A bit about a balanced diet...and a little about the Saint that did not eat
We are going on a diet!
It is amazing how those extra pounds creep up on you...
One day you look in the mirror and you love how you look, and a month later you go on the scale and you find that you've gained five pounds....
How? You think to yourself....
I did not indulge in cakes or desserts.... I did not even eat much more than normal....
The truth is that it does not take much to gain weight.
But it also does not take much to lose it...
Recently I read that most people in America admit to drinking one can of soda or soft drink per day.
The research said that this means that they consume about 250 calories per day from a soft drink.
Accumulated over ten or eleven days they will gain one pound.... Or... An average of three pounds per month, just from adding one soft drink or canned juice.
Over the course of a year, it amounts to a staggering weight gain of 36 pounds...
Imagine that.... 36 pounds, just from adding to your daily diet 250 calories.
Those of us who never drink Red Bull or any other soft drinks can still easily accumulate an extra 250 calories per day from many other healthy food staples.
A bowl of nuts with raisins.... Two bananas,.....one thick slice of bread,.... An extra spoon of pasta.... Or anything with a rich sauce... All easily amount to an increase in calories that accumulates to potentially a substantial weight gain.
So we are going on a diet!
We decided to cut back substantially on cheese, bread, desserts and pasta.
We decided to have a vegetable or miso soup with seaweed and tofu every day.
For grain, we will eat steamed rice or fried rice.
For protein, we will eat beans and a small amount of fish.
Our meal will be similar to those eaten in most of the "undeveloped" world, which has a much better diet than the SAD (Standard American Diet) diet that is loved and eaten in most of the developed world.
This means that we will eat a plate that is composed of one third grain (like rice), one third vegetables, and one third beans, tofu, or fish.
This plate with a soup or a salad, will be our diet food.
For sweets, we will eat only fruit.
One of the things I learnt when I studied Macrobiotic cooking, is that in order to provide yourself with a balanced and sustaining diet, you have to include all flavors in your meal.
They do not have to be strong or very dominant, they just have to be there.
This means that in order to feel satisfied with what you eat, you need to include something sweet, something sour, something bitter, something salty and something hot.
Watercress, Endive, Arugula (Called Rocket in NZ), and many herbs, are considered bitter.
Radish, hot spices, chillies, Daikon, uncooked onions, garlic, horseradish, are examples of hot.
Sour, salty and sweet are easy to identify.
Most nuts and grains are considered sweet.
For example- Adding a fruit, like an orange, to a salty salad with a sweet and sour balsamic dressing, or a honey dijon dressing, will make the salad more balanced to the taste buds, than a salad that is just salty and sour.
The idea of balancing flavors is a dominant principle in Indian Ayurveda wisdom, and it also comes from the ancient Chinese and Japanese concept of Yin and Yang.
It is also important to include in your diet not just steamed food, but also a small amount of fried food (especially for men).
But you must not overdo it.
When you eat food that is fried or is too salty (salty is Yang, and fried food is also Yang), you almost immediately crave a drink of water or any liquid (all liquids are Yin).
This is because we naturally exist in a state of balance, and when we create imbalances, we immediately get the urge to balance out again.
When you eat meals that are too Yang or too Yin, you eat meals that are not balanced, and you basically end up fluctuating between cravings...between Yin and Yang....
An example of this is when you eat a meal of just a large soup- it is a meal that is too Yin, therefore you usually want to eat it with some bread, or crackers, which are Yang.
Or when you eat a meal that is composed of only a large salad- which is also Yin (raw vegetables and raw fruit, are all full of water and therefore are Yin) - You usually crave eating the salad with bread (Yang), or to add a baked potato (Yang), or to add goat cheese or a boiled egg (both Yang)- or you simply feel unsatisfied, like you ate a meal that is too light.
A small amount of fried food accompanied with a green salad (Yin) and a small soup (Yin), with some steamed rice (Yang), is a balanced meal, and you would feel more satisfied.
Diet is all a way to work with your mind... Because the truth is, you are not really capable of being hungry... It is a state of mind generated by our idea that we NEED food to survive....
Or more accurately, that our bodies need food for energy and survival.
The Truth is.... that ALL bodily craving are not real...
All bodily cravings are an attempt to satisfy the Spirit, through bodily sensations.... Which is basically impossible.
Taking in food, cannot nourish your Spirit....
Nor will sex.... Or a drink... Or a smoke.
We are too accustomed to erroneously trying to nourish our Spirit through the body, which will never work...
Our Soul and Spirit will only be satisfied when we are loving and kind towards others and towards ourselves.
Only when we let Divine Love guide our thinking and our feelings, will we know real and physical contentment.
