Food Quality

On the quality of my food:

I would choose carefully when choosing my words, my steps, my goals and intentions.

So why not also my food?

And when I choose what I shall eat, what will my criteria be?

Pleasure, obviously, evolved in us for a reason, which presumably indicates valuable nutrients. 

But this one all by itself is tricky, for food products have been designed to fool your pleasure centers. 

Many people choose food by the price they have to pay for it. 

Again, tricky. Do we mean the dollar amount today? What about the cost to the environment and thus, in the long run, to us all, of degrading our shared common support system?

Do we mean the cost to our individual health in the future?

 This is a wise question to start with. Then we might ask how to align this with the greater good of our neighbors, and then the healing of the already frayed fabric of nature around us. Good questions.

If one must drink dirty water for a day to survive in the desert that is one thing. Otherwise there are many choice points. We must not try to live in a food desert, unless we can create an oasis there, full of good fresh natural food. Get out of that desert!

You, a noble child of the Earth, do not deserve to scrabble around on a dry, toxic desert, (unless, of course, that is what we, the humans from Earth, turn the planet into!)

Then there is our irrational food taboo programming. 

Why do humans create so many weird food taboos? My guess is that cultures overlay their rules onto the scaffolding of an instinct already hardwired in us. We evolved to remember, really well, the thing we ate that made us sick. To share this information with our tribe mates, this was codified later into food taboos.

So I propose new, rational food taboos. 

How about we just don’t create and sell food that is bad for people and our environment?

     “I started being vegan for my health, then it was for moral reasons, and now it’s just to annoy people” -overheard joke

Here are my food rules, for your consideration:

If it (they) would rather run, swim, or fly away, don’t eat it (them).

If I can find it organically grown, buy (support!) that kind. 

Keep it in its most whole, fresh (in shell or peel, whole grain) form until I eat it.

Lots of raw food.

Try to find things to eat that are in season and grown nearby.

Eat only when hungry, and not too much. 

It’s better to fast than eat poor quality food.

Better to eat less good quality food, than more poor quality food.

I try to eat food only six hours a day, at mid day, to give the body a rest.

“I think; therefore I’m vegan”- author unknown

Gratitude and Struggle

Two ways of proceeding, two attitudes, two paths...

I am not saying we should just accept injustice. We ought to speak up when we witness injustice, in person and even if we simply know about it. In this world of the twenty four hour news cycle, that means all the time. And if fighting in the political arena invigorates you, do it!

“So keep fighting for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don't forget to have fun doin' it. Be outrageous... rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through celebrating the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was!” 

― Molly Ivins

But it is tough going, except for the talented few, to work for freedom and justice by contending. Often the process is exhausting for everyone and only strengthens the grip of each side on their own point of view. Still, sometimes the only way to resist is to fight, and I, for one, am grateful to those who have gone before and fought for my freedom.

I am grateful that I have the freedom and leisure to think and write about this. Sometimes we get so angry, even for a righteous cause and on behalf of others, that we forget about the very positive things we do have going for us. 

More often, naturally, we get the most upset about slights to ourselves by others. It becomes a distressing syndrome. We walk around ruminating on points of unfairness. We are all too aware of it because we pour our precious divine gift of attention into our angry thoughts. Then we transfer our smoldering resentments to the surrounding world and walk around like ticking time bombs, waiting for events to confirm our negative expectations. 

This line of thinking leads to making political presumptions based on fear or scarcity, which cause us, en mass, to make bad decisions.

But this erroneous cascade has an antidote. Naturally we have evolved to avoid danger so we exaggerate the importance of the negative aspect of things. So we have to seek the good and pay our precious attention to it.

Gratitude works. This Great Attitude fills us with a feeling of well being and empowers us to do something about problems. If we remember that the great and small things we enjoy daily  are a gift, we get a bounce. An urge to share, to give back, to keep it going, to pass it on. It connects us.

Let us begin to count our blessings. Recent books point out that in many ways, more people are doing better in measurable ways than ever before. Just to use one example, while the technologies that create wealth by doing more with less that have been steadily raising the standard of living globally in recent times, even though the money system efficiently distributes most of the money to the elite, most people are doing better on the current crumbs than the previous crumbs dropped by the greedy men. 

