8 teaspoon cayenne pepper (or to taste)
Dir ections
1 Cut the parsnips into chunks. 2 Combine the apple juice, parsnips, chickpeas, walnuts,
cinnamon, and cayenne pepper in the blender container. 3 Secure the lid on the container. 4 Starting on a low speed and gradually easing toward high, blend
the ingredients for 45 seconds or until smooth and there are no
visible pieces of vegetable in the mixture. 5 Pour the smoothie into 2 glasses, and enjoy! Per serving: Calories 486 (From Fat 115); Fat 13g (Saturated 1g); Cholesterol 0mg; Sodium 34mg;
Carbohydrate 86g (Dietary Fiber 17g); Protein 13g. Tip: Make extra vegetables at dinner—steamed, roasted, or
simmered. Freeze them or store them in the refrigerator and use insmoothies the next day. B e r r y  B r o c c o l i
Prep time: About 3 min • Blending time: 1 min • Yield: 2 servings
Ingr edients
1/2 cup fresh carrot juice
1/2 cup applesauce
1/2 cup plain low-fat yogurt
1 cup lightly steamed broccoli or broccoli rabe
1 cup frozen blueberries
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
Dir ections
1 Combine the carrot juice, applesauce, yogurt, broccoli or
broccoli rabe, blueberries, and nutmeg in the blender container. 2 Secure the lid on the container. 3 Starting on a low speed and gradually easing toward high, blend
the ingredients for 45 seconds or until smooth and there are no
visible pieces of vegetable in the mixture. 4 Pour the smoothie into 2 glasses, and enjoy! Per serving: Calories 162 (From Fat 18); Fat 2g (Saturated 1g); Cholesterol 4mg; Sodium 96mg;
Carbohydrate 33g (Dietary Fiber 4g); Protein 6g. Tip: You can use raw broccoli in smoothies, but the texture and
taste is better if it’s lightly steamed or simmered ﬁrst. C o c o n u t  G r e e nPrep time: About 3 min • Blending time: 1 min • Yield: 2 servings
Ingr edients
1 cucumber
1 cup coconut or almond milk
2 cups fresh spinach
1 cup cooked lentils or lima beans
1 heaping tablespoon coconut oil
Dir ections
1 Peel the cucumber and cut it into chunks. 2 Combine the coconut or almond milk, cucumber, spinach,
lentils or lima beans, and coconut oil in the blender container. 3 Secure the lid on the container. 4 Starting on a low speed and gradually easing toward high, blend
the ingredients for 45 seconds or until smooth and there are no
visible pieces of vegetable in the mixture. 5 Pour the smoothie into 2 glasses, and enjoy! Per serving: Calories 415 (From Fat 284); Fat 32g (Saturated 27g); Cholesterol 0mg; Sodium 42mg;
Carbohydrate 27g (Dietary Fiber 11g); Protein 13g. Tip: Using coconut oil in smoothies adds good fats and lauric acid,
which helps ﬁght harmful bacteria. The fats stay with you longer
than carbohydrates, giving you the feeling of being full. L e n t i l  S o u p
Prep time: About 3 min • Blending time: 1 min • Yield: 2 servings
Ingr edients1 orange
1 mango
1 cup fresh orange juice
2 tablespoons fresh lime juice
2 cups fresh spinach
1 cup cooked lentils or lima beans
2 tablespoons whey powder
Dir ections
1 Peel the orange and break into sections. Remove the seeds. 2 Peel the mango, remove the stone, and cut into chunks. 3 Combine the orange juice, lime juice, spinach, lentils or lima
beans, orange, mango, and whey powder in the blender
container. 4 Secure the lid on the container. 5 Starting on a low speed and gradually easing toward high, blend
the ingredients for 45 seconds or until smooth and there are no
visible pieces of vegetable in the mixture. 6 Pour the smoothie into 2 glasses, and enjoy! Per serving: Calories 317 (From Fat 13); Fat 1g (Saturated 0g); Cholesterol 0mg; Sodium 91mg;
Carbohydrate 64g (Dietary Fiber 13g); Protein 17g. Vary It! Any dark leafy green (chard, beet tops, collard greens, or
kale) may be substituted for the spinach. You can use chopped
frozen greens in this smoothie if you don’t have fresh on hand. V e g e t a b l e  S o u pPrep time: About 3 min • Blending time: 1 min • Heating time: 1–5
min • Yield: 2 servings
Ingr edients
1/2 cucumber
1 carrot
1 cup vegetable or chicken broth
3 tomatoes, cored and quartered
1 cup chopped chard or kale
1/2 cup cilantro or parsley
Dir ections
1 Peel the cucumber and cut it and the carrot into chunks. 2 Combine the broth, tomatoes, chard or kale, cilantro or parsley,
cucumber, and carrot in the blender container. 3 Secure the lid on the container. 4 Starting on a low speed and gradually easing toward high, blend
the ingredients for 45 seconds or until smooth and there are no
visible pieces of vegetable in the mixture. 5 Pour into a saucepan and heat over medium-high heat for 5 to
10 minutes or until carrot is soft; or pour into a microwave-safe
bowl and microwave on high for 1 minute or until hot. 6 Pour the soup into 2 bowls, and enjoy! Per serving: Calories 98 (From Fat 14); Fat 2g (Saturated 0g); Cholesterol 0mg; Sodium 557mg;
Carbohydrate 21g (Dietary Fiber 5g); Protein 5g. Vary It! If you want a chunkier soup, pulse for 10 to 20 seconds in
Step 4.Tip: If you own a Vitamix blender, skip Step 5 and run the
machine on high for 4 to 6 minutes or until the soup is hot. B e a n  S o u p
Prep time: About 3 min • Blending time: 1 min • Heating time: 1–5
min • Yield: 2 servings
Ingr edients
2 green onions
2 celery stalks
1 carrot
1 cup vegetable or chicken broth
1 cup cooked kidney or navy beans
1 tablespoon fresh savory or thyme leaves
Dir ections
1 Cut the onions, celery, and carrot into chunks. 2 Combine the broth, onions, celery, beans, carrot, and savory or
thyme in the blender container. 3 Secure the lid on the container. 4 Starting on a low speed and gradually easing toward high, blend
the ingredients for 45 seconds or until smooth and there are no
visible pieces of vegetable in the mixture. 5 Pour into a saucepan and heat over medium-high heat for 5 to
10 minutes or until vegetables are soft; or pour into a
microwave-safe bowl and microwave on high for 1 minute or
until hot. 6 Pour the soup into 2 bowls, and enjoy!Per serving: Calories 155 (From Fat 9); Fat 1g (Saturated 0g); Cholesterol 0mg; Sodium 574mg;
Carbohydrate 29g (Dietary Fiber 8g); Protein 10g. Vary It! If you want a chunkier soup, pulse for 10 to 20 seconds in
Step 4. Tip: If you own a Vitamix blender, skip Step 5 and run the
machine on high for 4 to 6 minutes or until the soup is hot. C a b b a g e  S l a w
Prep time: About 3 min • Blending time: 1 min • Yield: 2 servings
Ingr edients
2 green onions
2 celery stalks
1 carrot
1 apple
1 cup fresh carrot juice
1/2 cup plain yogurt
1 cup chopped red or green cabbage
2 tablespoons chopped walnuts
1 tablespoon fresh thyme leaves
Dir ections
1 Cut the onions, celery, and carrot into chunks. 2 Peel the apple (if not organic) and cut into quarters. Remove
the core and seeds. 3 Combine the carrot juice, yogurt, onions, cabbage, celery,
carrot, apple, walnuts, and thyme in the blender container.4 Secure the lid on the container. 5 Starting on a low speed and gradually easing toward high, blend
the ingredients for 45 seconds or until smooth and there are no
visible pieces of vegetable in the mixture. 6 Pour the smoothie into 2 glasses, and enjoy! Per serving: Calories 190 (From Fat 57); Fat 6g (Saturated 1g); Cholesterol 4mg; Sodium 183mg;
Carbohydrate 30g (Dietary Fiber 5g); Protein 7g. V egetable Mocktail and Cocktail


 a series of passes to
cover the reflex areas. Apply
thumb-walking passes to the
center and then to the heels
of the palm. Desserts help
with relaxation. 2Go on to work with the left
hand, making a series of
thumb-walking passes through the
stomach  reflex area.Foot sequence
Thumb-walking most easily
works the reflex areas of the
digestive system, which are
reflected in a broad expanse
of the foot. Hold the foot in
a stretched position to
expose these reflex areas and
work with them more easily. Set up a pattern of applying
a series of thumb-walking
passes. Start by applying
technique from the midfoot
to the ball of the foot, and
then go on to work from the
heel to the midfoot.1Beginning at the kidney
reflex area, make a series of
passes through the  liver and
gallbladder  reflex areas. Then
thumb-walk from heel to midfoot.2Move on to the left foot. Hold the foot back, making
passes from midfoot to ball, the
stomach  reflex area. Next make
passes from heel to midfoot.266 health concernsHeartburn
To relieve heartburn, you should work the
solar plexus reflex area for several minutes
three to four times a day. As you apply the
thumb-walking or golf-ball technique,
concentrate on any sensitive areas. Irritable bowel syndrome
consists of a combination of
intermittent abdominal pain
and discomfort, diarrhea
and/or constipation. It is
an impairment of intestine
functioning. To encourage
better functioning, the reflex
areas of the colon and
intestine are targeted. In
addition, technique is applied
to the adrenal gland reflex
area to aid muscle tone as
well as to relieve stress.Irritable bowel syndromeThumb-walk over the solar plexus  reflex area,
making several passes. Reposition your thumb and
reapply. Seek out the areas of most sensitivity, and
work these areas with more emphasis. selF-helP
Grip a golf ball  in your fingers. Now rest it at the
base of the thumb on the other hand and roll it
around the solar plexus  reflex area. 1 Use the thumb-walking
technique to walk up the
colon reflex area. Make
successive passes before working
on the small intestine  reflex. 2 Continue holding the foot
back. Work the adrenal
gland reflex area, spanning the
area from the midfoot to the ball
of the foot. Make several passes.the digestive system 267Stomachache
To relieve a stomachache,
apply technique to the
stomach reflex area until the
discomfort diminishes. If you
are prone to experiencing
stomachaches, working this
reflex area several times a
day will act as a good
preventive measure.Hemorrhoids
Hemorrhoids are varicose
veins of the rectum. The
reflex area for the rectum is
located within the tailbone
reflex area. Experiment,
working through this reflex
area to find the most
sensitive area on either foot.Flatulence
Flatulence is an excessive
accumulation of gas in
the stomach or intestines. Tension is a contributor. Self-
help reflexology technique is
suggested. A golf ball is used
to target digestive system
areas on the hand. A foot-
roller for work with reflex
areas on the feet is helpful. Constipation
Constipation consists of
sluggish action of the bowels
and/or difficulty in passing
stools. Tension is frequently
a cause of this condition.selF-helP
Work the stomach  reflex area
on the hands by using a golf ball.Hold the foot  steady as you
make successive passes through
the tailbone  reflex area. selF-helP
Roll the golf ball  through the heel
of the hand, targeting the colon,
and small intestine  areas. Use the thumb-walking
technique to make successive
passes through the solar plexus
reflex area to encourage relaxation.selF-helP
Use a golf-ball  technique to work
the colon  and small intestine
areas in the heels of the hands.The endocrine system
The endocrine glands  regulate bodily activities. Together with the central
nervous system they are responsible for controlling the complex processes and
functions of the body. The endocrine glands produce their effects via hormones,
or chemical messengers, that travel throughout the body. 268 health concernsThe glands of the endocrine system include the
pituitary and adrenal glands; thyroid and
parathyroid glands; pancreas; ovaries (women)
and testicles (men). The pituitary is the master
gland, secreting hormones that control most of
the other glands. The endocrine glands, which
are central to balancing the stress mechanism,
produce various hormones responsible for a
1
3
5wide range of bodily processes, including
metabolism, growth, and reproduction. In an
endocrine disorder, there is either deficient or
excessive production of a hormone. As a result,
the bodily processes regulated by that hormone
are disrupted. To address an endocrine disorder,
reflexology technique is applied to the reﬂex area
reﬂecting the malfunctioning endocrine gland. 2
3
4
61
2
61
left Hand
1 pituitary
2 thyroid /parathyroid
