Fabulously Wealthy or Suffering Under an Insane Delusion?

THE REAL STORY OF MONEY


Ooooh. Where IS she going w/ these two videos? (Let them take you where they take you, for now)

FEDERAL RESERVE CHALLENGE


THE COMING ECONOMIC COLLAPSE?


Btw, in this video, I think we learn the real reason why the US wanted Sadam Hussein's Iraq!

I posted these to get us all thinking about TRUTH ... and not illusions!

Today, I hope you enjoy the knowledge and wisdom of Matt Amsden, of RawVolution. (Photo of handsome Matt courtesy of Amazon.com)

I opened Matt's newsletter today and found this very succinct bit of useful information:

The Top Three Things That Are Sapping Your Energy & Compromising Your Health

Dehydration
Your body is over seventy percent water, shouldn’t your food choices mirror this? A great way to get a head start on becoming hydrated is to consume food that has not had the natural water removed from it through cooking. Cooked food does nothing to provide your body with much-needed water and, it dehydrates you further in your bodies attempt to digest it. Everything you put in your stomach needs to be turned into liquid to be digested. How easily is your current diet liquefied?

Malnutrition
Recent data shows that nutritional deficiencies are most often caused by what we eat rather than by what we do not eat. Your current diet may be robbing you of precious vitamins and minerals. A well balanced diet of consciously prepared raw plant foods contains the full compliment of essential vitamins and minerals, while food prepared using conventional methods destroys over 80% of that foods nutrition. Can you afford 80% less nutrition than is naturally found in your food?

Lack of Enzymes
Enzymes are responsible for every metabolic process that takes place in your body from digestion to healing. Most prepared food is served with up to 100% of the natural enzymes destroyed. One hundred percent! When the lipase and amylase enzymes are destroyed, the body cannot digest fats or carbohydrates and they are stored in the body, causing you to gain weight. When you consume living, enzyme-rich food, it practically digests itself. This leaves you with a surplus of energy to play harder, work more efficiently and do more of what you love!

Check out Matt's website RAWvolution, and while you're at it, check out his book. It's loaded with easy, terrific recipes and lots of helpful information for those beginning -- and even farther along -- this raw foods adventure! If you're ever near Santa Monica, CA, make a stop at his cafe, Euphoria Loves RAWvolution. I hear it's also pretty cool - and the place where he prepares his famous "BOXES" -- loaded with raw food goodies for a whole week's time.

Confidence Makes Things Happen!

Yup ... confidence does make things happen. So does fear.
But the good thing is that it's just as easy to be confident and full of faith and optimism as it is to be fearful and full of foreboding and dread!! :-)

Both happen by decision in a moment of time. I love this Carley Simon song ... it just screams NEW LIFE ... CONFIDENCE ... POSITIVE THINGS HAPPENING!

Now for all you scientists out there ... check out this video of Bruce Lipton, author of The Biology of Belief. I found this on Phil McCluskey's website, LovingRaw.com, and the general topic is that "You Are Not Your Genes." That's the best news I've heard in a long time! I read Lipton's book about a year ago, so it was cool to see this video as a reminder. It's loaded w/ truly fascinating info with regard to our awesomely-designed human bodies! And even more fascinating info on the human CELL.

Hang in there until the end ... because it gets REALLY good at the end! Genes don't control the things we can do ... belief does!

Bruce Lipton Video

Following Up on this Theme of Personal Responsibility

I've found in my life at times that the truth of "personal responsibility" has sometimes been used as a self-defeating weapon ... a concept that becomes a guilt-inducing thing (such as, "Wow, how can I have NOT gotten healthy all these years? I've had sooo much time to do this!" And, "No one can do it but me. What's WRONG with me that I haven't done this yet?" etc.) I've made myself personally responsible alright -- but not in a good way -- certainly not in a way that helped me get any closer to a return to fitness!

I found another helpful thing on Phil McCluskey's website that I want to share today, along this line of personal responsibility -- but from the positive view. It's called "Five Steps for Transformation" and can be found

HERE

One particular quote really grabbed me. Phil wrote: "I spoke to one of the trainers at the gym about the best time to come, when it wasn’t so busy and more machines would be available. He let me know that anytime during work hours would be fine, now that January was over. I asked him why that was. He said, 'Well everyone is done making their attempt at actually following through on their New Year's resolution of getting back in shape, and it won’t be busy like that again until next year'."

