn’t provide you with that.

In fact, today, people in the Western world eat a lot but they are actually starving! Why? Because a great deal of their diet is lacking in minerals and enzymes.Fresh, uncooked fruit and vegetables and superfoods are the richest foods you can give your brain and body.

What are superfoods?

They are those plants, pods, seeds, berries, sea weeds, roots etc that have been consumed and revered by ancient cultures like the Greeks, Aztecs, Tibetans for their ‘super-strengths’; even a spoonful is packed with more minerals, vitamins, proteins, amino acids and many, other nutrients than a whole plate of processed food .

And when we say ‘superfood’, we are not talking about synthetic supplements that taste like cough medicine. These chemical-free, raw superfoods have their own unique flavours whether it be the juicy raisin-cherry taste of goji berries, the earthy sweetness of truly raw carob or the bittersweet, rich velvet of cacao nibs.

So why consume superfoods?

Given that many of us live lifestyles that include rushing to meet deadlines, punching clocks, going to bed late, grabbing quick meals, eating store-bought fruit and vegetables that all have to be just the right size, colour, shape, thickness to meet EU standards, along with the weekly food scandals we keep hearing about, (you only have to turn on the news to hear the tip of the iceberg) it is no wonder we are not functioning at our supreme best. Add to that the bombardment of electromagnetic frequencies, air pollution and less than optimum water quality and it’s a wonder we can wiggle!

However, the human body is the most wonderful piece of engineering, a daily miracle that no scientist could ever hope to replicate. Our bodies amazingly pump, filter and pulse away, doing everything they can to protect us until eventually, they get fed up and tire out - which is why we need to treat them well through lifestyle changes and certain additions:

How?

• slowing down where and when we can
• breathing deeply
• doing exercise that we love
• avoid going to bed late
• spending time in nature
• laughing
• adding more raw food to our lives; more green juices, dark green salads, wild edibles and superfoods.

These can all re-charge and re-vitalise you, help your organs to work as they should, balance hormones and circadian rhythms and give you a sense of well being.

Here are some Superfoods from around the world that are known for their super qualities and ones we love in their raw states:

* hemp seeds

* olives

* cacao

* sesame seeds

* maca

* carob

* goji berry

*kelp, seaweeds (nori, wakame, kombu)

* spirulina, algae, chlorella, plankton

* cedar nut

* vanilla sticks

* honey, bee pollen, propolis, royal jelly

*aloe vera

*Himalayan pink salt

Many of these are great additions to meals, drinks and smoothies –and you only need a small amount each time to super-strength yourself.

SevenFold Peace World Peace

Through Body, Mind, Family, Community, Culture, Ecology, God. (taken from Dr. Gabriel Cousen’s Book Sevenfold Peace)

Dear Friends,

As the future of life on earth is seen to be fundamentally in jeopardy, a wave of new awareness is sweeping across the planet. Everywhere people are seeing that if we continue to experience ourselves as isolated and threatened, if we continue to act as though our lives depended on conquering nature and each other, we will destroy not only ourselves but the very life-support systems that have given us birth. The truths of our time necessitate great changes in our ways of thinking and living.

The Essenes lived two thousand years ago, but their message is still absolutely accurate for helping us to bring peace to our planet and to ourselves.

Gabriel Cousens’ book “Sevenfold Peace” makes an important contribution in bringing Essene concepts to our consciousness, because peace can’t come from social activism alone, from trying to change others without wanting to change ourselves. Through the example of the Essenes, he shows that peace is the result of a multidimensional approach:

When we love ourselves we have to learn to accept all aspects of our being in order to be free of self-criticism – then we can begin to understand what peace is.

A vital step to peace is to stop polluting our bodies, for the pollution of our planet is the reflection of the pollution of our bodies by an artificial nutrition.

It is time that we human beings start living in harmony with all aspects of ourselves and all living beings.

The path of the Sevenfold Peace, based on the ancient teachings of the Essenes, takes us beyond narrow definitions of peace to a comprehensive and integrated understanding of the personal, social, and planetary dimensions of peace. Living this ancient, multileveled path of Sevenfold Peace lays the foundation for the establishment of lasting planetary peace. This full peace is predicated on both the inner process of personal transformation and the outer process of planetary transformation. Either by itself is not enough.