3 adrenal  gland
4 pancreas
5 uterus /prostate
6 ovary /testiclerigHt and left feet
1 pituitary
2 thyroid /parathyroid
3 adrenal  gland
4 pancreas
5 uterus /prostate
6 ovary /testicleareaS WOrKed
1 pituitary
2 thyroid
3 adrenal  glands
4 pancreas
5 uterus /prostate
6 ovary /testicle543
4
5 62Hand Orientati On fOO t Orientati On BOdY Orientati Onthe endocrine system 2691Begin by applying the hook and back-up
technique to the pituitary  reflex area. Hold the
big toe stationary, position your working thumb just
beyond the reflex area, and then hook in and across.Foot techniques
Several different basic foot reflexology techniques are used to
work reflex areas reflecting the endocrine glands The reflex areas
are worked to ensure proper functioning of the glands and to
help ameliorate the effects of endocrine disorders. 5Finally, work the ovary/
testicle reflex area. Hold
the foot steady and use the
thumb-walking technique to work
the area, making a series of passes.2Next, use the thumb-walking technique to work
the thyroid and parathyroid reflex areas. Make at
least two passes, one high and one low. 3Hold the toes back with
your left hand. Use your
right hand to thumb-walk through
the pancreas  reflex area, making
a succession of passes. 4With the middle finger of
your left hand, pinpoint the
uterus/prostate  reflex area. Rotate the foot clockwise then
counterclockwise several times.270 health concernsHand techniques
When applying technique to the endocrine
gland reflex areas most of the basic
techniques are used: thumb-walking, hook
1To work the pituitary
reflex area, rest the thumb
against the thumb of the working
hand. Press the reflex area
repeatedly with the index finger.2Holding the thumb steady
with the right hand, use the
thumb-walking technique to work
the thyroid  and parathyroid
reflex areas. Make several passes.3Move on to thumb-walk
through the  pancreas
reflex area on the heel below the
thumb. Make a series of passes,
thoroughly covering the area. 4Holding the recipient’s
thumb and fingers as shown,
rest the tip of your index finger on
the adrenal gland  reflex area
below the thumb. Exert pressure
with the fingertip repeatedly.5First pinpoint the uterus/
prostate reflex area with
your left index finger. Now rotate
the hand repeatedly 360˚ in a
clockwise direction and then 360˚
in a counterclockwise direction.6Pinpoint the
ovary/
testicle  reflex area
with the index finger. Rotate the hand clockwise,
then counterclockwise.and back-up, and rotating-on-a-point. Be
sure to accurately locate each reflex area
before commencing your work. the endocrine system 271Diabet es & hypoglycemia
(low blood sug ar)
Insulin, a hormone made by the pancreas, is needed to
metabolize sugar in the body. In some forms of diabetes, too
little insulin is produced, allowing blood sugar to rise to
potentially dangerous levels. Hypoglycemia is sometimes a
side-effect of treatment with insulin in people with diabetes. For both diabetes and hypoglycemia, the pancreas reflex area
is targeted as well as the kidney area to help eliminate toxins. 2Apply the thumb-walking
technique repeatedly to the
kidney  reflex area, making a
series of passes. Work both feet. 1Work the
pancreas
reflex area on the
upper arch of the
foot, making several
thumb-walking
passes, particularly


if fness and addictions. Emotional af flictions include eating disorders, low
self-esteem, envy, and jealousy. Second Chakra Energy
Svadhisthana en er gy comes from the dynamic of its water e lement and
lunar ener gy. W ater plays a big p art on our planet and in our bodies. Almost
three-fourths of the earth is covered in water and about two-thirds of the
human b ody is made up of wat er. The moon has a major influence on the
tides, our moods, women’ s men strual cycles, and even the birth of babies. This dyn amic dance between the water element and the moon  mirrors the
dualistic awakening that happens in the Svadhisthana chakra. The first chakra ener gy of survival and its earthly limitations evolves to
the second chakra ener gy of water and the search for connection. The
awakened sexual ener gy leads to desire for earthly pleasures. It’ s no longer
about needing and accumulating  things; it’ s about desire. Food is no longer
just a necessity for living; eating becomes a tantalizing sensual experience. The con cept of polarity plays o ut in the chakras as it does in life. The
first chakra carries yang, or mas culine ener gy, and the second chakra carriesyin, or feminine ener gy. Then i n the third chakra the ener gy shifts back to
masculine, and so on. The cele stial body of the second  chakra is the moon. The ener gy of the
moon is  feminine, passive, and changing. W ater is the element that gives
way to life. The womb of creati on, literally and metaphorically,  is rooted in
the second chakra ener gy. Out of the se cond chakra come music, art, poetry, and dance. Imagination develops in this chakra, as does the deep desire for marriage
and family. Imagine the ebb and flow of the oceans. No longer are we bound to a
seemingly solid state where we must find our place. Now we’re moved to
taste what the e arth has to of fer. Think of baby sea turtles em er ging from
their cozy nests in the sand and making their way to the ocean to begin life. Discovering the  second chakra’ s delights is an exciting awakening. For
the first time we  experience true duality, in the romantic sense, a nd we learn
the meaning of cause and e f fect. In the stage of development that
corresponds to the second chakra, a baby learns how to playfully
manipulate others to get what he wants. When he flirts with his caregivers
by performing, laughing, giggling, or repeating some funny antic, he gets
hugs, kisses, and much love. W e start to learn the ef fect we have on other
people and how to woo them to our side. The moo n ener g y of the second chakra is a passive but attractive ener gy. It includ es deep  emotions, inner strength, nurturing, and nourishing. The
mermaid is an archetypal ener gy of the Svadhisthana chakra. In mythology,
mermaids are known for their alluring beauty and melodious voices. Depictions of mermaids show them beautifying themselves by combing
their hair and adorning themselves with jewels. They are sexually
tantalizing, sed uctive, and charming as they attract sailors with their
luscious song. However, they also have an independent and rebellious side
to them, and they only appear by the light of the moon. Our Societal Relationship with the Second Chakra
In the W est, or  more particularly in the United States, the predominant
lifestyle shows an overindulgence of second chakra pleasures. Everything
Americans do is big. W e eat lar g e amounts of food, especially in  restaurantsbecause they have to give you  enough bang for your buck. W e are the
lar gest consumers of prescription pills, painkilling medications in particular
— we consume 80 percent of th e world’ s supply of opioids. W e spend more
than $90 billion per year on alc ohol consumption. And Americans have on
average around $16,601 in credi t card debt. W e are enthralled with stars and
sex symbols, and we attempt to live out pleasures vicariously through them
by way of reality TV shows. W e are a society of overindulgence. The concept of delayed gratific ation holds little ground here. W e want
things th e way we want them, and we want them quickly. T he constant
search for pleasure and the avoidance of pain, without regard for the
consequences, is a second chakra imbalance. Like the small wooden boy in Disney’ s Pinocchio  who is led to Pleasure
Island and indulges in many fo rbidden pleasures but then barely escapes
with his  life, we too have begun to see consequences of choo sing such a
lifestyle. Chronic lifestyle  diseases such as diabetes,  obe sity, heart d isease,
hypertension, st roke, cancer, and alcohol and drug addictions af flict 133
million U S adul ts, or roughly ha lf the adult population. W e’re getting fatter,
sicker, and more addicted by the day. Pleasure in itself isn’ t a bad th ing. W e need to seek out pleasure and
avoid pain for o ur bodies to kno w that all is well. However, it’ s the excess
that is harmful. It’ s the inability to overcome the persistent ur ge to indulge
rather than direct this creative ener gy toward a higher purpose. W omen W orking the Second Chakra
W omen are readily hardwired for the strengths of second chakra ener gy. The wom b of creation is within them, and they possess the sa me creative
power as the Creator of the universe. This blessed gift gives them the ability
to n urture, to b e highly sensitive, and to have a heightened sense of
intuition. W omen are also naturally blessed with the passive inner strength
of t he second c hakra. This strength imbues women with th e power of
attraction. In mythology, many goddesses are portrayed as passively
awaiting good things while ado rning themselves with jewels or brushing
their thick, luxurious hair. The idea in this portrayal is that the goddessdoesn’ t have to do anything but  relax, and like a magnet, she attracts good
things to her. In m odern society, women are pulled to live more in yang ener g y, which
is mascu line, fo rward moving, and competitive. As they compete in the
workplace with their male counterparts, they must take on more masculine
roles. Bu t in order to remain ba lanced, all people, women as well as men,
must embrace both ener gies, yi n and yang, and problems can result when
women move too far into yang ener gy. Some women feel that they must
deny the ir femininity in certain situations at work or at home, a nd this can
create imbalance s. For example, at work a woman might feel compelled to
dress more like a man to avoid  potential sexual harassment or to fit in a
mostly male workplace. T ypically, wome n who naturally have more yin ener gy find it e asier to
swing th e pendulum back: they’re able to embrace their femininity while
performing mor e masculine activities, and they don’ t have a d if ficult time
remaining balan ced. On the other hand, women who naturally feel more
comfortable in a masculine role might not strive to temper their yang ener gy
with their inherent yin. Health problem s can result w hen women lose this balance. Some
women who overidentify with yang ener gy develop depression, lupus,
cancer, high blood pressure, and other diseases. Many others have a hard
time get ting pregnant. Fertility and procreation are natural when the second
chakra is balanced. In fact, they ’re a normal and healthy part of the process
of life. But today, because of th e demands of higher education and work,
many women wait until after age thirty-five to try to get pregnant. W aiting
this long  decrea ses a woman’ s c hance of getting pregnant in the  first place. Then, when she finally does get pregnant, she must face the fear of not
being on par wit h her male co-workers because of the physical v ulnerability
of being pregnant and having a child. So instead of embracing pregnancy as
a natura l time to enjoy being a woman and to embody goddess ener gy, she
can suppress these feelings in order to fit in. Excessive yang  ener gy also sp ills into relationships and family life. Many w omen are single mothers and must play the role of b readwinner,
disciplinarian, h omemaker, parent, and head of household. W omen who are
used to having p ower and respect in the workplace then take that same yang
ener gy and apply it to parenting and marriage. The problem is, women aren’ t p hysically built to sustain the demands of
taking on every single task of bo th a man and woman, such as working full-
time, taking care of a household, creating babies, raising children, being a
great wife, balancing the budget, lifting weights five days a  week,


anyone else’s, is based on spiritual desperation. Look at your interactionwith your beloved and honestly  confront any fear-based behavior you are
exhibiting. When control is ready to loosen its grip, a definite relaxation
takes place. The facade of the demanding, critical partner who is so quick to
