[Manymoons]

Curious Guest

Please understand that what I say is my own opinion rooted in my own experiences. This food is the single most precious thing that I possess and it has served me well. I take it very seriously because I have discovered how powerful it can be.

Each of us is a certain balance of yin/yang, as is everything. Not all balances are the the same- some stronger -others weaker. Eating foods that are of smaller yin/yang, such as much of the macrobiotic diet, may not be adequate to compensate for a person's own particular balance - imbalance. Eating a broad diet will more likely cover all of the bases, but then one's own yin/yang may be synthetically fortified. The goal is to have and contain one's own yin/yang to be full as an individual person, not just a reflection of the yin/yang that we eat.

Few if any of us are complete. This food strips away the false yin/yang imposed by conventional western food and thereby strips away the associated "cover-up". Here is the danger as well as the advantage. We get to experience our true balance and then with open, sincere effort work to correct it, or avoid the pain of seeing our limitations by continueing to over-ride the imbalance and compensate with big yin/yang foods.

Big yin/yang food will "do" it for us--at least for a while. Eventually we must find our own yin/yang. Macrobiotic foods will not give us our yin/yang but will fortify us when we do find it. The "other" food gives only what it is and not necessarily what each of us really is.

People I have known have died of organ failures (ex. kidney} as well as cancer and simple starvation. Each of these that I have known created great upheaval in themselves by fluctuating between extremes--great contraction to great expansion and back again - and again - and again. This does not and will not work. I know of no-one capable of that kind of transmutation. I have lived on nothing but brown rice for over six weeks at a time but not without months of preparation. It was not a sudden move! The experience was a spiritual boot camp to say the least.

When I started this diet, food needed to be dry and brown in order to be "macrobiotic". It appears things have improved since. There are some really well spirited receipts on this list. It is a delight to see that kind of spirit and creativity.

To heal the body requires also healing the spirit. Consider your foods carefully and also your thoughts and attitudes. Honesty, honor, virtue, respect and diligence, as well as food contribute to being a full, complete human person.

Love yourself and this food will love you. Hate yourself and this food will hate you. Go slowly and consistently to best see what you are and what this food is doing. The food will not take you anywhere you can not go on your own. It will however help illuminate what you are capable or incapable of being, and then fortify it. Careful cautious honest effort well not be wasted.

Humor can be dry--not your food.

A zen riddle:

If a man falls in the forest and there is no woman to witness it, is he still wrong? Consider the yin/yang of this!

Eat well and live full!

Manymoons