There is a true wealth in the ability to communicate, to access the knowledge of all the other people, and this is more or less freely shared now on the web. This free wealth is a true game changer. The sharing of our knowledge freely is leading to more tangible sharing as well. Sharing is now a thing.

People are routing around obstacles by helping one another remotely, often bringing very close up results. We are swimming in this bonanza right now like tadpoles, getting our bearings in the new pond full of all of us. Most of it is, like in the precyber age, wasted flailings about, undirected, silly, and even all the bad things are starting to figure out ways to cause trouble there too, but still:  we are way underestimating how great of a gift it is to be connected at the speed of light.

We seem to take it for granted that all the wisdom of the ages is at our fingertips. 

We shrug off the security of traveling with the power to summon help in an instant.  We have the magical power of smart maps to guide us through the mazes we have built, to warn us of dangers on the way in real time, to help us find food, shelter, friends, and any other thing in the world. 

Then we even dare to complain about how much others like their little pocket sized glowing magic rectangles.

I feel so grateful that my present self has this gift. Because of it, I feel so much more wealthy and well than my previous self, who lived in the days before we all were this connected. It is a wealth and richness of one another. So I have hope that we can build on this platform of connectedness to take care of one another and solve our problems.

“The roots of all goodness lie in the soil of appreciation for goodness.” -Dalai Lama

Unitics, Truth and Love

“On the one hand, may truth serve as your guide,

Love, on the other hand, must always decide..” - Omni Sunheart

“No one is useless in this world who lightens the burdens of another”- Charles Dickens

What can one person do to help? What can I do? What can a typical person do to serve the highest good, to be a good member of the tree of life? How can I specifically help other people? These questions have been pondered over the ages by people of good will. 

So we have invented cultures, religions, civilizations, systems of ethics, philosophical models, and political constructions.

Unitics offers an easy way to help. First, we simply realize our oneness with the person or situation needing help. We harmonize ourself with the all. 

We tune into the flow that is already presenting, even as the boatmaster guides the boat through the rapids, mindful that surfing in harmony with the greater flow is the only way through.

Next, we simply intend to be of service. Only you know what you have to offer, and what is presented to your awareness in that moment, so let your intention move you. 

Beyond this, there is the belief that we CAN know the best thing to do. We may not know all things in the future, or what someone else should do, but we must believe that we can, at  least know what we ourselves, in this particular moment, would be wisest to do.

Truth, or your own best awareness of truth, will be your guide. But love will always know the wisest, most compassionate thing to do or say or think, so Love will always have the last word.

In Unitics, this means that you believe in yourself. Wherever we look, our Self is all we see. Who else?

“Do what you can do” - J. Golden

The Seed to Sprout Stage

(Continued from Dancing Tree Meditation: be a tree!)

“The tallest oak in the forest was once a little nut that held its ground’’

-Gregory Gunn

Be an Acorn:

Hold yourself in a hug. Curl up to your head, and make a ball like a seed. An egg. An acorn. 

We and trees alike store our data with the language of dna. Be it in eggs or seeds, we keep a patterned template of our forming data called our genes. We are cousins in the same tree of life on earth; we the smart monkeys, the trees, and all life.

A seed wants to fall into a nice warm bed, where it is low and safe and dark. A seed tries to nestle. While a seed might spend the winter under the ground, we bundle up and cuddle up too. We “cocoon”. 

The seed must attach to the earth! The shape, round or oval, gently guides the weight downward, down to ground with the bioelectric field of the great planet field with which we all must harmonize. 

How beautiful, this shell we are in, this sacred sphere.

This is your own tailored mobile aura, your personal office of thought creation and love, that receives and resonates the signal vibration you choose as you go along, wearing it like a car. It can also be a sanctuary of meditation and temple of conception for inspirations and aspirations. 

This seed place is a good place to meditate. Why is it so hard to just pause for a little while? There is a moment when a swing reaches as far as it can go, and reverses direction. This is the magic moment of peace.

Find this seed place of quiet, in your mind, in the elbow of a mindful breath, or curled up in a ball like a seed. Touch in. Go on a retreat. It is a place you can keep and use when you need some peace and quiet. 