blame begins to melt. You start to feel love once more, not as an idea but as
a sensation in your heart. And at last you find it possible to allow. When this stage  is reached with the beloved, the healing process begins
to branc h out into other aspects of your life. The following changes will
often be in evidence:
You stop measuring people by whether they live up to your
expectations. Y ou begin to resist the ur ge to correct their mistakes and
give unwanted advice. You lessen your habit of taking care of others without really caring for
them. You become tired of trying to keep track of every detail of your life
and bored with people who have always given in to you. You begin to listen to objections and disagreements instead of using
them to trigger your own opinion. Unexpected emotions come to the surface. This usually arouses self-
criticism because you can’ t control your feelings anymore as you once
did. At another level, however, this eruption of emotions comes as a
great relief. Your impatience begins to lessen. Y ou stop living according to the
clock. You take stress seriously, no longer believing that you thrive on it. You begin to listen to your body, which has all along been giving you
signals of tightness, fatigue, contraction, and overstimulation. Your mind gives up calculating every move in advance. Some room is
made for spontaneity. You stop holding grudges and remembering slights. Resentment begins
to be replaced by tolerance. You quit setting external goals for yourself and believing that
achieving these goals faster, better, and more tirelessly makes you a
good person. The most loving  thing you can do for your beloved, if he or she is dealing
with control, is to encourage these shifts, but this is something no one whois still in a state of need can do. In the mind of a needy person, any loss of
attachment equals loss of love. In fact, however, exactly the opposite is true. The craving to possess and cling is what smothers love. Attachment is that
condition in which your needs overshadow your spirit. So how can you love
without need. Know the difference between ego and spirit. Ego is needy, but spirit is
not. It exists to give and not to take. It wants to bring joy; it has no hunger
for approval. It does not crave the obedience or agreement of another
person and lives  beyond all demands. When you see yourself in this way,
your relationship will become sacred. Without nonattachment this can’t
happen. The choice between the mundane and the sacred has always been
with us, and it will always be true that to choose the sacred is to choose
love. OceanofPDF. comLOVING  PRACTICE
Healing Our Inner Needs
ALL OF US bring needs to relationships, but they don’t have to turn into
attachment. Attachment is created when needs aren’ t understood and faced. Needs you place  on your partner  never really get resolved; there fore even if
your partner bends over backward to satisfy every need you have, the final
outcome will be the same as if none of your needs was met: you will be left
to confront why you have such needs. This “why” is answered by
examining how you feel about being in separation, for the underlying
anxiety of separation from God, spirit, and Self is what created need in the
first place. When you heal separation, your needs will not r eflect fear and insecurity. Relationship is meant to heal separation; therefore the proper attitude
toward need is that you want to heal. However, in many relatio nships there
is a confusing mismatch betwee n what two people actually consider most
important. How can neediness be healed when there is constant jockeying
over what two people want. We have to make a distinction between
external needs, like food and shelter, and inner needs. Inner needs come
down to what makes you feel secure, as tested in this questionnaire. PART ONE
Look at the following statements—preferably with your beloved—and
check the conclusion, right or left, that applies best to you. Answer each
item even if both alternatives seem remote or improbable. 1. I would be mortified if my friends found out that I
lost all my money. or     had plastic sur gery. 2. I would rather
be pr omoted at work. or     be at my ideal weight. 3. I’d be a lot better of f if I spent more time
getting back into shape. or     improving my diet. 4. I would rather be
respected. or     accepted. 5. I’d keep it a secret if I was
looking for a new job. or     planning to have an affair. 6. I’d like to have my children look back on me as a parent who taught
them
right fr om wr ong. or     not to hurt others. 7. In a flood I’d like to be the one who
rescued the victims. or     shelter ed the homeless. 8. My problems would be solved if only I had
more money. or     more self-understanding. 9. You’re my friend if you
back me up. or     listen to me. 10. If I failed a test at school, it meant that I was
not pr epared. or     not in the mood. 11. The worst thing my enemies could say about me is that I’m
weak and incompetent. or     selfish and uncaring. 12. In my nightmare the whole world thinks I’m
stupid. or     ugly. 13. I’d rather be
productive. or     happy. Now calculate two totals—all your points from the left column and all those
from the right. In evaluating your score, we will consider the left-hand
column male and the right-hand female. If you ar e a woman  your score from the right-hand column will tend to be
more than that from the left-hand. If you ar e a man  your score from  the left-
hand column will tend to be more than that from the right -hand. This
difference alone can cause conflict in a relationship. We were all shaped by
society to expect security from dif ferent sources. Men tend to find security in power, career, skills, information,
intelligence, winning, and physical strength. Women tend to find security in
family, a strong mate, sharing, communication, their own emotions, and
being loved. If you have more than five answers from the column that is not your
gender, you are likely to be able to define your needs without reference to
society’ s standa rds. If you have  more than eight answers from  the right-
hand column, your feminine nature is quite strong. Man or woman, you put
a great emphasis on your emotions and sense of well-being. Self-
understanding is one of your highest values; you put your own fulfillment
ahead of external motivations. Now compare your score with your partner ’s. There is no right or wrong
match here, but your scores say a lot about the dynamic of your
relationship. A marriage in whic h the woman scores high on the male while
the man scores high on the female often implies an exchange of social
models. The woman is driven by success and the man by emotion. If both
partners score high on the same column, they share a similar view of the
world, but the balancing half may be lacking. A marriage that is very male
or very female can be a happy one, but in times of stress the predominance
of one worldview may make it difficult to find the coping skills to pull
through. For example, if both partners are so emotional that no family
decisions can be made without much drama and little concession to reason,
strains will develop. Finally, if the man is very male (ten or more) and the wom an very
female, this may indicate a conflict of values and therefore a conflict of
needs. A strongly masculine man mated to a strongly feminin e woman is
held up as a social ideal, but in reality, if the man is motivated by power and
status while the woman is motivated by emotions and communication,equality is difficult to sustain in the marriage. You are on two different
paths, not a shared path. One way or another the weaker partner will wind
up giving in to the stronger, or one of you will repress your true needs in
hopes that you will find happiness through sacrifice. This rarely if ever works. Giving in to another person’ s needs is actually
a form of attachment. Having thrown away your own desires, you will be
forced to cling to the other person to bring you satisfaction. This is a form
of separation from your true identity, and in the end you cannot hope to use
separation of any kind to reach unity. Now that I have  said all this, what can you do. You need to recognize
imbalances where they exist and take responsibility for them. A man who
has many female needs shouldn’ t rely on his wife to make all the decisions,
while a woman with strong male needs shouldn’ t ignore her partner ’s
emotions. The object is to find the balance of male and female within you
rather than take the easy road, which is to attach yourself to someone else’s


 went on, a control group of men
over seventy- ve also talked about the events of 1959, but using the
past tense instead of the present. Castro, Mickey Mantle,
Eisenhower, and Marilyn Monroe were allowed to have their real
futures. The radio played 1979 music, the magazines carried the
latest news, and the lms were current releases. Before, during, and after the retreat, Langer measured each man
for signs of aging. For members of the 1959 group, to a remarkable
extent these measurements actually went backward in time over the
one-week period. The men began to improve in memory and manual
dexterity. They were more active and self-sucient (instead of
waiting to be helped, they took their food and cleared their tables
by themselves). Some such changes might be expected in any older person
enjoying himself on vacation. However, traits that are denitely
considered irreversible signs of aging also started to turn around. Independent judges looked at before-and-after pictures of the men
and rated them three years younger in appearance. Hand
measurements showed that their ngers had actually lengthened
and gained back some of the exibility in their joints. The group
could sit taller  in their chair s, had a stronger hand grip, and could
even see and hear better. The control group also exhibited some of
these changes but to a smaller degree, and in some measures, such
as manual dexterity and nger length, they had even declined over
the week. In her intriguing book, Mindfulness, Langer attributes some of
these reversals  to the fact that the men were given more control
over their lives than they enjoyed at home. They were treated like
anyone in his mid-fties, who would naturally carry his own
suitcase or select his own food for dinner. Their opinions were
valued in group discussions, and it was assumed that they were
mentally vigor ous, an assumption probably not made about them in
everyday life. In this way they moved from a mindless existence to
one that is “mindful,” Langer’s term for living with alertness,
openness to new ideas, and mental vigor. But why did the group
who lived in 1959 do so much better than the 1979 group. It is
quite plausible  that they improved because of what they saw. In a
neat twist on Shankara’s dictum, not seeing other people grow old
seems to prevent us from growing old ourselves. Langer’s men were like time travelers of a special sort, who went
back to the past by going back inside themselves. We tend to think
that time is outside us, but in this instance, it was just as much
inside, packaged as memory. To remember is to take your body time
traveling, even though you do not leave your chair. For example, if I
remember being scared in a dark alley when I was six, my heart
starts to thump like a six-year-old’s again. The mind can also project
the body forward in time. I have seen twenty-year-old women, on
being told that they have cancer, age before my eyes, becoming as
worn as someone who has battled the disease for years. In each case, the mind mana ges to be in two places at once, both
traveling in time and staying  in the present. The old men who went
back to 1959 were also rmly xed in 1979—they read old
magazines, but the same rain fell on them as on the other citizens of
Boston that week. The illusion of xed time was thus partly
dissolved. One could go furth er. If I lost all my prior conditioning of
seeing others age, perhaps I could remain a twenty-year-old
