Starting a More Raw Diet

I am on a raw food cleanse.  I am not doing 100% raw as I have just incorporated cooked lentils and might steal a nut that is roasted when visiting people, but mostly I am eating raw and organic when available.  When I started, I wouldn’t have called it a cleanse, I would have called it a mostly raw diet, but as I get into it, I realize more and more that I am cleansing. I am using the word “cleansing” but it is the same as detoxing.

This is my sixth time eating a raw food diet. (I will write about why I got off of it the other times in another blog entrée)  I hope it is my last and that I will stay eating this clean, but one never knows the future.   I could find myself in an ashram in India for the rest of my life and in that case I would not be eating raw.  This time I started with a vegan diet.  I have been a strict vegan for a number of years now.  It made eating mostly raw much easier for me.  It is also easier for me since I am allowing myself cooked beans, legumes, olives and the occasional whatever that may arise that I might feel I need to eat.  Being less strict is better for me.  I am also allowing myself to have vegan, plant-based protein drinks.   It is interesting to even use the word “allowing.” Who am I talking to when I say this?  Is there a raw food diet deity that is constantly looking over me to give me approval or disapproval?  Maybe there had been a voice in my head that did this with everything, but I am now able to hear it. 

That is precisely why I am writing this now.  I want to share with others what I am experiencing.  I am able to “hear” more than I was before.  My level of clarity is greater.  I haven’t even been on the diet for that long and already I have noticed that my mind is more able to discern with clarity to a greater degree than when I was eating cooked vegan food.   What I am noticing more than anything that I really want to share is the fact that my tolerance level has changed.   Since I am not eating food to suppress my feelings, I am more clear about parts of my life that I believe need to change.  I can no longer just eat a piece of chocolate or a bowl of cereal or have a baked potato, etc. to suppress my feelings in order to help me deal with outdated circumstances.  I am not eating anything right now to suppress my feelings.   In this case, things that I just grinned and bared are flashing with bright lights saying this needs to be changed.   Sometimes that change is an attitude change. I might see a circumstance from a higher perspective.  I might change my view toward it in order to resolve undealt with feelings.  Or, I might be able to change a situation with applied action.  I am hearing “one step at a time.”  There is patience with this process.   That is something I am learning, too.  

On a physical level, I am still in the cleansing stage.  I understand that when one eats all raw or mostly raw, cleansing is something one must keep doing periodically, regularly.  I may always be cleansing something, even if it is the physical ramification of a stale thought.  I believe that thoughts produce energies that sometimes need to be cleaned since, if prolonged and negative, they might create a situation on the physical level that is unwanted.  So, detoxing must be done on all levels.  One cannot be cleansing with all or mostly raw food and not pay attention to the thoughts and words of the mental plane. 

It is also really important to clean the colon.  That is the sewer of the body and it needs to be cleaned periodically.  When I started to feel a bit dizzy, I knew I needed to clean my colon.  You cannot just put healthy food into your body and not cleanse the trash can underneath. The trash has to be dumped.    As we progress through life, old thoughts, old food, old behavior patterns need to be cleaned out.    We cannot separate them, they are part of a whole. 

Cleaning the diet is showing me what in my life needs to be cleansed.  I have nothing to suppress something that is not working for me anymore, something that is “no longer growing corn” for me.   I may be able to change some things through action, but some things may not be able to be changed by our own efforts.  If I cannot change it right away, I am able to see my thoughts and respond to them in a more clear way now that my diet is more clean.  If I feel out of sorts, then my mind needs to change first.  Applying action to try to change something without changing the way we feel first usually just creates a spinning of the tail as we spin another tale that is not affective.   Change the mind to positive before tackling an outer change.  When we start to eat a clean vegan diet, the need to change appears before our eyes.