This is what living in the Light actually means- You let the Light fill your mind and guide your thinking, guide your feelings and all of your decision making process.
I wish to share a true story about the German saint that did not eat for YEARS.
The writings below are from the book: "Autobiography of a Yogi," by Paramhansa Yogananda. (a most important reading for any student of Truth and Spirituality)
Chapter 39
Therese Neumann -The Catholic Stigmatist
Yogananda: "... I wanted to make a special pilgrimage to Bavaria.
This would be my only chance, I felt, to visit the great Catholic mystic, Therese Neumann of Konnersreuth.
Years earlier I had read an amazing account of Therese.
Information given in the article was as follows:
Therese, born in 1898, had been injured in an accident at the age of twenty; she became blind and paralyzed.
(2) She miraculously regained her sight in 1923 through prayers to St. Teresa, "The Little Flower." Later Therese Neumann's limbs were instantaneously healed.
(3) From 1923 onward, Therese has abstained completely from food and drink, except for the daily swallowing of one small consecrated wafer.
(4) The stigmata, or sacred wounds of Christ, appeared in 1926 on Therese's head, breast, hands, and feet. On Friday of every week thereafter, she has passed through the Passion of Christ, suffering in her own body all his historic agonies.
(5) Knowing ordinarily only the simple German of her village, during her Friday trances Therese utters phrases which scholars have identified as ancient Aramaic. At appropriate times in her vision, she speaks Hebrew or Greek.
(6) By ecclesiastical permission, Therese has several times been under close scientific observation. Dr. Fritz Gerlick, editor of a Protestant German newspaper, went to Konnersreuth to "expose the Catholic fraud," but ended up by reverently writing her biography.
As always, whether in East or West, I was eager to meet a saint.
I rejoiced as our little party entered, on July 16th, the quaint village of Konnersreuth.
The Bavarian peasants exhibited lively interest in our Ford automobile (brought with us from America) and its assorted grouping, an American young man, an elderly lady, and an olive-hued Oriental with long hair tucked under his coat collar.
Therese's little cottage, clean and neat, with geraniums blooming by a primitive well, was alas! silently closed.
The neighbors, and even the village postman who passed by, could give us no information.
Rain began to fall; my companions suggested that we leave.
"No," I said stubbornly, "I will stay here until I find some clue leading to Therese."
Two hours later we were still sitting in our car amidst the dismal rain. "Lord," I sighed complainingly, "why didst Thou lead me here if she has disappeared?"
An English-speaking man halted beside us, politely offering his aid.
"I don't know for certain where Therese is," he said, "but she often visits at the home of Professor Wurz, a seminary master of Eichstatt, eighty miles from here."
The following morning our party motored to the quiet village of Eichstatt, narrowly lined with cobblestoned streets.
Dr. Wurz greeted us cordially at his home; "Yes, Therese is here."
He sent her word of the visitors.
A messenger soon appeared with her reply.
"Though the bishop has asked me to see no one without his permission, I will receive the man of God from India."
Deeply touched at these words, I followed Dr. Wurz upstairs to the sitting room.
Therese entered immediately, radiating an aura of peace and joy.
She wore a black gown and spotless white head dress.
Although her age was thirty-seven at this time, she seemed much younger, possessing indeed a childlike freshness and charm.
Healthy, well-formed, rosy-cheeked, and cheerful, this is the saint that does not eat!
Therese greeted me with a very gentle handshaking.
We both beamed in silent communion, each knowing the other to be a lover of God.
Dr. Wurz kindly offered to serve as interpreter.
As we seated ourselves, I noticed that Therese was glancing at me with naive curiosity; evidently Hindus had been rare in Bavaria.
"Don't you eat anything?" I wanted to hear the answer from her own lips.
"No, except a consecrated rice-flour wafer, once every morning at six o'clock."
"How large is the wafer?"
"It is paper-thin, the size of a small coin." She added,
"I take it for sacramental reasons; if it is unconsecrated, I am unable to swallow it."
"Certainly you could not have lived on that, for twelve whole years?"
"I live by God's light." How simple her reply, how Einsteinian!
"I see you realize that energy flows to your body from the ether, sun, and air."
A swift smile broke over her face.
"I am so happy to know you understand how I live."
"Your sacred life is a daily demonstration of the truth uttered by Christ: 'Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.'"
Again she showed joy at my explanation.
"It is indeed so. One of the reasons I am here on earth today is to prove that man can live by God's invisible Light, and not by food only."
"Can you teach others how to live without food?"
She appeared a trifle shocked.
"I cannot do that; God does not wish it."