permanently, although I would still walk around experiencing the
ordinary passage of time as other people do. I would then have
taken “my time” under control. Why not speak of “my time” and “your time”. A clock  on the
shelf mindlessly taps out its seconds and minutes, but our innerclock possesses as much intelligence as the brain that houses it. After years of searching, physiologists in the last decade have
pinpointed the biological clock that governs all the rhythmical
functions of the body, such as waking, sleeping, eating, thirst, body
temperature, blood pressure, growth, and the ebb and ow of
numerous hormones. A tiny core of cells in the hypothalamus, called the
suprachiasmatic nucleus, regulates all these wheels within wheels,
orchestrating rhythms as long as the twenty-eight-day menstrual
cycle and as short as the three-hour burst of growth hormone. Even
the chemical reactions inside individual cells, which take place
thousands of times per second, must obey the body’s master clock. To use the word “clock” here is deceptive, because we can dictate
the ow of time within ourselves, breaking free of any mechanical
ticktock. We wake, sleep, eat, and breathe at will, overriding the
preset cycles for these funct ions. Some women seem to be able to
reset their ovulation cycle, delaying their periods under times of
stress (they may not realize that they have made this choice, but
their bodies apparently are responding to a specic brain signal
triggered by the woman’s emotions). In more extreme cases, women
suering from multiple personalities—the syndrome made famous
by Eve and Sybil—can have a period for each personality, separated
by several days or weeks each month. A woman with three
personalities and three menstrual cycles does not have three
separate clocks  inside; instead, she has better control over time than
we generally acknowledge. To have so much freedom of choice can play havoc with rhythms
that should not be thrown o—jet lag temporarily disrupts our
major sleep-wa ke cycle, pulling dozens of smaller cycles along with
it. Yet the very fact that time and mind can blend into one another
points to the possibility of total freedom, an escape from mindless
clocks into a reality where every second is alive. The Arrow of TimeThe concept of personal time would strike a physicist as a fantasy. To him, space-time is fundamental to existence, and time is
governed by laws that do not bend because the mind wants them to. Physicists use the phrase “the arrow of time” to indicate that events
move forward in the ordained manner and cannot be reversed. Stephen Hawk ing among others has used the example of knocking a
glass o the table. When the glass strikes the oor, it shatters into a
hundred pieces, and once shattered, it will never regroup itself into
a whole glass. By the same law, ice cubes melt in a glass of tea and
do not reform ; junkyard wrecks rust into chaotic heaps, with no
chance that they will suddenly turn back into new cars. On paper you can put a broken glass back together again by
carefully computing the energy exchanges that sent each shattered
fragment o into space. A whole glass could then be conjured up by
reversing each tangent. As pure mathematics, a whole glass is just a
smashed glass with the equations turned around, and you can
alternate one version with the other endlessly. But the arrow of time forbids such easy shuing in the real
world. The instant the smash occurs, time carries the glass away,
never to return it whole again. If this is indeed the law, it would
only be wise to resign yourself to it, to bow to time as heat, light, all
moving bodies, and all forms of energy in the univer se do. But
personal time, “my time,” is not at all like that. Instead of shooting
o in one direction, it moves forward when I worry about the future
and backward when I remember the past. “Time is not just a road,”
the novelist John Fowles has written. “It is also a room. ” We call the
room memory, a space where one can sit and be surrounded by
heaps of things past. Personal time can also be dead or alive. Several decades ago a
team of archaeologists unearthed a clay vessel of wheat grains
buried in an Egyptian pyramid. The grains were planted and
watered, and within a few days they sprouted, amazingly, after two
thousand years of dormancy. If you can imagine seeing this event
from the wheat grain’s viewp oint, it must have been very much like
waking up. Time was dead while the seeds were dormant, causing
no change or decay. That twenty centuries had passed was nodierent from one season, since the intervening time had no life in
it. It was dead time, or sleeping time, wrapped up inside the seed,
waiting for the touch of life. The location of this wrapped -up time is the wheat’s DNA, which
has also stored  time for us, in the form of our own genetic memory. You could not survive a cold or any other disease if your thymus
gland did not store up the memory of antibodies that learned to
combat viruse s and bacteria millions of years ago. Your immune
system is an encyclopedia of every disease ancestral man caught;
thousands of generations died from fevers and plagues so that you
may live. Science has yet to recognize  that DNA has a magical side, yet
imagine that you are standing in an empty room with


ck-hard
and may come out looking like long black braids. There may also be long tangled strings of gray/brown mucous, she ets and flakes
of mucous, and worse yet, an occasional worm (tape worm) or many smaller ones. Once confronted however, it is not hard to
imagine how these fecal rocks and other obnoxious debris interfere with the proper function of the colon. They make the  colon's
wall rigid and interfere with peristalsis thus leading to further problems with constipation, and interfere with adsorption o f
nutrients. Our modern diet is by its "de -"nature, very constipating. In the trenches of the First World War, cheese was given the name
‘chokem ass' because the soldiers eating this as a part of their daily ration developed severe constipation. Eaten by itself or with
other whole foods, moderate amounts of cheese may not produce health problems in people who are capable of digesting dairy
products. But cheese when combined with white flour becomes especially constipating. White bread or most white -flour crackers
contain a lot of gluten, a very sticky wheat protein that makes the bread bind together and raise well. But whi te flour is lacking the
bran, where most of the fiber is located. And many other processed foods are missing their fiber. In an earlier chapter I briefly showed how digestion works by following food from the mouth to the large intestine. To fully
grasp  why becoming constipated is almost a certainty in our civilization a few more details are required. Food leaving the small
intestine is called chyme, a semi -liquid mixture of fiber, undigested bits, indigestible bits, and the remains of digestive enzymes. Chyme is propelled through the large intestine by muscular contractions. The large intestine operates on what I dub the "chew
chew train" principle, where the most recent meal you ate enters the large intestine as the caboose (the last car of a train)  and helps
to push out the train engine (the car at the front that toots), which in a healthy colon should represent the meal eaten perh aps
twelve hours earlier. The muscles in the colon only contract when they are stretched, so it is the volume of the fecal m atter
stretching the large intestine that triggers the muscles to push the waste material along toward the rectum and anus. Eating food lacking fiber greatly reduces the volume of the chyme and slows peristalsis. But moving through fast or slow, the
colon still keeps on doing another of its jobs, which is to transfer the water in the chime back into the bloodstream, reducin g
dehydration. So the longer chime remains in the colon, the dryer and harder and stickier it gets. That's why once arrived at the "end
of the tracks" fecal matter should be evacuated in a timely manner before it gets to dry and too hard to be moved easily. Som e
constipated people do have a bowel movement every day but are evacuating the meal eaten many days or even a week previously. Most hygienists believe that when the colon becomes lined with hardened fecal matter it is permanently and by the very
definition of the word itself, constipated. This type of constipation is not perceived as an uncomfortable or overly full fee ling o r a
desire to have a bowel movement that won't pass. But it has insidious effects. Usually constipation delays transit time, incr easing
the adsorption of toxins generated from misdigestion of food; by coating and locking up significant portions of colon it  also
reduces the adsorption of certain minerals and electrolytes. Sometimes, extremely constipated people have almost constant runny bowels because the colon has become so thickly and
impenetrably lined with old fecal matter that it no longer removes  much moisture. This condition is often misinterpreted as
diarrhea. The large intestine's most important task is to transfer water -soluble minerals from digested food to the blood. When a
significant part of the colon's surface becomes coated with impermea ble dried rigid fecal matter or mucus it can no longer
assimilate effectively and the body begins to experience partial mineral starvation in the presence of plenty. It is my obser vation
from dozens of cases that when the colon has been effectively cleanse d the person has a tendency to gain weight while eating
amounts of food that before only maintained body weight, while people who could not gain weight or who were wasting away
despite eating heavily begin to gain. And problems like soft fingernails, bone loss around teeth or porous bones tend to improve. The history of my own constipation, though it especially relates to a very rustic childhood, is typical of many people. I was  also
raised on a very constipating diet which consisted largely of processed cheese and crackers. Mine was accelerated by shyne ss,
amplified by lack of comfortable facilities. I spent my early years on the Canadian prairies, where everybody had an outhouse. The fancy modern versions are frequently
seen on construction sites. These are chemical toilets, quiet different than th e ones I was raised with because somebody or
something mysteriously comes along, empties them and installs toilet paper. The ones I'm familiar with quickly developed a ba d-
smelling steaming mound in the center --or it was winter when the outhouse was so col d that everything froze almost before it hit
the ground in the hole below. (And my rear end seemed to almost freeze to the seat!) The toilet paper was usually an out of s eason
issue of Eatons mail order catalogue with crisp glossy paper. Perhaps it is a pe culiarity of the north country, but at night there are
always monsters lurking along the path to the outhouse, and darkness comes early and stays late. When nature called and it was daylight, and there was no blizzard outside, the outhouse received a visit from me.<|eot_id|><|begin_of_text|>Summarize the following text section accurately and concisely. Maintain specific details and numerical information, and use anti-repetition mechanisms:

        He also ate larger and larger quantities of gra ins, nuts and avocados, although I had warned him
of specific quantity limits on rich foods. Most sadly, he returned to enjoying spaghetti with lots of cheese grated on top. W ithin
months of leaving my care his paralysis and weakness returned, except that unfortunately for him, he still retained the ability to
assimilate food and maintain his body weight. Ironically, the only ultimate benefit of his fasting with me was to permit him to
suffer a far longer existence in a wheelchair without wasting away and e scaping into death. I would be failing my readers if I did not explain why Jake became ill in the first place. Jake had started what grew to beco me a