“Just as the acorn contains the mighty oak tree, the Self has everything it needs to fulfill its destiny. When the inner conditions are right, it naturally emerges.”-Derik Rydell

Use this space to look forward with clarity and choose your way. When you go out walking and find an acorn on the ground, pick it up and put it in your pocket. When you feel it in there you can remember the quiet feeling of being in the seed meditation place.

Before the sprouting seed sends out a shoot or root, it will swell up with water. The water of life is love, and when the seed cannot contain any more, it reaches out! The first direction it reaches is downward with its little root toes, down to the more water, down to connect with Earth. 

If water is like emotion to us, and the golden emotion is Love, then connecting to Earth is connecting to all love! Indeed, when we are physically, electricly, grounded to the earth, our cortisol levels, or stress hormone levels, plummet. Getting grounded calms and refreshes us, gently lifting our emotional orientation from fear to love. One of the quickest ways to get grounded, is in fact, available in your house by taking a bath or shower. Or going for a walk, preferably barefooted in wet grass. Or hey, go hug a tree!

“The greatest achievement was at first and for a time a dream. The oak sleeps in the acorn, the bird waits in the egg, and in the highest vision of the soul a waking angel stirs. Dreams are the seedlings of realities.”- James Allen

Dancing Tree Meditation

(From the sacred dancing tree meditation book, “play like a tree”)

“ Learn character from trees, values from roots, and change from leaves” - Tasneem Hameed

Anytime, Anywhere, Centering Meditation

You can just be a tree anytime, anywhere. 

You just play like a tree!

Your own special one. What kind of tree are you?

The first thing your treeness will want is a safe place to stand. So maybe, for example, you are standing in line. Let your psychic roots feel their way down, through the floor, homing their way to Earth. Feel your toes stretching out as you sway gently, even imperceptibly to the others in line, firming your balance in this spot. Let your knees bend just a little, to stay supple and bouncy.

You own this spot on earth where you now stand. It is your birthright. I don’t care who “owns” the land, or “property” where you happen to be standing. If you are alive you have the right to be here, taking up space. Feel this truth, breathe it in.

 Check your posture. Relax, even as you allow your spine to straighten as you now can stand a bit taller, confident in your place of belonging, in line here, and also in the world, here and now, alive and in harmony with all that is. 

This is tree trunk consciousness, perpendicular to the gravitational field of the planet, an audacious assertion of individual being, a miracle against time. Here you are! What an outrageous implausible amazement! 

Your cylindrical inner core trunk can be viewed in your minds’ eye, from above, to see the tree rings. The dot in the center marks a point in time when you initiated verticalness. The rings go on out from the center like a record of time passing. This pole forms and is reinforced anew, each cycle, over time. It stands as an antenna to the sky, a deliberate link from earth toward the infinite heavens. From the dust, life arises, grows, and reaches up to heaven. Heaven showers light and wisdom.

Varying somewhat from culture to culture in distance, your personal space extends out from your body. This is also your domain, here in line. Feel your arms, as your upper tree limbs, holding the weight you carry, dancing in the atmosphere of the room you are in, asserting the intentions you aspire to, responding to the environment in which you stand. Your limbs can reach out, grow, and are your action. This is your work, your power to build in the world. Perhaps one day these limbs will hold the fruits that you have imagined.

The atmosphere around a tree out standing in the world consists of wind and water, sun, and all of the creatures around. The atmosphere in the line where you are standing consists of light and air, but also the presences of each whirling person-universe around you. You will be in the aura of each one, but most importantly you are in the aura of the universe of you, your current weather, how you are thinking and feeling. This is the leaves and twigs part, of your tree. 

So now, with your roots down and your limbs activated, feel your fingers. Bring your thumb and a finger tip together, and press them into... a thought. There is deep meaning in every body gesture, and the mudra language of the hands and fingers is a further realm of significance and nuance. 

The leaves of the tree shape themselves for, and follow, the light of the day, as it changes, even as we change our thoughts constantly. Our tree leaves quiver in the breeze, and we breathe in our atmosphere, the thoughts and moods in the air around us. We are also light seeking creatures.

Trees respire, releasing emotion-chemicals and particles that make rain, or communicate distress to others. We feel, smell, read, hear, and see the others around us. We react, we can respond. We are changed.

We are awake, present, attuned. We hold our center gracefully, like a flower. We stand at the ready. 

