During a time of crisis, we often are required to self-reflect, to get past our pain and anger, and to discover the opportunities inherent in any difficult experience. One of the most nurturing things a “whole being” can do at such a time is to look for deeper meaning in the relationship between freedom, terrorism and raw food.
The real value of a whole, raw food lifestyle is that it empowers much more than just our health. You see, with a healthy body and mind we not only think clearly and less reactively, but with greater awareness, understanding, sensitivity and compassion. A healthy, whole being takes full responsibility naturally, doesn’t fall into fear and anger with a knee-jerk response to adversity, and has compassion for his enemies as well as his friends … albeit, in some cases, what I call “ruthless compassion.”
We have that whole being within us, just waiting to come out, and all we have to do is stop repressing it with a detrimental lifestyle and toxic diet based on death. We just have to stop killing our food and ourselves in order to rediscover ourselves. Death, in the form of dead food or any other form, creates death. Life, in the form of live food or any other form, creates life. It’s not profound. It’s just common sense!
This wisdom doesn’t diminish the horror of terrorist acts nor the guilt of the terrorists. But it puts it into a perspective in which we can be powerful, whole beings again rather than lose ourselves in a powerless “victim” state of mind.
I didn’t feel “called” to share my experience of raw, whole, live foods just because I am interested in health and healing. Personally, I am committed to transforming the world! That is the essence of a Whole Being — to nurture meaningful change on a planetary scale! And that is the power that raw food helps you get back in touch with. You really can begin to change the world just with your nutritional choices.
Whole beings are always naturally powerful. The toxins in cooked and processed foods, however, block our natural power. As you can see in my article “Toxins Created by Cooking,” many of these toxins actually have a sedative-like affect on your brain — putting you to sleep. Perhaps cooking was the evil knowledge given to Eve by a snake, a symbol of fire — and cooking perhaps, in the Garden of Eden.
Toxins rob your body of energy as the body struggles to survive and maintain some semblance of “homeostasis” or balance. Toxins from cooking, not to mention the artificial flavorings and chemicals in processed and “fast” foods, can block the molecular “receptors” in your nose and mouth that would otherwise have a natural ability to sense vitamins, minerals, amino acids, fatty acids and other nutrients normally found in “real” food. With less energy, your ability to think clearly is hampered. With your body in survival mode, taking care of yourself instinctively sometimes becomes more important than caring for others. With imbalanced brain functions, you may become less emotionally balanced, more prone to anger, depression, anxiety or violence. These are just some of the short-term ripple effects of an unnatural, unhealthy lifestyle and diet. There are many more, as well as many long term effects from cancer to heart disease.
The opportunity of rediscovering a natural, healthy lifestyle is to re-empower ourselves to be “whole beings” once again, as we may have been in the Garden of Eden. As “whole beings,” we can approach life’s challenges with compassion, wisdom and trust. We can embrace these challenges responsibly, learn from them and grow together.
True togetherness for all people can only come from within. It can’t be imposed from the outside, by another person, political party or philosophy. For that to manifest itself we need healthy bodies, minds and spirits. A whole being, nurtured by whole foods, naturally experiences himself or herself as part of the “whole” — part of the “web of life.”
Today, with the all the terrorism we see every night on the news, trust is more important than ever. Fear creates distrust, especially of anyone that looks like the “enemy.” When some tragedy happens, the media can whip our anger and fear into a war-like frenzy. We can quickly learn to distrust neighbors with the wrong skin color or cultural heritage. The danger of that is that it opens us up to manipulation by the very terrorists we despise, and vastly increases the real danger that may be confronting us – the loss of the founding principles of freedom that has historically made our country great. When that happens, the terrorists win because what they want to defeat is our freedom itself. So it is essential for us to learn to unconditionally Trust our fellow Americans again, regardless of their politics, heritage, accent, hair color or skin tone.
Such trust only comes from within. It is unconditional, and not dependent on external factors. It comes from consciousness, responsibility and awareness. If we don’t learn to Trust unconditionally, we can dilute our ability to actually perceive real threats, distrusting everyone with a certain accent or viewpoint. Then, we spend all our energy and time investigating, complaining and arguing about the wrong people. It would be much more productive to simply trust each other. Then those that are not deserving of our trust will quickly stand out and be easier to locate and deal with proactively. Meanwhile, we will be healthier and happier ourselves. That’s the real American way!
Terrorism is a battle between the rigid ideals of a fundamentalist theocracy and the liberated institutions of a republic or democracy. These two systems of thought cannot coexist. Religious or theocratic governments have no real personal liberties and often actually despise the concepts of freedom that make American unique. Merely having “free” neighbors is a threat to them, an insult to what they believe, and perhaps even an intolerable temptation for which they feel an overwhelming guilt. So freedom itself is their enemy. They hate us for being free. They want to kill freedom itself.
In this battle between freedom and terrorism, the terrorists are already winning. Anti-terrorist legislation in American threatens to destroy our constitutional rights. In the end, this has little effect on terrorists, but is devastating to the lives of most Americans. You see, terrorists today don’t want to make a philosophical argument or negotiate for anything. They want to destroy everything we believe in because it’s antithetical to their rigid perspective.