very successful chain of spaghetti restaurants with a unique noodles and sauces made to his own formu la. He ate a lot of his own
spaghetti over the years, and had been reared in a good Italian family with lots of other kinds of rich food. Jake had a repu tation for
being able to outeat everybody in terms of quantity and in the amount of time spent eating. In childhood, this ability had made his
Italian mother very happy because it showed appreciation for her great culinary skill. Secondly, Jake the adult was still at his core, Jake the spoiled brat child, with a bad, unregulated temper. He was in the h abit of
dumping his temper on other people whether they needed a helping of his angry emotions or not. A lot of people in his employ and
in his extended family tiptoed around Jake, always careful of triggering his wrath. At my place as Jake began to get we ll he began
to use his increased energy and much stronger voice to demonstrate his poor character. At meal times Jake would bang the tabl e
with a fork hard enough to leave dents in the wood table top while yelling for more, complaining loudly about the lac k of rich
sauces and other culinary delights he craved. This was a character problem that Jake could not seem to overcome, even with a lot
of intervention from the local minister on his behalf and my counseling. Jake was a Catholic who went to church regul arly, but
acted like a Christian only while he was in church. On some level Jake knew that he was not treating others fairly, but he wo uld
not change his habitual responses. His negative thoughts and actions interfered with his digestive capacity to the ex tent that his
gluttonous eating habits produced illness, a vegetative paralyzing illness, but not death. To me this seems almost a form of karmic
justice. It is common for people who have been very ill for extended periods of time to realize what a won derful gift life is and arrive at
a willingness to do almost anything to have a second chance at doing ‘life" right. Some succeed with their second chance and some
don’t. If they don"t succeed in changing their life and relationships, they frequently relap se. Luigi Cornaro’s left the world his story of sickness and rejuvenation. His little book may be the world’s first alternative h ealing
text. It is a classic example of the value of abstentousness. Had Jake taken this story to heart he would have total ly recovered. Cornaro was a sixteenth century Venetian nobleman. He, like Jake the spaghetti baron, was near death at the young age of fort y. (Jake was also in his early 40s when he broke down. ) Cornaro’s many doctors were unable to cure him. Finally he sa w a doctor
who understood the principles of natural healing


 toxic and have long remained in the fatty cells and in
the cells of the connective tissues which have been appropriately termed the “dumping ground of
the body” to get them out of the circulation. Freeing the tissues of such materials renders the body
more efficient as a physiologic mechanism. Besides the renovation that fasting enables the body to
undergo, there is created a potential for better function which continues long after the fast has been
broken. Wear and waste with repair and replenishment are continuous and almost simultaneous
processes in all living structures. The one is a building up, the other a tearing down. The two
processes have received the technical name of
metabolism
 as described above, and are called
respectively,
anabolism,
 the building up, and
catabolism
 which is the tearing down. Catabolism
predominates during periods of activity; anabolism during periods of rest and repose. Anabolism may be defined as the process by which the body is repaired, reinvigorated and
prepared for renewed activity. It is the dominant process during periods of active growth; it is
somewhat slowed down in age. 64Fasting has been shown to result in an accelerated metabolism, with the emphasis after the fast
is broken, on the anabolic, or constructive phase. This is to say: the general cleansing of the body
renews the building-up process of life. It is true that under experimental conditions, this
improvement of the process of life is not lasting. But this has been due, in great measure, to the
failure of experimenters to follow up the fasts with anything other than a speedy return to
conventional modes of living. A man’s age is the duration of his life. When we use the term age to mean several aspects of that
life, the stage of one’s development (physiological age), the mental development attained
(psychological age) or any other such term or phrase which signifies something other than
chronological age, we are confusing age with body condition or with stages of growth and
development. When we say that a man is old at forty and that another man is young at seventy we actually refer
to the physical and mental states of the two men and not to their ages. The suggestion that we use
the phrase “functional age” in speaking of an individual and make no reference to his birthdays is
based on the same confusion. It is true that birthdays do not tell the condition of one's body, nor do they tell how well
developed the mind may be, but conditions are related to age only incidentally and are not
essential parts of age. A man of seventy may be youthful in physical condition or in mental outlook,
or a man of forty may be old in condition, flaccid and depressed, but the first is still seventy years
old and the other is only forty years of age. Knowing these things, we may ignore the objection often offered that we are “trying to set the
clock back.” The changes called “aging” that take place in the body are not related so much to the
clock of time as to causes totally unrelated to time as such. If the clock had casual relation to “aging,” we should expect the man of seventy to show all the
signs of “aging” that are common to this time of life, and the man of forty to present all the signs of
“youthfulness” that are common then. That we so frequently see these facts in reverse should cause
us to question the assumption that the condition of the body is irrevocably related to the number of
years we have lived. We should not find it difficult to understand that we “age” in time, but time is
not the cause of the “aging” process. Think of the stone worn away by water. It changes in time, but
time does not wear it away. The water wears it away. The process of wearing away the stone
takes time—time is not the wearing process. Two stones subjected to the same amount of water-wearing, will wear away at different rates,
depending on their respective hardness and density. For this same reason, two men, under the same
amount of impairing influences will “age at different rates,” depending on the resistance each
offers to the causes of impairment. A stone will wear faster or slower depending on the amount of water that flows over it; wearing
slowly if only a small amount of water washes its surface, wearing faster if much water flows over
it. In the same way, a man will “age” slowly or rapidly, depending on the amount of impairing
influence to which he is subjected. Carrying our comparison a bit further: if we can conceive of a self-repairing rock being worn
away and then having the water cease flowing over it, we’d see the rock repair itself and restore
much of its former substance, and would witness a process similar to that which takes place in the
human organism (which is self-repairing) when the causes of “aging” are removed. The body is capable of tearing down some of its damaged structures and replacing these with
new structures; it is capable of renewing its cells, of casting off its accumulated burdens and of
65repairing much of its damages. Unlike the lifeless rock, the living organism is capable of taking an
active hand in its affairs and doing something constructive. Man is constituted for longer and better life than he now enjoys. He should live considerably
many more years than he now does. And he should enjoy the possession of full health and vigor. He should not fall apart at sixty or earlier. The fact is that, barring death by accident or killing, as
in war, human beings die of disease. If we live in such a manner as to prevent the evolution of
disease, we not only may live much longer than is now thought possible, but we may live in full
possession of all our mental and physical powers. Aging has been defined as “the accumulation of body changes that increase one’s chances of
dying with the passage of time.” This simply means that aging is the slow accumulation of
pathological (diseased) changes in the organs and tissues of the body. It signifies the accumulation
of damages to the structures of the body and a slow impairment of the functions of life. Old age is
simply one more chronic disease. This is the reason we may
age
 early or late, and why some men
are younger at seventy than others are at forty. Age takes place in time but is not caused by time. It is not important, therefore, that means be
found of determining accurately one’s physiological age. What is important is that we find and
recognize the causes of the aging process. Remove the cause of aging; and the physiological age
takes care of itself. It is claimed that no one knows precisely what the body changes that constitute aging consist of,
or what exactly the changes might be. The experiments of the noted French scientist. Dr. Alexis
Carrell, author of
Man, the Unknown,
 in keeping fragments of a chicken heart alive for many
years, revealed that they aged when not kept free of their own cell waste. In other words, they aged
as a consequence of the accumulation, in the culture medium in which they were kept, of their own
metabolic waste. If these wastes were regularly washed away, so that the cells were not poisoned by them, the
chicken heart did not age. We have indications again that aging is the result of chronic toxic
saturation. This important finding has received all too little attention, perhaps because there was
no way to exploit it. Carrell’s experiments and many more like them have led to the conclusion by some authorities
that the cells are potentially
immortal. Normally they continue to divide and redivide, but they do
not die. From this viewpoint death would seem to be abnormal. What we observe, however, under
all ordinary conditions of life, is that the cells do age and they do die in great numbers. To go on
living indefinitely, all conditions must be favorable. If the cells are potentially ageless, as is now believed by scientists, and the complex body ages,
then it is evident that one of two things is true. Either the functional specialization of cell groups—
the organs of the body—is inadequate, or there is some lack of coordination of the cell groups in
the body. Perhaps there may be both. If one or both of the propositions is true, the question
becomes: is the inadequacy of specialization or the inadequacy of coordination a primary state of
life or is it a result of ascertainable and removable causes? If it is primary, we cannot hope to
prevent, for more than a brief span, the aging process, which seems to set in, in most cases, rather
early in life. If it is due to avoidable and removable causes, as seems likely, we should be able to
do much to prevent aging. At least in many of the lower forms of life numerous experiments have
demonstrated that not
only can the aging process be indefinitely held off, but also that it can be reversed and youthfulness
restored. 66For more than fifteen years. Professor C. M. Child of the University of Chicago did research on
aging in animals. His results revealed that periodic fasting is generally conducive to
rejuvenescence. In certain species of insects he found that, with abundant food, insects pass through their whole
life-history in three to four weeks, but when the food is greatly reduced or the insects are forced to
fast, they may continue active and young for at least three years. His conclusion was that “partial
starvation (fasting) inhibits senescence.