Personal and planetary transformation are the two wings of the dove of peace.

Institutions alone cannot save the earth from the cumulative results of our everyday, seemingly unimportant inner thoughts and life-style actions or the lack of actions. Sometimes, we feel helpless in the face of the apparent power of governments or large corporations. But remember, governments and corporations are made up of people, and they depend on people for their power. We are those people. Our seemingly unimportant thoughts and actions do make a difference. Our collective daily choices about how we live on this planet have a profound impact. Someday, if we all participate in changing our own lives, we will make a significant difference, and peace will prevail on earth.

Peace With The Body.

1. Choose to take responsibility for your own personal health and improve the ecology of your personal body just as you would care for the planet. a) Exercise aerobically at least three times per week for one half hour; brisk walking is sufficient. B) Practice deep breathing three times a day with ten cycles of four count inhalation, sixteen counts hold, and eight counts exhalation. This 1:4:2 ratio

2. Peace with the planetary body. (a) If you are not a vegetarian already, read Diet for a New America by John Robbins and consider the ramifications of eating flesh food on the planetary ecology and peace in general. The flesh-food industry accounts for over fifty percent of our water usage, eighty-five percent of soil loss, and twenty times more land usage than that required for a vegan diet. A vegan diet saves one acre of trees per year. (b) At your own rate, add vegetarian food and progressively cut out red meat, poultry, and fish from your diet. (c) Support local farmer’s markets; their produce usually has less pesticide residue and is fresher. (d) Buy certified organically grown produce on a regular basis. This preserves bodily health, soil fertility, and wildlife, and minimizes soil loss and water pollution.

3. Peace with the cosmic body. Think about yourself as one cell in the cosmic body. Instead of thinking about humanity as the web of life, begin to understand humanity as one strand in the cosmic web of life.

PEACE WITH THE MIND.

1. Enhance your own inner peace by learning to meditate or pray. Keep asking, do I “barter that which is eternal for that which dieth in an hour”?
2. Enhance peace with the planetary mind by thinking positive thoughts and participating in some thought form for peace group activity such as World Healing Hour on December 31 st, Peace the 21 st on each equinox or solstice, or on the last day of the month, or take time daily at noon or 7a.m. in meditations for peace. According to The Maharishi Effect, data from the summer project in Rhode Island showed that one group of 350 people meditating daily on peace decreased the amount of social disorder by forty percent.
3. Enhance peace with the cosmic mind by trying to begin each thought, word, and action with love.

PEACE WITH THE FAMILY.

1. Forgive everybody. Forgiveness ends the memory and depletes the energy of conflict.
2. Love your neighbor as your Divine self. If you’re not sure whether you or your neighbor have a Divine self, pretend that both of you do and try relating from that understanding.

PEACE WITH HUMANITY.

1. Make a point to volunteer or contribute to humanitarian causes and organizations. Check with any local peace center for a list of causes and ways to contribute. Volunteers are much appreciated by almost all of these groups.
2. Develop your likelihood so that it supports your personal and planetary values. Start this one step at a time. This may take several years, so be patient and persistent.
3. Begin socially responsible investing (SRI), which is investing in organizations with positive community and environmental policies. Get a credit card, mutual fund, and / or a checking account with a SRI policy.
4. Become a peacemaker in all levels of your life and inspire others to do the same. Let your life be an example of living your ideals. The cumulative effect of your inspiring your friends, and your friends inspiring a wider circle, will transform our social, economic, governmental, and religious institutions and bring peace to the world.

PEACE WITH CULTURE.

1. Participate in art, music, drama, or cultural events that inspire and connect you with the eternal values of love, peace, beauty, truth, and the Divine in all.
2. Make peace with your own cultural roots. Ask your parents or grandparents for stories about your cultural origins. Read a book about them or take a class on your culture of origin.
3. Try to respect and appreciate the flourishing of peace and joy in all cultures.
4. Explore activities that bring you into harmony with the culture of nature’s rhythms. It is not surprising that most cultures have such rituals.

PEACE WITH THE EARTHLY MOTHER / ECOLOGY.