Even deeper, terrorists want to destroy our faith in our lifestyle so that we destroy ourselves from within. That is exactly what is happening when, out of fear, we are willing to give up our Constitutional rights in the mistaken belief that will enable the government to protect us. But the Constitution that has been protecting us for over 200 years. Suspending it only makes us weaker and plays right into the hands of the terrorists. By destroying ourselves, and our belief in everything we stand for, we give new life to their crazy beliefs. Supporting the Constitutional ideals uniquely fundamental to only United States is truly the only way to resist all such radical points of view.
Sure, we must defend ourselves … responsibly, intelligently, and with a heart founded in the liberties this country was founded upon. But ultimately, brute force only generates more brute force, and more terrorists. You see, terrorism is like the mythological Hydra with many heads, you cut one off and ten more grow back in its place. So Israel is an armed camp, not a truly free country. The Israelis have been in this mode for half a century, and are no closer to solving these problems then they were fifty years ago. They’ve merely become experts at living with fear and at protecting themselves from those whom they fear. Every time Israel has won a war, they created more fear and hate in their enemies. Every generation of Palestinians has had fathers, mothers, grandfathers, grandmothers, sisters, brothers, cousins and friends killed in that conflict.
Do we want to export that negative energy to the shores of America? We have the highly sophisticated means today to create powerful, effective solutions without a knee-jerk reaction that kills everything America stands for — because when we do that, the terrorists kill much more than people…they kill our ideals.
Once we are willing to surrender our Constitution for perceived convenience, we’ll lose more rights as the violence escalates. For every bomb we drop there will be a dozen terrorists willing to die as martyrs on our own shores. We don’t need to paint scenarios of terrorists with biological weapons, nukes or fertilizer bombs. A simple can of gasoline in a shopping mall can become a weapon equivalent to several sticks of dynamite.
If the violence escalates, we’ll suspend even more rights. But it is inevitable that most of the impact of this “military rule,” will be felt by regular people, not terrorists. When all our police and military isn’t enough, the United Nations may be asked to lend a hand. Then, soldiers from foreign shores, who don’t necessarily care for our silly American notions of personal liberty, will be asked to help bring order further affecting regular Americans more than terrorists. Laws that regulate us, for our own safety, actually only impact the honest people who obey them. They rarely affect criminals who’ve chosen to operate outside the law.
I say this not to take a political stance or to go against our leaders and their difficult choices, but to demonstrate from a whole being perspective how violence ultimately only leads to more violence. Death leads to more death — and Life leads to Life. It’s the basic principle of raw food, applied to life itself.
Violence and death can’t ever result in true peace. It can’t create lasting security. It won’t really make us safe from terrorism. That isn’t even some profound truth, it’s just plain old common sense. And this all comes about simply from a lack of Trust. Trust for ourselves, to be able to deal with the problems and fears of today’s complex world. Trust for our neighbors, who may have a different cultural heritage than ourselves. And Trust for God, The Great Spirit, Allah, Buddha or Jesus, who is guiding us all through life’s lessons no matter how difficult they may be. And Trust is just one of the things that come naturally from within a healthy, self-empowered, whole being – who, of course, prefers to eat whole, live food!
Without trust, living in fear and anger, we become mere victims who do not take responsibility for what happens to us. Instead we blame someone else. As victims, we have no power. We want to lash out, to destroy our enemy in order to reclaim our power. However, power truly only comes from within. You can’t get it back by destroying whomever you think took it from you because the very belief that it can be taken makes you a victim. So even if you destroy your enemy, a new enemy will inevitably crop up. This is the very nature of animals – the strong always prey on the weak. And when you are not manifesting as a “whole being,” all that’s left is your natural animal nature.
Tobacco companies knowingly promoted lung cancer for many decades in the name of profit. Arms companies sell guns to both sides in a war. And fast food companies are happy to sell you 99 cent hamburgers laced with toxins that scientific studies clearly show have negative health effects – and even market them to little children using images of clowns, toys and happy faces.
Such businesses are happy to build an oil pipeline that makes a huge profit — and even to start a war in distant lands to achieve their ends. To such a business you represent not a human being but a human resource – a worker and a consumer. To be more than that you need to be aware, awake, alive and fully actualized as human beings … what I like to call a “whole being.” And, believe it or not, being whole begins with what you choose to eat.
Death creates death. People that thrive on dead food thrive on dead thinking, dead beliefs, dead politics, dead economics, dead lifestyles and the means of creating more death. On the other hand, life creates life.
You can choose if you want to be fully alive, with the conscious joy engendered by whole, live foods and without the sedative effects from toxins found in cooked foods. You’ll discover clearer thinking, more awareness, purer consciousness and much more. And this isn’t some new age psycho-babble, it is proven in numerous scientific studies (for some examples, see the scientific references throughout my website. It’s not just a fact, its common sense for people that have all the facts. Dead food kills. Live food gives life. And the good news is that You Still have the Freedom to Choose!
Opinion By Robert Ross
(C) 2009-2017 www.RawFoodLife.com
Also Read:
https://rawfoodlife.com/philosophy-of-raw-whole-food/