 2 carrots, finely chopped
 2 celery stalks, finely chopped
 1 green pepper, chopped
 4 spring onions, chopped
 4 sprigs parsley, chopped
 50 g raisins
 4 tbsp olive oil
 Juice of ½ lemon
 1 garlic clove, crushed
 ½ tsp salt
 Black pepper
1. Place the couscous in a medium bowl
and add the boiling water. Cover and
let stand for about 20 minutes or until
the water has been absorbed and the
couscous has cooled slightly.2. Add the finely chopped vegetables,
herbs and raisins. 3. In a small bowl, mix the oil, lemon
juice, garlic, salt and pepper. Add the
mixture to the salad and toss to blend. Ginger Fried Rice
I tend to vary the type of rice I use when
making this recipe. You can try this with
Thai, Jasmine or any other fragrant rice. Add some more vegetables such as sweet
corn if preferred. Serves 4–6
 3 tsp sesame oil
 2 eggs, beaten 6 spring onions, chopped
 2½ cm ginger, minced
 500 g long-grain brown rice, cooked
 150 g frozen peas
 100 g mung bean sprouts
 2 tbsp oyster sauce
1. Heat 1 tsp of sesame oil in a wok over
a medium heat. Add the eggs and
scramble. Transfer to a plate and set
aside. 2. Pour the remaining oil into the wok. Add the spring onions and ginger and
stir fry for about 2 minutes until
fragrant. Add the rice and peas and stir
fry for about 4 minutes until hot and
beginning to stick to the wok. 3. Add the bean sprouts, oyster sauce andthe eggs. Stir fry, breaking up the eggs
for about 2 minutes. Serve
immediately. Bengali Fish
A Bengali meal without fish is apparently
incomplete. Fish is prepared in the most
nutritious and delicious way to
complement any Bengali meal. Salt and
turmeric are the simplest marinade for
fish in Bengali cooking. Serves 4
 1 kg cod fillets
 1 tsp turmeric
 6 tbsp mustard oil or grape seed oil 1 tsp salt
 4 fresh green chillies, chopped
 2½ cm ginger, crushed
 2 garlic cloves, crushed
 2 onions, chopped
 2 tomatoes, chopped
 425 ml water
 15 g fresh coriander, chopped
1. Preheat the oven to 180°C or Gas Mark
4. 2. Cut the cod into bite-sized pieces. 3. In a small bowl, mix the turmeric, half
the oil and salt together. Pour over the
fish. Place on a baking tray and bake
for 10 minutes. Remove and set aside. 4. In a food processor, blend the greenchilli, ginger, garlic, onions, tomatoes
and remaining oil into a paste. Pour
into a saucepan and simmer for 10
minutes. Remove from the heat and
gently place the fish in the sauce
without breaking up the fish. 5. Return the saucepan to a medium heat. Add the water and cook for 15–20
minutes. 6. Garnish with coriander and serve. Lamb with Potatoes
(Delhi-
style)
Serves 4–6
 2 tbsp grape seed oil 2 onions, chopped
 5 garlic cloves
 400 g lamb, diced
 400 g tomatoes
 1 tbsp cumin
 1 tsp coriander
 ½ tsp turmeric
 ¼ tsp cayenne pepper
 3 tsp salt
 400 g potatoes, diced
 200 g red lentils
 700 ml water
1. Heat the oil in a saucepan and sauté the
onion, garlic and lamb for 15 minutes. 2. Add the tomatoes, cumin, coriander,
turmeric, pepper and salt. Cook on ahigh heat for 10–15 minutes. 3. Add the potatoes, lentils and water. Simmer on a low heat for 1 hour and
10 minutes. Serve when cooked. Chicken Kadai
(Indian)
This is one of my favourites because of
the mixture of spices and chilli. Kadai is
an Indian cooking pot that looks like a
wok, a handle on each side. Serve this
with naan bread, chappati, or perhaps
with basmati rice. Serves 4
 2 tbsp grape seed oil
 1 onion, chopped 2 garlic cloves, chopped
 2½ cm ginger, minced
 450 g skinless chicken breast, diced
 3 tomatoes, peeled and chopped
 1 tsp turmeric
 2 tsp garam masala
 ½ tsp chilli powder (or to your taste)
 Juice of ½ lemon
 1 tsp salt
 2 tsp coriander to garnish
1. Sauté the onion, garlic and ginger in oil
for 10 minutes. 2. Add the chicken, tomatoes, spices,
lemon juice and salt. Mix until the
chicken is thoroughly coated and sauté
for 5 minutes. Cover and simmer overa low heat for 45 minutes. 3. Garnish with coriander and serve. Curried Lentils with Sweet
Potatoes and Spinach
This is a comforting and healthy meal,
full of flavour and spices but not fiery
hot. Add more curry powder if you like
your food spicier. Serves 4
 1 tbsp olive oil
 1 onion, chopped
 2 garlic cloves, crushed
 1 tbsp curry powder 2½ cm ginger, minced
 1 tsp ground cumin
 200 g dried lentils, rinsed
 600 ml vegetable or chicken stock
 1 sweet potato, peeled and cut into 5
mm cubes
 100 g baby spinach
 Salt and pepper to taste
 225 ml plain yoghurt (optional)
 50 g almonds, chopped
1. Heat the oil in a medium saucepan. Add
the onion and garlic and sauté for 5
minutes. 2. Stir in the curry powder, ginger and
cumin and cook for 1 minute. Add the
lentils and stock and bring to the boil.Reduce the heat and simmer, covered,
for 10 minutes. 3. Add the sweet potato, cover and cook
for 10 minutes until soft. 4. Stir in the spinach and cook for 1
minute until the spinach is just wilted. Add salt and pepper to taste. 5. Transfer to bowls and top each with 1
tbsp of yoghurt and 1 tbsp of chopped
almonds. Serve hot. Tofu with Tomatoes and
Coriander
A nutritious recipe especially for
vegetarians and vegans. Tofu is an
excellent source of protein for
vegetarians and vegans and is also richin calcium and iron. Serves 4
 1 tbsp grape seed oil
 6 spring onions, chopped
 2 garlic cloves, crushed
 3 tomatoes, deseeded and cut into 2½
cm squares
 450 g fresh extra firm tofu, drained and
cut into 2½ cm squares
 1 tsp salt (optional)
 ½ tsp honey or agave nectar
 1 tsp soy sauce
 ¼ tsp ground coriander
 ½ tsp black pepper1. Heat the oil in a wok or saucepan. Stir
fry the spring onions and garlic for 2
minutes. 2. Add the tomatoes and stir fry for 1
minute. 3. Add the tofu, salt, honey or agave, soy
sauce and coriander. Stir to blend in
and cook for 30 seconds. 4. Season with black pepper and serve
hot. Spicy Salmon Fillets in
Tomato and Garlic Sauce
Serves 2–4
 2 tsp olive oil 1 onion, coarsely chopped
 2 garlic cloves, chopped
 1 red bell pepper, chopped
 2 tomatoes, coarsely chopped
 15 g fresh coriander, chopped
 1 can tomatoes, diced
 2 tbsp paprika
 1 tbsp ground cumin
 2 tsp salt
 2 tbsp cayenne pepper
 1 tsp ground black pepper
 125 ml water
 450 g salmon fillets, cut into 4
individual slices
 Juice of ½ lemon
1. Preheat the oven to 180°C or Gas Mark4. 2. Heat the oil in an ovenproof frying pan
and sauté the onion and garlic for 5
minutes. 3. Add the red pepper, chopped fresh
tomatoes and coriander. Sauté until
tender. 4. In a medium bowl, mix the canned
diced tomatoes, 1 tbsp paprika, cumin,
salt, 1 tbsp cayenne pepper, ground
black pepper and water together
thoroughly. Add half the mixture to the
pan and cook for 10 minutes. 5. Sprinkle 1 tbsp paprika and 1 tbsp
cayenne onto the salmon and rub in. Add the salmon to the sauce and cook
for 10 minutes. 6. Pour the remaining tomato mixture overthe salmon and continue to cook for
another 10 minutes. 7. Add the lemon juice, cover and cook
for 5 minutes or until salmon is cooked


 would like you  to try a simple exercise: Stop t hinking and
observe how long it takes before the first thoughts enter. Is it 5 or 10
seconds, perhaps? The deg ree to which you are in control of your mind depends on how
long you are ab le to remain free  from thought. The longer you can remain
ef fortlessly free from thought, the better your powers of concentration and
focus. Most people are only able to clear their mind for a few seconds at
most. It is likely that your mind has more control over you th an you may
have im agined. The good news is that there is much to gain from taking
control o f your thought processe s. Learning to quiet your mind is easy to do
with a little focus and practice. Think of it as a challenge, just lik e any other
new form of training, but one that will inevitably improve your health and
sports performance. The first step to escape the trappings of a busy mind and take control of
your thought processes is to become aware of the thoughts inside your head. Seldom do we observe our minds. Seldom are we aware of our thought
activity and the ef fect it has on mood, tension, and performance. Bring your
thoughts to the f orefront of your mind. When you first observe the activity
in your head, you might find that your thoughts become amplified. This is
simply because they are under y our scrutiny rather than running unhindered
in th e background. Y ou may als o discover that the same repetitive thoughts
have been running through you r mind for quite some time, possibly for
years. T his is also normal, so d on’ t be critical of yourself. Ob serving the
mind is a most p ositive activity, allowing you to realize just how active it is. This aw areness is the first step in allowing you to break free from the
trappings of the mind and improve your concentration and focus.When y ou take time out to obse rve your thoughts, you will rea lize just
how ofte n you are stuck inside your head. There is no need to  analyze or
judge what is going through your mind—doing so will only pile on more
thoughts. The mind is never calmed by further questioning, and thinking too
much is the very habit that we want to address. In order to step out of this
constant circle of thought—to get out of your head and into life—you must
learn to tame your mind. By s imply making the commitm ent to pay attention to your thoughts
periodically thro ughout the day, you can take control of the most important
tool you  possess —the power of your mind. The clarity of your mind plays a
significant role in determining  your quality of life: A still mind brings
benefit to your sleep patterns,  mood, and health, while a mind full of
incessant though ts and distractions will blunt your ability to reach your full
potential. It is especially important to observe your thoughts w hen an
undercurrent of negative thou ght takes over. Don’ t let yourself be
overwhelmed by self-doubt and  worry. The mind is unable to dif ferentiate
between an imagined and a real event; to the body, both are the same. If you
are experiencing  pregame nerves or overthinking the decision o f a coach or
worrying about being dropped f rom the team or anxious that you won’ t be
able to complete that charity fun run, your body will react as if the event
has alrea dy taken place. As soon as you become aware of an anxious train
of thought, take notice of its ef fect on your body. Does your head or
stomach feel tense? Is your b reathing getting faster? Are negative and
repetitive thoughts causing y ou to feel nauseated? How you think
determines how you feel, and how you feel feeds back into how you think. A feeding frenzy of negative thought and emotion will inevitab ly result in
poor performance and health. Each tim e you find your head fu ll of internal chattering, ask yo urself if
all th is t hinking and analysis is a ctually helpful. Is it getting you  anywhere? Is it helping to s olve the problem? If you continue thinking in th is way, will
it do  any thing to address the situation, or is it just a never -ending merry-go-
round of  habitual anxiety? Asking these questions provides an insight into
the nature of repetitive thought and the way it af fects your life. The
realization that these negative thoughts serve no purpose to you can of fer
the impetus you need to escape from the clutches of your mind.Be patie nt with your observation. At first, your thoughts may continue
unabated as you start to notice t he tension created within your body—your