1. Commit yourself to planting one or more trees this year. If you do not know how to plant and care for a tree, call a local nursery for instructions. According to 50 Simple Things You Can Do To Save The Earth, the average American uses up the equivalent of seven trees per year. It also points out that if every American family planted one tree per year, over a billion pounds of “greenhouse gases” would be removed from the air per year. Planting seven trees each year keeps us ecologically even. Because trees absorb large quantities of carbon dioxide, they help to prevent the greenhouse effect, provide oxygen, help to preserve the soil, and are uplifting to the spirit.
2. Recycle all newspapers, glass, aluminium, tin, organic refuse, and anything else you are able to recycle creatively. Recycling has a powerful conservation effect on our environment. If everyone in the United States recycled even one-tenth of their newspapers, we would save about twenty-five million trees per year. Small steps multiplied by millions do make a difference.
3. Support environmental groups by volunteering or with donations.
4. Participate in the ‘campaign for the earth,’ which is a unifying symbolic idea, not an organization, for individuals and groups around the world who are committed to working to heal the planet, and ourselves as part of that process. The campaign involves acting as part of the vision of healing the earth. Identify with the vision with your own unique action and thoughts. Share the vision with others. Acknowledge yourself as a citizen of the earth.
5. Read and act on 50 simple Things You can Do to Save the Earth.

PEACE WITH THE HEAVENLY FATHER/GOD

1. Find your own personal way to connect with the Divine every day.

The experience of divine Communion entails a feeling of total, abundant fullness with God. A person with such an awareness lives a life that is full of the sweet presence of the Divine with every breath. He or she is made sublimely content with the daily kiss of all the angels of the earthly Mother and Heavenly Father. Love pulses in every bodily cell, nurtured by the essential peace of all creation. The energies of all the forces of life tingle through the body with a quiet excitement; they flow through the body in the exquisite harmony of the One as we live our daily activities. A joy without cause bubbles from the heart. With every breath, with every sound, with every moment, the one at peace is bathed in the inner nectar of love. A life of peace is fun.

As the great Sufi poet Rumi put it, “The man of God is drunken (God –intoxicated) while sober. The man of God is full without meat (food).”

Isaiah 30:15 states, “In sitting still and rest shall you be saved, in the quietness andconfidence will be your strength.” Prayer, good fellowship, and service with the awareness of the Divine in our brothers and sisters are also powerful ways to reclaim the primary experience of the One. The full practice of the consciousness of the Sevenfold Peace is an important aid to this sustained experience of wholeness, because it was developed for bringing us into harmony. It is probably why the Essenes were able to sustain their communities in such profound peace for so many hundreds of years.

CONCLUSION.

It is estimated that within the next few decades the deterioration of the earth’s life support systems will accelerate at such a rate that none of our present mild efforts at conservation will be able to save us. The tropical forests that are our earth’s lungs are too rapidly being destroyed, and the oceans, rivers, and the other waterways that are our earth’s circulation system are becoming so polluted that the earth as an organism is becoming toxic. The flesh of our earthly topsoil is being scraped so thin that it will no longer be able to support us. As of 1990, regardless of a steadily increasing global warming from the greenhouse effect, the United States and Japan at seventy-one nation conference on global warming were unwilling even to sign an agreement to limit carbon dioxide emissions to their present excessive daily level. Carbon dioxide emissions are considered a major cause of the greenhouse effect. We are like a global alcoholic who is unable to stop drinking as his body and mind deteriorate from the toxicity of the alcohol. Will the people on this planet choose to be so attached to their destructive habits and consumptive life-style that they would rather die than give them us? Or, in an act of sanity and spiritual awareness, will there be a mass human awakening to our condition and to the need for peace on every level? Will we choose to sober up? Will we choose to wake up and heal ourselves on a global level? Nothing less than the FULL Sevenfold Peace is worth working for at this time, because nothing less will be a strong enough medicine to heal this planet. What is necessary is a commitment to total peace on every level.

For us to become peacemakers, we need the self-will to overcome our own inertia, fear, and apathy toward peace, to dispel ignorance, to overcome our subtle disbelief and fear of the experience of peace, to start every thought and action with love, and to bring this love and peace to every situation the best we can.

To create peace in our own lives, our beliefs and the way we live must come into alignment. In this way we create peace by being peace.

Collectively we can and will, with God’s grace, heal ourselves and the soul of this planet.

We create peace by being peace…