This meditation is not about tuning out the rest of the world. It is to gently hold your center so you can be whatever you are here to be.

(This meditation is on a virtual imaginal app. Just stare at your device, as you stand there in line, with everyone else also gazing into their devices, and pretend it’s on there: there’s even a mental picture of your special medicine tree!)

How Nuts Can Save the World

"The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.”  

―  Chinese proverb

Above: Filbert trees in the park

I like nuts! Nuts like me! Nuts like you! Nuts can save the world. 

We know that food sourcing is at least as responsible for global warming as transportation and energy use. Yet it need not be.

A satisfying meal of vegan food can be many times better for our shared environment than a meat or dairy plate. But some of your satisfaction comes from the concentrated protein and fat that animal body derived food offers. The animal eats a whole bunch of grass, and concentrates it into a liquid food that is whole, complete, and rich in everything a little mammal requires.

Nature is abundant, usually providing extra, so humans soon found they could share some of that milk. Fair enough. I know a fellow who was brought up in India and he tells me that as a child, he remembers the loving eyes of those holy cows. He would literally nap in the fields, cuddled up with the mama cows, who would let him nurse alongside the baby cows.

Diversified small organic farms are in fact the ONLY way to feed all the population of the world, according to a UN study.

But that is a far cry from the horrors of the meat and dairy industry factory farm model that most people use as the main source of their food. We don’t need this. We can have really yummy food without the meat and dairy industry.

Nuts like us can save the world! We need to fix global warming as well as feeding the people, and nuts are the answer. Some say we must design “plants”, factory style plants, to pull carbon out of the air. I do not think we need to build more factories for that! Planting trees locks up carbon. Some say all those trees would take up living space we need to grow food. What if they were nut trees!? 

Money may not always grow on trees, but I assure you, food most certainly does grow on trees. 

Different kinds of nuts grow well all over the world, even without extra water or care. Obviously the factory farm model can be applied to the production of nut crops, in some cases to the detriment of the environment, but you can also grow nuts in backyards, and use native compatible varieties and organic methods that not only do not harm the environment, but actually improve it!

I recently saw an analysis of the global warming/carbon values of different food sources. Meat and dairy were off the charts. Other foods were smaller contributors to the problem. Only nuts, done right of course, actually reversed global warming causes.

Conventional row crops can deplete soils and contaminate the air and water with poison, and even factory farm style organic row crops can cause erosion and other problems. Trees for nuts can be dramatically different from row crops for food. Instead of depleting the soil, trees enrich the soil by sending roots deep, breaking up compacted soil, and bringing up minerals that then end up at the surface.

While row crops of say, soybeans, require clearing forest, exposing soils to drying, increasing the heat on the surface of the land, trees provide shade, cooling the land, helping retain moisture. There is evidence that forests and trees actually “make“ rain by releasing tiny droplets into the air when they need some water!

While row crops raze the land for monocroping, destroying the micro environment that preceded them, trees actually provide habitat for a myriad of creatures, large and small.

Trees clean the air and make oxygen for us to breathe. And we would all rather look at trees we plant, than a factory “plant” with noisy fans sucking in millions of pounds of air to chemically remove carbon, (even if it did actually work).

Above: walnut tree in the park

Best of all, switching to nuts for food gets us out of the ugly business of the enslavement, torture, and murder of our fellow beings, which is harmful not only to them, but is also a moral hazard to any conscientious person.

Let’s all go nuts for nuts!

"Someone's sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.”   

―   Warren Buffett

Previous posts with recipes for nut milk and other great nutty menu ideas:

How to make nut milk at home:

http://omnimountainskyrainbow.blogspot.com/2014/12/nutmilk.html

Smoothie with time release recipe:

http://omnimountainskyrainbow.blogspot.com/2016/12/planet-earth-mothers-milk-smoothie.html

Converting your favorite recipes:

http://omnimountainskyrainbow.blogspot.com/2015/05/vegan-cuisine-meat-eaters-love.html

Spiced nuts:

http://omnimountainskyrainbow.blogspot.com/2014/12/party-nuts.html

All Tree Pudding: 

http://omnimountainskyrainbow.blogspot.com/2015/04/rich-rawsome-puddin-downloaded-from.html

"Trees are poems that the earth writes upon the sky. ”   

―   Kahlil Gibran