heart beats faster, butterflies flut ter in your stomach, and your mind refuses
to cease  its activity. In time, an d with practice, you will learn to still your
mind an d take back control. O bserve your thoughts as many times as
possible throughout your day, especially when faced with a challenge. There w ill be times when you can quiet your mind ef fortlessly; at other
times th e buildup of emotions may make it more dif ficult. Either way,
observe how negative thinking af fects your body and ask your self if these
types of thoughts are useful to you. Simply asking yourself th is question
will bring awareness to your life and allow you to know yourself better. In time, if you commit to observing your thoughts and the ef fect they
have on your b ody, you will find you spend less ener gy on fruitless
thinking. Y our mind will be clearer, your body more relaxed, and life will
become easier. Y ou will notice more of what takes place around you and
miss less. Repetitive, regur gitating thought is extremely draining, causin g stress,
tiredness, and headaches. The less headspace you give to negative thinking,
the more room you have in your life for positivity and improvement. Consider the following example:
Michael is driving his car to an important training session, well aware
that he is likely  to be late. As he projects his mind into the  future, he
imagines and rehearses the rea ction from his coach and team mates. He
cannot stop these thoughts circ ling around his head, worrying about the
outcome, getting  frustrated with traf fic, and generally winding himself up. His body  feels tense, a headache begins to take hold, and he probably starts
to drive faster than he should. Alan is also driving on his way to a training session. It is likely  that he
too will be late. Knowing that he is doing the best he can to get there on
time and that no amount of worrying is going to get him there any faster,
Alan brings his attention to his b reath, observing the flow of air as it enters
and leaves his body. Every now  and again the thought of being late enters
Alan’ s mind. As he notices the  thoughts, he asks himself whether these
thoughts are helpful. Knowing only too well that anxiety will only serve to
make hi m tense and distract him, he takes his attention back to  his breath,
keeping himself calm and relaxed.Now im agine bo th Michael and Alan are cut of f by another car,  forcing
each of them to apply the brake s. How do you think each one reacts to the
situation? Most likely, Michael is engulfed in rage and soun ds the horn
angrily. Alan, on the other han d, chooses not to react and does not get
sucked into the situation. In this example, the two drivers were presented with the same
challenge, but while one immediately reacted to the challenge, the other
responded by choosing to let i t go. There is no doubt that a  stressed or
anxious person reacts more str ongly to a dif ficult event than a relatively
calm person. Keeping a quiet mind enables you to consider a situation more
objectively and choose how to respond rather than being consumed by the
moment. Alan had the choice to respond or not. Michael’ s instincts took
over before he could make a conscious decision. In a ddition to observing your t houghts, it is just as vital to be  able to
quiet yo ur mind. T ogether, these skills will magnify your ability  to enter the
zone du ring spo rts. When you f irst practice taming your mind it is normal
to fi nd distracting thoughts ente ring your head every few seconds. In fact,
you sho uld expect them to appear. Do not be dishear tened—this
bombardment o f thoughts has built up through years of condi tioning and
will take time to strip away. Layer upon layer of thoughts have been added
by every  influen ce in your life : education, religion, society, relationships,
and wor k. The mind has simpl y developed a bad habit; it knows how to
think but is unable to stop thinking. When yo u first begin practicing meditation, try not to become frustrated
when the mind wanders, becaus e it inevitably will. Many peop le abandon
meditation too quickly when they find it isn’ t an instant fix. Y ou may feel
discouraged if your thoughts do n’ t switch of f as quickly as you had hoped,
but try to view t he practice as ju st that: practice


 salt substitute that really tastes salty. Nutrisweet is basically harmless tomost people and can be used as a very satisfactory replacement for sugars. (Afew people are unable to tolerate nutrisweet, causing the anti-chemicalists tocirculate much anti-nutrisweet propaganda, but you should carefully consider thisthought before dismissing nutrisweet—there is almost no food substance thatsome people are not allergic to or unable to digest. The fact that nutrisweet ismade in a chemical vat and the fact that some cannot handle nutrisweet does notmake it “of the devil.”
And its not all black and white with the other items either. Sea salt does have
certain redeeming qualities not found in mined salt and under certain very specialconditions, eating small quantities of salt may be acceptable. Similarly, some formsof sugar are not quite as harmful as other forms, though all are harmful. The primary health problem caused by table salt is not that it contributes to
high blood pressure in people with poor kidneys, though it does that. It is not thateating salt ruins the kidneys; salt probably does not do that to most kidneys. Thereal problem with salt is that sodium chloride is an adrenal stimulant, triggering therelease of adrenal hormones, especially natural steroids that resist inflammation.When these hormones are at high levels in the blood, the person often feels verygood, has a sense of well-being. Thus salt is a drug! And like many drugs of itstype, salt is a habituating drug. However, we are so used to whipping our adrenalswith salt that we don’t notice it. What we do notice is that we think we like thetaste of salted food and consider that food tastes flat without it. But take away aperson’s salt shaker and they become very uncomfortable. That’s because theaddict isn’t getting their regular dose. What’s wrong with repetitive adrenal whipping is that adrenal fortitude is
variable; many people’s adrenals eventually fail to respond to the prod of salt andthe body begins to suffer from a lack of adrenal hormones. Often those inheritingweak adrenals manifest semi-failure in childhood. The consequence is that
ordinary, irritating substances begin causing severe irritation. The person becomes
allergic to pollen, dust, foods, animal danders, etc. We see asthma, hay fever,sinusitis, etc. Though one can then discover specific allergens and try to removethem from the environment or diet, often this case can be solved far more easilyby complete withdrawal from all salt. This rests the adrenals and they mayrecover their full function; almost certainly their function will improve. The asthma,allergies and etc., gradually vanish. Most of us don’t need to eat salt as a nutrient. There’s enough sodium in one
dill pickle to run a human body for a year. There’s enough natural sodium in manytypes of vegetables to supply normal needs without using table salt. Perhapsathletes or other hard working people in the tropics eating deficient food grownon leached-out depleted soils, people that sweat buckets day after day may needa little extra sodium. Perhaps. Not having practiced in the humid tropics myself, Ihave no definitive answer about this. Unfortunately, the average American is entirely addicted to salt and thinks food
tastes lousy without it. To please the average consumer, almost all prepared foodscontain far too much salt for someone suffering from exhausted adrenals.Interestingly, Canadians do not like their foods nearly as salty as Americans, andprepared foods like soups and the like in cans and packages that look just like theones in American supermarkets (though with French on the back panel) have tobe reformulated for our northern neighbors. I’ve observed that Canadians aregenerally healthier than Americans in many respects. We would all be far better off consuming no salt at all. Those with allergies or
asthma should completely eliminate it for a month or two and discover if thatsimple step doesn’t pretty much cure them. The trouble is that bakery bread isroutinely two percent salt by weight. Cheese is equally salted or even more so.Canned and frozen prepared food products are all heavily salted. Restaurantmeals are always highly salted in the kitchen. If you want to avoid salt you almosthave to prepare everything yourself, bake your own bread, abstain from cheese
(though there are unsalted cheeses but even I don’t like the flavor of these), and
abstain from restaurants. My family has managed to eliminate all salt from ourown kitchen except for that in cheese, and we eat cheese rather moderately. Sugar is a high-caloric non-food with enormous liabilities. First, from the
viewpoint of the universal formula for health, no form of non-artificial sweetenercarries enough nutrients with it to justify the number of calories it contains, noteven malt extract. White refined sugar contains absolutely no nutrients at all; the“good” or “natural” sweets also carry so little nutrition as to be next to useless.Sweets are so far over on the bad end of the Health = Nutrition / Calories scalethat for this reason alone they should be avoided. However, healthy people can usually afford a small amount of sin; why not
make it sweets? In small quantity, sugars are probably the easiest indiscretion todigest and the least damaging to the organ systems. Although, speaking of sin, asEdgar Guest, the peoples’ poet, once so wisely quipped, (and my husbandagrees) “Candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker.” Sugar is a powerful drug! Peoplewho abuse sweets set up a cycle of addiction that can be very hard to break. Itstarts when the body tries to regulate blood sugar. Kicked up to high levels byeating sugar, the pancreas releases insulin. But that is not the end of the chainreaction. Insulin regulates blood sugar levels but also raises brain levels of anamino acid called tryptophan. Tryptophan is the raw material the brain uses tomanufacture a neurotransmitter called serotonin. And serotonin plays a huge rolein regulating mood. Higher brain levels of serotonin create a feeling of well-being.Eating sugar gives a person a chemical jolt of happiness. Heavy hits of high-glycemic index starch foods are also rapidly converted to sugar. So don’t giveyour kids sweets! Or huge servings of starch to mellow them out. It is wise not tostart out life a happiness addict with a severe weight problem. Now that the chemistry of sugar addiction is understood, there currently is a
movement afoot to cast the obese as helpless victims of serotonin imbalances andto “treat” them with the same kinds of serotonin-increasing happy drugs (like
Prozac) that are becoming so popular with the psychiatric set. This promises to
be a multiple billion dollar business that will capture all the money currentlyflowing into other dieting systems and bring it right back to the AMA/drugcompany/FDA nexus. The pitch is that when serotonin levels are upped, thedesire to eat drops and so is weight. This approach is popular with the obesebecause it requires no personal responsibility other than taking a pill that reallydoes make them feel happy. However, the same benefit can be had by strictadherence to a low-fat, low-carbohydrate diet. Eventually, the brain chemistryrebalances itself and serotonin levels stabilize. Remember, the pancreas has another major service to perform for the body:
