Michael Vick and the Question of Animal Cruelty

How interesting. Did you notice how many people are enraged at Michael Vick? That is a pretty horrible thing, dogfighting. Animal cruelty. So how many years should he get in jail, how much should it cost him? Looks like he will lose at least $100,000,000 of his football contract.

I don't think anyone reading this blog would accept what he did as morally acceptable. Now, I have to ask you: when was the last time you had eggs, or milk, or chicken, or pork, or beef, or fish? If you read the book The Way We Eat: Why Our Food Choices Matter, by Peter Singer and Jim Mason, you will realize that if you are eating these animal products, you might want to place yourself in the same moral category as Michael Vick, because your food choices are producing as much and more animal suffering.

Unfortunately, most of us will utilize the psychological tools called denial and rationalization to avoid confronting this unpleasant fact.

I am not telling anyone to become a vegan tomorrow, just asking you to think about it. If Michael Vick disgusts us, maybe it's time to look at our own actions.

I haven't reached the point where I can avoid all animal products myself, but I am no longer in denial either, as regards to what I am doing. When I make my green smoothie in a few minutes I will be taking one big step along the way to making that change. You would be very surprised how good kale and watermelon can taste after a few minutes in the Vita Mixer.

Best Day Ever!

The best day ever! That is David Wolfe's promise when we eat raw foods. I attended his seminar in New Hampshire this weekend with Gina, Steven, and Cathy, and I am more convinced than ever that a raw food diet is the way to a healthier, happier life. If David Wolfe is any indication of the energy one can get from being a raw-foodist, I am going there. He has more energy than any person I have ever come across. I'm talking back to back three hour lectures without stopping for a breath.

This is what I learned:

1. Consuming raw food will eliminate just about any health problem you can think of, including cancer, heart disease, diabetes, depression, and obesity.
   
2. We do this little by little.
   
3. We do this by adding raw food to our diet, we are not giving anything up.
4. Food is our number one relationship to the earth.
5. We need to be aware what ratio of fats, carbos, and protein in our diet works best for us personally.
6. Drink about a quart of water on rising to flush out your system.
7. Drink super food smoothies! This is a big part of the adding element of becoming healthy. Start with a base of water, tea (goji berry or vanilla) , coconut water. Add macha, coconut oil, hemp seed, cacao beans, spirulina, honey, etc. Play with it.
8. When you start consuming high quality food your body starts telling you what it needs.
9. Don't try to use willpower.
10. Put diluted seawater in your garden and fruit trees.
11. Real spring water is healthy, avoid filtered tap water.
12. It isn't calcium that makes bones, our body makes calcium from silicon and magnesium.

There you are in a nutshell. (By the way, the cacao nutshell is good to eat.)

So, do you want to be really really healthy? Little by little add the following to your diet:

• Fruits (especially berries and the best of these are goji berries)
• Vegetables (especially green leafy veggies; salads and smoothies)
• Nuts and seeds (especially cacao-raw chocolate)
• Minerals (especially from seaweeds like Kelp powder)
• Sprouts
• Grasses
• Herbs
• Superfoods (cacao, spirulina, honey, bee pollen, macha, etc.)

Okay, there you have everything you need to have the best day ever! E-mail me if you have any questions about this stuff.

The Pleasure of Meditation

One of the first things I do every morning is meditate for about 20 minutes. I tell myself that this is the most important thing I will do today. I am trying to add another time to meditate around noon and another later in the day. I want to stay connected to what is real.

Usually I read a passage from Ekhart Tolle's "The Power of Now" to help me get in the mood.

This morning I was feeling how enjoyable it is to meditate. My body was peaceful, as well as my mind. Everything felt calm and pleasurable. But another part of me was pushing to finish up and get on with my day. How strange. Meditation is so enjoyable, but don't we often think of it as something we have to do before we get on with things? Like it's a chore, or a job.

At that moment I realized that there was a part of me, I think it is the mind, that doesn't like it when I meditate. It is the same part of me that wants to eat what makes it feel good, or wants to watch TV and be entertained. The mind wants what it wants (it wants problems and drama), and I don't think it is often what I want. I like the pleasure and the peace of just sitting there, my thoughts (and mind) not cluttering up things.

I am going to pay attention to this part of me that tries to control my life and isn't who "I" really am. There is a deeper, truer Self that knows better what will make my life whole, healthy, and happy. And I think that real Self comes out when I meditate. I'd like to see it also when I make my food choices, when I make choices about what I am going to do with my time.

I'm not going to listen to my mind trick me into believing that meditation is work--hell, it's not work, it is a real pleasure.

Super Food Overdose

Okay, so I made my green fruit smoothie this morning after having more ice cream than I would have liked to this weekend (thanks mom for the mud pie). I put in everything that I had: kale, mango, melon, frozen banana and blueberries; cacao, maca, flax seeds, agave, spirulina. I'm going to feel really good today, right? Wrong!

Green fruit smoothies are the best first step on a raw food life style; but you gotta use common sense, unlike me. I probably won't be eating anything else today (which is a good thing), but I feel really terrible right now. It is as if my whole body has shut down and is working full-time trying to make sense of all this really good food it just got. Like, "hey, let's not waste this stuff, fellas! Put everything thing else aside and get to work absorbing all these 'superfood' molecules!"

So, I'm home today contemplating how I can do this a little more "smoothly." From now on, one kind of fruit, one kind of superfood (two at most), and more water, along with a little less kale. It'll just take a little longer to get raw.

On a happier note: I've finished putting up my website. Please check it out at holistic-perspectives.com. (Don't forget to put the dash between holistic and perspectives or it doesn't work.) There is also a link to the site on this page over on the left hand side with the other links. I have uploaded all the pages to my book, Holistic Perspectives, if you can't wait to read the whole thing. It's free. Or, you can wait, and in a month or so it will be printed and available on Amazon and I'll send you a copy free, if you ask for one.

I'm gonna go lay down now and digest some more flax seeds.