As my gaze fell on her strong, graceful hands, Therese showed me a little, square, freshly healed wound on each of her palms.
On the back of each hand, she pointed out a smaller, crescent-shaped wound, freshly healed.
Each wound went straight through the hand.
The sight brought to my mind distinct recollection of the large square iron nails with crescent-tipped ends, still used in the Orient, but which I do not recall having seen in the West.
The saint told me something of her weekly trances. "As a helpless onlooker, I observe the whole Passion of Christ."
Each week, from Thursday midnight until Friday afternoon at one o'clock, her wounds open and bleed; she loses ten pounds of her ordinary 121-pound weight.
Suffering intensely in her sympathetic love, Therese yet looks forward joyously to these weekly visions of her Lord.
I realized at once that her strange life is intended by God to reassure all Christians of the historical authenticity of Jesus' life and crucifixion as recorded in the New Testament, and to dramatically display the ever-living bond between the Galilean Master and his devotees.
Professor Wurz related some of his experiences with the saint.
"Several of us, including Therese, often travel for days on sight-seeing trips throughout Germany," he told me.
"It is a striking contrast while we have three meals a day, Therese eats nothing.
She remains as fresh as a rose, untouched by the fatigue which the trips cause us.
As we grow hungry and hunt for wayside inns, she laughs merrily."
The professor added some interesting physiological details: "Because Therese takes no food, her stomach has shrunk.
She has no excretions, but her perspiration glands function; her skin is always soft and firm."
(By Yogananda)
So... We do not need food to survive....
This is because our bodies are not really physical, but spiritual vibrational bodies, which can change, adopt, and rebalance themselves....
Even if we were badly injured in an accident... Even if we lost limbs... Even if we were blind and paralyzed like Saint Therese in the story above.... We can regrow limbs, regain eyesight and regain feeling in a paralyzed spine.
What is possible for one of us, is possible for ALL of us....
We are beloved eternal children of an all Loving God, which wants to see us happy, joyful, abundant awake and healthy....because sickness and death are nothing but an illusion.... A mistake... A lie...
Life is eternal and everlasting.
Some of us would rather die, than believe this to be true.
Yet nobody can die....
They will simply fall into the Great Sleep, and there, in the safety and warmth of Eternal Love, they will choose another Universal Career and maybe even choose to come back to earth, in another body and they will reincarnate again.
It is a journey without end... A journey of love and light...
It is amazing how those extra pounds creep up on you...
One day you look in the mirror and you love how you look, and a month later you go on the scale and you find that you've gained five pounds....
How? You think to yourself....
I did not indulge in cakes or desserts.... I did not even eat much more than normal....
The truth is that it does not take much to gain weight.
But it also does not take much to lose it...
Recently I read that most people in America admit to drinking one can of soda or soft drink per day.
The research said that this means that they consume about 250 calories per day from a soft drink.
Accumulated over ten or eleven days they will gain one pound.... Or... An average of three pounds per month, just from adding one soft drink or canned juice.
Over the course of a year, it amounts to a staggering weight gain of 36 pounds...
Imagine that.... 36 pounds, just from adding to your daily diet 250 calories.
Those of us who never drink Red Bull or any other soft drinks can still easily accumulate an extra 250 calories per day from many other healthy food staples.
A bowl of nuts with raisins.... Two bananas,.....one thick slice of bread,.... An extra spoon of pasta.... Or anything with a rich sauce... All easily amount to an increase in calories that accumulates to potentially a substantial weight gain.
So we are going on a diet!
We decided to cut back substantially on cheese, bread, desserts and pasta.
We decided to have a vegetable or miso soup with seaweed and tofu every day.
For grain, we will eat steamed rice or fried rice.
For protein, we will eat beans and a small amount of fish.
Our meal will be similar to those eaten in most of the "undeveloped" world, which has a much better diet than the SAD (Standard American Diet) diet that is loved and eaten in most of the developed world.
This means that we will eat a plate that is composed of one third grain (like rice), one third vegetables, and one third beans, tofu, or fish.
This plate with a soup or a salad, will be our diet food.
For sweets, we will eat only fruit.
One of the things I learnt when I studied Macrobiotic cooking, is that in order to provide yourself with a balanced and sustaining diet, you have to include all flavors in your meal.
They do not have to be strong or very dominant, they just have to be there.
This means that in order to feel satisfied with what you eat, you need to include something sweet, something sour, something bitter, something salty and something hot.
Watercress, Endive, Arugula (Called Rocket in NZ), and many herbs, are considered bitter.
Radish, hot spices, chillies, Daikon, uncooked onions, garlic, horseradish, are examples of hot.