secreting digestive enzymes to aid in the digestion of proteins. When the dietcontains either too much protein or too much sugar and/or high-glycemic indexstarch foods, the overworked pancreas begins to be less and less efficient atmaintaining both of these functions. Sometimes a stressed-out pancreas gets overactive and does too good a job
lowering the blood sugar, producing hypoglycemia. Hypoglycemia is generallyaccompanied by unpleasant symptoms such as fatigue, dizziness, blurred vision,irritability, confusion, headache, etc. This condition is typically alleviated by yetanother hit of sugar which builds an addiction not only to sugar, but to food ingeneral. If the hypoglycemic then keeps on eating sugar to relieve the symptomsof sugar ingestion, eventually the pancreas becomes exhausted, producing aninsulin deficiency, called diabetes. Medical doctors treat diabetes with insulinsupplements either oral or intramuscular plus a careful diet with very low andmeasured amounts of sugar and starch for the remainder of the persons inevitablyshortened and far less pleasant life. However, sometimes diabetes can becontrolled with diet alone, though medical doctors have not had nearly as muchsuccess with this approach as talented naturopaths. Sometimes, long fasting canregenerate a pancreas. It is far better to avoid creating this disease! Glycemic Index
(compared to glucose, which is 100)
Grains Fruits V egetables
all bran 51 apples 39 baked beans 40
brown rice 66 bananas 62 beets 64
buckwheat 54 cherries 23 black-eyed peas 33
cornflakes 80 grapefruit 26 carrots 92
oatmeal 49 grapes 45 chic peas 36
shred. wheat 67 orange juice 46 parsnips 97
muesli 66 peach 29 potato chips 51
white rice 72 orange 40 baked potato 98
white spagetti 50 pear 34 sweet potato 48
whole wheat spagetti 42 plum 25 yams 51
sweet corn 59 raisins 64 peas 51
Nuts Baked Goods Sugars
peanuts 13 pastry 59 fructose 20
sponge cake 46 glucose 100
Meats white bread 69 honey 87
sausage 28 w/w bread 72 maltose 110
fish sticks 38 whole rye bread


 all that has the
essence of life pulsating within it. You can’t reconnect to your Source and
know the power of intention in your life without the assistance of the
environment. You’re connected to this environment. Without gravity, you
can’t walk. Without the water, you can’t live a day. Without the forests, the
sky, the atmosphere, the vegetation, the minerals—all of it—your desire to
manifest and reach intention is meaningless. Extend thoughts of kindness everywhere. Practice kindness toward Earth
by picking up a piece of litter that’s on your path, or saying a silent prayer
of gratitude for the existence of rain, the color of flowers, or even the paper
you hold in your hand that was donated by a tree. The universe responds in
kind to what you elect to radiate outward. If you say with kindness in your
voice and in your heart, “How may I serve you. ” the universe’s response
will be, “How may I serve you as well. ” It’s attractor energy. It’s this spirit
of cooperation with all of life that emerges from the essence of intention. And this spirit of kindness is one that you must learn to match if connecting
back to intention is your desire. My daughter Sommer has written from her
experience about how small acts of kindness go a long way:
I was getting off the turnpike one rainy afternoon and pulled
up to the tollbooth while fumbling through my purse. The
woman smiled at me and said, “The car before you has paid
your toll. ” I told her I was traveling alone and extended my
money. She replied, “Yes, the man instructed me to tell the next
person who came to my booth to have a brighter day. ” That
small act of kindness did give me a brighter day. I felt so movedby someone I would never know. I began to wonder how I could
brighten someone else’s day. I called my best friend and told her
about my paid toll. She said she’d never thought of doing that,
but it was a great idea. She goes to the University of Kentucky
and decided to pay for the person behind her every day on her
way to school as she exits the toll road. I laughed at her
sincerity. “You think I’m kidding,” she said, “but like you said,
it’s only 50 cents. ” As we hung up, I wondered if the man who
paid my toll even fathomed that his thoughtfulness would travel
to Kentucky. I had an opportunity to extend kindness at the supermarket
one day when I had my cart filled to the top with food that my
roommate and I would share over the next two weeks. The
woman behind me had an antsy toddler and not nearly as much
in her cart as I had. I said to her, “Why don’t you go first. You
don’t have as much as I do. ” The woman looked at me as if I’d
just sprouted extra limbs or something. She replied, “Thank you
so much. I haven’t seen many people around here be thoughtful
of another person. We’ve moved here from Virginia and are
considering moving back because we’re questioning whether
this is the right place to raise our three children. ” Then she told
me that she was about ready to give up and move back home,
even though it would create a huge financial strain on her
family. She said, “I’d promised myself if I didn’t see a sign by
the end of today, I was going to demand that we move back to
Virginia. You are my sign. ”
She thanked me again, smiling as she left the store. I was
flabbergasted, realizing that such a small gesture had impacted
a whole family. The clerk said as she was checking me out,
“You know what, girl. You just made my day. ” I walked out
smiling, wondering how many people my act of kindness would
affect. The other day I was getting a breakfast sandwich and coffee
and thought my co-workers might like some doughnuts. Thefour guys I work with at the stables live in the little apartments
at the front of the barns. None of them has a car, but they share
a bike. I explained to them that the doughnuts were for them. The look of gratitude on each of their faces was rewarding in an
immeasurable way. I haven’t worked there all that long, and I
think that those 12 small doughnuts helped break the ice a little
bit. My small act of kindness turned into something huge as the
week went on. We started looking out for one another more
carefully and working as a team.<|eot_id|><|begin_of_text|>
Q: What is the key to manifesting one's desires?,
A: Refuse to entertain doubt and instead, focus on the power of intention.
Q: What is the author's approach to manifesting one's desires?,
A: The author emphasizes the importance of imagination, kindness, and love in order to connect with the power of intention.
Q: What is the author's perspective on the concept of free will?,
A: The author does not discuss free will as a separate entity, but rather emphasizes the importance of aligning with the power of intention.
Q: What is the author's view on the relationship between imagination and intention?,
A: The author views imagination as the connecting link to intention, and encourages the reader to focus on the power of imagination in order to manifest their desires.
Q: What is the author's advice for overcoming self-doubt?,
A: The author suggests that one should not focus on what they don't have, but rather focus on the abundance and kindness that is always available.<|eot_id|><|begin_of_text|>The sound world. You seldom perceive sound waves with your eyes,
but they can actually be felt. These invisible waves are also high/low and
fast/slow. This sound level of energy is where you connect to the highest
frequencies of Spirit through the practice of Japa meditation, or the
repetition of the sound of God, as I’ve written about extensively in Getting
in the Gap. 3. The light world. Light moves faster than the material world and faster
than sound, yet there are no actual particles to form a substance called light. What you see as red is what your eye perceives a certain pulsating
frequency to be, and what you perceive as violet is an even faster and
higher frequency. When light is brought to darkness, darkness becomes
light. The implications for this are startling. Low energy when faced with
high energy experiences an automatic conversion. 4. The thought world. Your thoughts are an extremely high frequency of
pulsation that moves beyond the speed of sound and even light. The
frequency of thoughts can be measured, and the impact that they have on
your body and your environment can be calculated. Once again, the same
rules apply. Higher frequencies nullify lower; faster energies convert
slower. A colleague I admire enormously, David Hawkins, M.D., has
written a work, which I’ve referenced often, called Power vs. Force. In this
remarkable book, Dr. Hawkins elaborates on the lower frequencies of
thought and their accompanying emotions, and how they can be impacted
and converted by exposure to higher and faster frequencies. I urge you to
read his book, and I’ll present some of those findings in the section on
raising your energy levels. Every thought you have can be calculated to
determine if it’s strengthening or weakening your ability to reconnect to the
highest and fastest energy in the universe. 5. The Spirit world. Here is the ultimate in energy. These frequencies are
so supersonically rapid that the presence of disorder, disharmony, and even
disease is impossible. These measurable energies consist of the seven faces
of intention, written about throughout the pages of this book. They are the
energies of creation. When you reproduce them in yourself, you reproduce
the same creative quality of life that called you into existence. They are the
qualities of creativity, kindness, love, beauty, expansion, peacefulabundance, and receptivity. These are the highest energies of the universal
Spirit itself. You came into existence from this energy, and you can match
up with it energetically as you remove the low-energy pulsations from your
thoughts and feelings. Consider these words of the Nobel Prize–winning physicist Max Planck
as he accepted his award for his study of the atom: “As a man who has
devoted his whole life to the most clear-headed science, to the study of
matter, I can tell you as the result of my research about atoms this much:
There is no matter as such! All matter originates and exists only by virtue of
a force which brings the particles of an atom to vibration and holds this
most minute solar system of the atom together.... We must assume behind
this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind. This mind is the
matrix of all matter.” It is to this mind that I urge you to match up. Raising Your Energy Level
Every thought you have has an energy that will either strengthen or
weaken you. It’s obviously a good idea to eliminate the thoughts that
weaken you, since these thoughts are obstacles to creating a winning match
with the universal, supreme Source of intention. Take a moment to ponder
the meaning behind Anthony de Mello’s observation in One Minute
Wisdom:
Why is everyone here so happy except me? “Because they have learned to see goodness
and beauty everywhere,” said the Master. Why don’t I see goodness and beauty everywhere? “Because you cannot see outside of you what you
fail