-- I guarantee at some point along the way you will be AMAZED at what raw foods can do for you and not just physically. Spiritually, emotionally, intellectually... besides limiting the purely physical assault on the body with artificial and questionable additives and preservatives (or for the organic cookers, the limitation will be on the heavy cooked low to no enzyme food), it will revive the intuitive connections that are blocked by self destructive habits and repetitive behaviors that limit the ability to really FEEL what is happening inside and out.

-- Inverse paranoia is a fantastic concept for us because we live in a society of absolute fear and paranoia where we literally believe we are perceiving things outside ourselves when much of the time it is entirely created by the imagination. if the imagination is not nurtured in an environment of self love and creative encouragement, it will find it's expression through darker avenues. The raw diet gives us this wonderful rich and rewarding opportunity to experience the opposite of carelessness. It fosters caring above all else and requires a great deal of the very best human qualities to really succeed at "being raw."

Some fantastic Q & A:

- So what is "being raw?"

(to be answered another time)

- So how come some raw fooders are not nice people and seem to have some average bad habits such as quick tempered, argumentative and quarrelsome?

-- This is an excellent question and this very thing turns many people away from raw nutrition. There are a few reasons for this. The first one i will address is that many people who identify as raw fooders actually drink beer at night and coffee in the morning! I have witnessed it myself. During the day they may grow sprouts and make salads and have studied some about raw food nutrition but they don't have the whole picture and they are by no means raw foodists! These very same people will enjoy rich cooked meals with friends (for social reasons) and then retire to their room and jump on the raw food forums and proceed to answer peoples questions about the raw diet as if they are experts, all the while believing that they are experts and becoming, some of them, absolutely drunker and drunker as the night wears on! Raw food has become a huge fad and has attracted conformists, people who want to make friends at all costs and who literally believe that they are part of the raw food "clique" because they enjoy some raw food in their diet or only "drink" cooked food (often it is primarily alcohol and coffee but can include many things) and because they are fond of produce and have read up on the raw food fad. It is not uncommon these days to find people on the raw food forums and at raw food potlucks who have never been raw a day in their lives and who lack the will power, dedication and discipline that it takes to actually make the substantial LEAP over the proverbial sink well of cooked cravings and addictions and reach a point where they honestly prefer raw food over cooked food. ( honestly once this happens in a persons experience it is magical and affirmative but it will most likely be fleeting and the old cooked desires will continue to pop up off and on as one continues to sincerely face the onslaught of cooked propaganda and silly nonsense that has so many on this planet hooked by corporate loyalties and swayed by commercial hypnotism)

OK, so that is one reason why many new comers to the raw experience are offended, scared off or discouraged when they begin their investigations or when raw food finds them (when they come upon it again and again until they can't help but get curious)!

Another reason is related to the above factor mentioned about how the raw diet has become a fad and so many many people are dabbling in it but don't hang in there and stay raw for more than a few weeks and so never really discharge some of the heavier patterning such as cynicism, "irony world view" (It will rain today because i washed my car... kind of thoughts constantly coloring the perceptions of life as if life is a series of unfortunate and ironic mishaps, mistakes, blunders, unfair and mysterious freak accidents! the cooked mind has so little connection to the wisdom realm which is all about trust and justice) and self pity ( I worked so hard today at that rotten job that i deserve a coca cola/ to be rude or whatever...).

I truly believe that the raw diet is superior to the cooked diet but not every human being is going to be balanced on either diet. If a person is quarrelsome on a raw diet they would most likely be much worse and shut down and repressed, on a cooked one! What we eat has a huge effect on us yes, but we are much more than that. So there will be a few genuine raw foodists who aren't very spiritually mature but I firmly believe that they have merely transfer ed some of their chronic neurosis into the raw philosophies so that they could continue to nurture the old habit patterns of aversion, conceit, craving, whatever. They may need to stay raw for twenty years to change their way of perceiving things as much as someone else can do in just six months on raw. It's a difference in spiritual constitution. the less mature people will still become more intuitive over time but they are slower to progress than others and so will appear to not be benefiting from the raw diet.

and lastly, and I have to say this even though i don't absolutely believe it, on rare occasions, there are probably people who are so obsessive and rigid that a raw diet could only make them more emotionally wound up and cause more problems for them and so they may be better off without it.

Intuitive Raw fact of the day: "Enjoy thyself, and Thy shall be successful at what Thine does."

Real joy is in touch with feelings. raw food does make us feel more. this is an accepted fact among experienced raw fooders. we feel more and thus we live more. we become more ALIVE through FEELING.

It is not nearly as numbing to over eat on almonds and dates as it is to over eat the unmentionables that Alissa writes about here

Q. What are some of the main problems people encounter when going raw?

People get too strict. They try to eat a mono diet. They start fasting. They cut out nuts. They start thinking one food is not good, that fruits are too high in sugar, they shouldn’t have as much fat, they should not eat too much, etc. Eating raw food is drastically different to what most people are used to eating. What makes people think that eating an extra piece of fruit or more raw nuts will be the worst think in the world when just a week before they were eating pizza, ice cream and Mexican food? On this diet, people tend to go to the extreme. Raw food is extreme enough for most people. Just relax around it and have fun with it.

Another major pitfall is not having food in your house. You need to make sure you have enough food so that when you get hungry you can eat! For some reason when people go raw, they don’t think they need to have a lot of raw food in their home. But you would have cooked food if you were eating a cooked food diet! Make sure you know how to make some good raw food meals so when you’re hungry you know how to whip something up so you don’t find yourself driving to the nearest fast food chain."
-From a Raw Guru Interview

Raw foods builds connections/ community/ makes one more open to possibilities and sharing and is thus a peaceful path, very anti-war, it fosters a real sense of sharing, co-operation and genuine appreciation of your own and other peoples input and energy.

RAW is the inversion or opposite of WAR and in a life full of miracles there are no mysteries. All will be revealed or already has been. We just have to remember it or open to it or access it and live it.

And from the Vipassana archives, regaurding the benefits of FEELINg (which is what Vipassana is primarily): "Someone may seem outwardly happy while performing unwholesome actions but their real situation is like burning charcoal covered with a thick layer of ash-bhasmacchannova pavako. One is burning inside because of the mental negativities, and yet one is totally ignorant of what is happening inside. This is avijja, moha, ignorance. For the Buddha, ignorance is not lack of knowledge of some philosophical belief. It is lack of knowledge of what is happening within oneself. One doesn't understand how one becomes miserable because of this veil of ignorance."
-From this Dhamma Newsletter



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