Sour, salty and sweet are easy to identify.
Most nuts and grains are considered sweet.
For example- Adding a fruit, like an orange, to a salty salad with a sweet and sour balsamic dressing, or a honey dijon dressing, will make the salad more balanced to the taste buds, than a salad that is just salty and sour.
The idea of balancing flavors is a dominant principle in Indian Ayurveda wisdom, and it also comes from the ancient Chinese and Japanese concept of Yin and Yang.
It is also important to include in your diet not just steamed food, but also a small amount of fried food (especially for men).
But you must not overdo it.
When you eat food that is fried or is too salty (salty is Yang, and fried food is also Yang), you almost immediately crave a drink of water or any liquid (all liquids are Yin).
This is because we naturally exist in a state of balance, and when we create imbalances, we immediately get the urge to balance out again.
When you eat meals that are too Yang or too Yin, you eat meals that are not balanced, and you basically end up fluctuating between cravings...between Yin and Yang....
An example of this is when you eat a meal of just a large soup- it is a meal that is too Yin, therefore you usually want to eat it with some bread, or crackers, which are Yang.
Or when you eat a meal that is composed of only a large salad- which is also Yin (raw vegetables and raw fruit, are all full of water and therefore are Yin) - You usually crave eating the salad with bread (Yang), or to add a baked potato (Yang), or to add goat cheese or a boiled egg (both Yang)- or you simply feel unsatisfied, like you ate a meal that is too light.
A small amount of fried food accompanied with a green salad (Yin) and a small soup (Yin), with some steamed rice (Yang), is a balanced meal, and you would feel more satisfied.
Diet is all a way to work with your mind... Because the truth is, you are not really capable of being hungry... It is a state of mind generated by our idea that we NEED food to survive....
Or more accurately, that our bodies need food for energy and survival.
The Truth is.... that ALL bodily craving are not real...
All bodily cravings are an attempt to satisfy the Spirit, through bodily sensations.... Which is basically impossible.
Taking in food, cannot nourish your Spirit....
Nor will sex.... Or a drink... Or a smoke.
We are too accustomed to erroneously trying to nourish our Spirit through the body, which will never work...
Our Soul and Spirit will only be satisfied when we are loving and kind towards others and towards ourselves.
Only when we let Divine Love guide our thinking and our feelings, will we know real and physical contentment.
This is what living in the Light actually means- You let the Light fill your mind and guide your thinking, guide your feelings and all of your decision making process.
I wish to share a true story about the German saint that did not eat for YEARS.
The writings below are from the book: "Autobiography of a Yogi," by Paramhansa Yogananda. (a most important reading for any student of Truth and Spirituality)
Chapter 39
Therese Neumann -The Catholic Stigmatist
Yogananda: "... I wanted to make a special pilgrimage to Bavaria.
This would be my only chance, I felt, to visit the great Catholic mystic, Therese Neumann of Konnersreuth.
Years earlier I had read an amazing account of Therese.
Information given in the article was as follows:
Therese, born in 1898, had been injured in an accident at the age of twenty; she became blind and paralyzed.
(2) She miraculously regained her sight in 1923 through prayers to St. Teresa, "The Little Flower." Later Therese Neumann's limbs were instantaneously healed.
(3) From 1923 onward, Therese has abstained completely from food and drink, except for the daily swallowing of one small consecrated wafer.
(4) The stigmata, or sacred wounds of Christ, appeared in 1926 on Therese's head, breast, hands, and feet. On Friday of every week thereafter, she has passed through the Passion of Christ, suffering in her own body all his historic agonies.
(5) Knowing ordinarily only the simple German of her village, during her Friday trances Therese utters phrases which scholars have identified as ancient Aramaic. At appropriate times in her vision, she speaks Hebrew or Greek.
(6) By ecclesiastical permission, Therese has several times been under close scientific observation. Dr. Fritz Gerlick, editor of a Protestant German newspaper, went to Konnersreuth to "expose the Catholic fraud," but ended up by reverently writing her biography.
As always, whether in East or West, I was eager to meet a saint.
I rejoiced as our little party entered, on July 16th, the quaint village of Konnersreuth.
The Bavarian peasants exhibited lively interest in our Ford automobile (brought with us from America) and its assorted grouping, an American young man, an elderly lady, and an olive-hued Oriental with long hair tucked under his coat collar.
Therese's little cottage, clean and neat, with geraniums blooming by a primitive well, was alas! silently closed.
The neighbors, and even the village postman who passed by, could give us no information.
Rain began to fall; my companions suggested that we leave.
"No," I said stubbornly, "I will stay here until I find some clue leading to Therese."