I do not want to be one of those New Year's statistics at the end of this month. And I won't. I'm heading down to Pure Food & Wine Take Out right now. Sometimes we need that added "boost" of really deliciously-prepared living food . . . to remind us to 'keep on keepin' on' . . . veggie "lasagne" it will be! Maybe a seaweed salad too (gotta keep helping along that stubborn little thyroid glandy thing I've got goin' on. I keep picturing that little, but powerful, thing HEALED!)

Thanks, Phil, for the continued inspiration. :-)

Personal Responsibility

In the above video, Phil McCluskey talks about this important topic of personal responsibility, a theme that is reverberating within me these past few days of this new year. This is probably the most crucial topic for me as I continue my path to fitness in 2009. No one but me is responsible for carrying around pounds and pounds of excess weight on my body for close to 10 years! Yes, I may have had some challenges along the way that contributed directly to it (for example ... a deeply emotional event in 2000 that -- NOT coincidentally -- occurred simultaneously with my thyroid throwing itself totally out of wack; or certain natural hormonal shifts taking place in a mid-40's female body) -- but I am STILL responsible for what I chose to do about those challenges once they occur! For there are all kinds of ways to deal with them, and the obvious ways are the ones that work: adjusting exercise frequency UP; eating good food and cutting out garbage food; and (this is BIG) realizing that if one is moving less, one MUST eat less. I failed consistently enough in these areas to stay stuck. And I lacked the brutal honesty to see it.

So what I love most about Philip is his straight talk. He took stock of his life and dared to become totally honest with himself in order to do it. There is a taking stock and a willingness to be totally honest that has to happen before lasting change can occur, and I feel I am finally there.

In addition to taking responsibility for what appears in our lives physically, on this video Phil talks about something else I deeply related to. He speaks about how to handle -- within our own hearts -- the lousy words others may think and/or speak about us. Their sting can initially set us back, but what we ultimately do with those poisonous words is what is important. All of us interpret others' actions through personal lenses. Those "lenses" are all too often conditioned by how we were treated in our lives. The problem is, the reactions we have happen on an unconscious level. (Don't kid yourself, we are ALL products of how we've been treated in life -- from the time we were infants until adulthood -- and we all unconsciously respond in relating to others, be they potential lovers, friends, intimates or whatever! It's only recognizing that we do it that helps us STOP doing it!)

In this vein, something I've seen is that people with "trust issues" find it nearly impossible to trust that others have good motives towards them. Instead their default is that others are "out to get them" in some way. They get what they expect. Yes WE get what WE expect. It's universal. So those w/ trust issues end up ascribing to others lousy character traits at the slightest sign of a communication upset or at the first hint of anything that could be interpreted as disapproval. They interpret things as personal affronts when there are totally innocent reasons for how a person is acting! They attach distorted meaning to the one they feel offended by and attribute motives to him/her that are not in that person's heart at all!

But what dooms the relationship is that they do it all without checking in with the other person to see if what they are thinking really is, in fact, so!

THIS is the truth of what happened to me about a year or so ago. And as if that weren't bad enough, I recently was the target of a rant regarding that encounter (and by someone I still have great affection for -- although I don't exactly know WHY I still do) on a public bulletin board where we are both known to have been an "item" (for lack of a much better word at the moment)! It bothered me deeply, bringing me to tears. As I mulled the stinging words written of me, I questioned why he'd open anew a wound that surely he'd realized had been somewhat 'healed' by time ... or at least scarred over. His broaching the subject in the manner and place he did was nothing but cruel. (The hallmark of cruelty is that it is coldly indifferent to the feelings of others. It's my view that cruelty springs from deep soul wounds -- but the person writing of me on that board would be infuriated if I dared think he had any of those.)

The alternative would have been to write me personally to let me know why he felt the need to totally shut down emotionally, intellectually and socially from me whilst I was visiting him. That would require sincere communication . . . with honesty and courage -- and without anger and judgment. You know, this person once implied (for whatever perceived slight of the moment) that he did not much respect me (one of many insults I foolishly endured of this person over far too much time). Well, I find nothing more defining of disrespect in a relationship than a person unwilling to speak the truth to a person face to face rather than waiting until there is distance between them.