Two hours later we were still sitting in our car amidst the dismal rain. "Lord," I sighed complainingly, "why didst Thou lead me here if she has disappeared?"
An English-speaking man halted beside us, politely offering his aid.
"I don't know for certain where Therese is," he said, "but she often visits at the home of Professor Wurz, a seminary master of Eichstatt, eighty miles from here."
The following morning our party motored to the quiet village of Eichstatt, narrowly lined with cobblestoned streets.
Dr. Wurz greeted us cordially at his home; "Yes, Therese is here."
He sent her word of the visitors.
A messenger soon appeared with her reply.
"Though the bishop has asked me to see no one without his permission, I will receive the man of God from India."
Deeply touched at these words, I followed Dr. Wurz upstairs to the sitting room.
Therese entered immediately, radiating an aura of peace and joy.
She wore a black gown and spotless white head dress.
Although her age was thirty-seven at this time, she seemed much younger, possessing indeed a childlike freshness and charm.
Healthy, well-formed, rosy-cheeked, and cheerful, this is the saint that does not eat!
Therese greeted me with a very gentle handshaking.
We both beamed in silent communion, each knowing the other to be a lover of God.
Dr. Wurz kindly offered to serve as interpreter.
As we seated ourselves, I noticed that Therese was glancing at me with naive curiosity; evidently Hindus had been rare in Bavaria.
"Don't you eat anything?" I wanted to hear the answer from her own lips.
"No, except a consecrated rice-flour wafer, once every morning at six o'clock."
"How large is the wafer?"
"It is paper-thin, the size of a small coin." She added,
"I take it for sacramental reasons; if it is unconsecrated, I am unable to swallow it."
"Certainly you could not have lived on that, for twelve whole years?"
"I live by God's light." How simple her reply, how Einsteinian!
"I see you realize that energy flows to your body from the ether, sun, and air."
A swift smile broke over her face.
"I am so happy to know you understand how I live."
"Your sacred life is a daily demonstration of the truth uttered by Christ: 'Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.'"
Again she showed joy at my explanation.
"It is indeed so. One of the reasons I am here on earth today is to prove that man can live by God's invisible Light, and not by food only."
"Can you teach others how to live without food?"
She appeared a trifle shocked.
"I cannot do that; God does not wish it."
As my gaze fell on her strong, graceful hands, Therese showed me a little, square, freshly healed wound on each of her palms.
On the back of each hand, she pointed out a smaller, crescent-shaped wound, freshly healed.
Each wound went straight through the hand.
The sight brought to my mind distinct recollection of the large square iron nails with crescent-tipped ends, still used in the Orient, but which I do not recall having seen in the West.
The saint told me something of her weekly trances. "As a helpless onlooker, I observe the whole Passion of Christ."
Each week, from Thursday midnight until Friday afternoon at one o'clock, her wounds open and bleed; she loses ten pounds of her ordinary 121-pound weight.
Suffering intensely in her sympathetic love, Therese yet looks forward joyously to these weekly visions of her Lord.
I realized at once that her strange life is intended by God to reassure all Christians of the historical authenticity of Jesus' life and crucifixion as recorded in the New Testament, and to dramatically display the ever-living bond between the Galilean Master and his devotees.
Professor Wurz related some of his experiences with the saint.
"Several of us, including Therese, often travel for days on sight-seeing trips throughout Germany," he told me.
"It is a striking contrast while we have three meals a day, Therese eats nothing.
She remains as fresh as a rose, untouched by the fatigue which the trips cause us.
As we grow hungry and hunt for wayside inns, she laughs merrily."
The professor added some interesting physiological details: "Because Therese takes no food, her stomach has shrunk.
She has no excretions, but her perspiration glands function; her skin is always soft and firm."
(By Yogananda)
So... We do not need food to survive....
This is because our bodies are not really physical, but spiritual vibrational bodies, which can change, adopt, and rebalance themselves....
Even if we were badly injured in an accident... Even if we lost limbs... Even if we were blind and paralyzed like Saint Therese in the story above.... We can regrow limbs, regain eyesight and regain feeling in a paralyzed spine.
What is possible for one of us, is possible for ALL of us....
We are beloved eternal children of an all Loving God, which wants to see us happy, joyful, abundant awake and healthy....because sickness and death are nothing but an illusion.... A mistake... A lie...
Life is eternal and everlasting.
Some of us would rather die, than believe this to be true.
Yet nobody can die....
They will simply fall into the Great Sleep, and there, in the safety and warmth of Eternal Love, they will choose another Universal Career and maybe even choose to come back to earth, in another body and they will reincarnate again.
It is a journey without end... A journey of love and light...