In this video, Phil touches on how other people need not ever "hurt" us again. But this only happens as we grow in awareness of who we really are. When we stand on the truth of ourselves, when another's cruelty crops up, what we can do is offer up a prayer and forgive them. I could do that with this person because the reality is that he does not know me the way he thinks he does. His thinking he knows me through and through makes all he thinks about me true in his mind. There is nothing I can do to change it as he's closed the door to relating in any way, but what is good is that I don't see it as a personal attack anymore. It cannot be if it's an unknowing, a genuine blind spot! Unfortunately for me, it's one he likely will never shake, for once we humans feel RIGHT about our own assessments of others, it's nearly impossible to rethink or reassess them! So, really, how can I be unforgiving in a case such as that? More importantly, though . . . Why let someone who knows me so little (indeed, who cares not to know me at all!) rob me of a moment's peace by considering his distorted view of me as reality?

Perhaps if we had had some sincere and in-depth conversations together (rather than being emotionally shut out and "endured" for three weeks) . . . conversations that had some real genuine fun and substance to them, with a loving give-and-take . . . conversations that had endearing and "interested-in-you" questions asked and answered of one another, conversations where the natural wit we each possess was allowed to come to the fore . . . conversations that revealed some stories of our lives that we both could lovingly relate to . . . perhaps THEN we might have dropped our guards and judgments of each other, and things would have been quite different.

But that is a big "what if," eh? Huge really. Untrusting, almost paranoid, sensitivity is a killer to good conversation and hearts opening, and we each had our fair share of that going on! And even more true in this case -- one making snap judgments of the other -- then feeling justified in "shutting one's self down" as a result of them -- hardly allows the truth of another's soul to be known, does it?

Yet . . . despite my experience, I love the heck out of the person. And that can't ever be a bad thing as long as I acknowledge it as the lost-forever opportunity it is. My heart's response, though, to the nasty comment revealed that -- to my sorrow -- it is a lost opportunity I still grieve.

Going forward, I think I've finally gotten the lessons needed (let's hope!) so that when I DO encounter that someone I'm meant to love who is willing to love me back -- because he knows a gem when he sees one and also how to treat one (!) -- it will all happen quite beautifully in its own time and place.

Hope you enjoy Phil's video. Check out all his other videos too -- at LovingRaw.com. You'll be enlightened and enriched.

Ahh ... January 1st, the Totally Useless "Resolution" Day!

So ... has this first day of 2009 been a useless resolution day for you? For me there have been too many years of those. No, today was simply a decision day. Just a simple decision made that will remain private for now. It has to do with a revolution of sorts ... I wanted to change the banner of my blog to "RAWvolution" but was informed it would violate Matt Amsden's exclusive right to use the term, so I'll keep this one as "Rawsome Life" and begin another little blog called "Revolution in the Raw" to use as a more personal diary.

So ... the time-lapse nature video I posted here begs the question: Where will each of us be in exactly one year?

Who will we be? What will we have achieved? Who will we have become? Who will we have loved deeply in the next 365 days -- if by the grace of God we have those days!?

Will we be holy? -- thus, kinder and willing to love, to "stretch ourselves for the other"? Or will our egos rule, making us dismissive, judgmental and cruel?

Will we be courageous and dare to openly communicate and risk intimacy with those who love us? Or will we "murder" people with our dark thoughts of them instead -- too cowardly to speak our own truth passionately when we are feeling upset? Will we be brave enough to have learned that working stuff through with others brings people closer; not doing so creates separation. (But then maybe that really is the goal of those who shut down so easily . . . closeness being the last thing they desire. For ego craves separateness while our true selves long for union. It's enough to make we humans quite mad at times!)

Will we love ourselves deeply . . . finally. Or will we allow our souls to be crushed by someone's harsh, skewed view of us? . . . even someone who we know cannot love us the way we want or need?

Will we be all we know we can be? Or will we settle for a lethargy of heart that gives up on the vision God continually cultivates within us?

A year from now we can all answer more clearly some of these kinds of questions, eh? These particular ones are just some that relate to my life, personally, right now.

And so for now, I'll live in this moment.

And this one.

And then this one. There, see how easy that is?!

Beginning tomorrow I'll be starting to take full advantage of Phil McCluskey as a mentor via his website. I've personally met and spoken to Phil a couple of times here in NYC. He is on the same path as I am on . . . only a bit further along -- thus a great one to emulate and follow.

Thanks, Phil, for the gift that is your life. And for your wonderful website, LovingRaw.Com.

HAPPY NEW YEAR to anyone who may have stumbled on this rather lonely blog of mine! May blessings abound and your personal growth astound your soul! Hopefully, I'll be writing frequently in this year ahead.

World ... by Five for Fighting