[Manymoons]

Mira

Unfortunately my comments come after the fact.

The rice fast can be very powerful. It opens you up (without much protection) to ones own real balance. If not done carefully a momentun can be created that is hard to control and be very dangerous. Remember the front is as big as the back. All the potential for healing carries also the potential to harm.

Your blog suggests that as early as the second week of December you were eating fruit. Several weeks later you do a rice fast. This is far too sudden a change. The contraction was putting pressure on you to match the expansion you had a very short time prior. Ouch!!!! The previously ingested yin was burning off rapidly, and during an Australian summer. Your lucky to have not burst into flame! It may have felt like that, however. I can well imagine that to be the case.

The universe gives us our youth to compensate for our ignorance and blind enthusiasism. This may be your salvation. There is far more to balance than just the food, which is a fundemental key but remains only simply food. The dynamic flow of yin/yang energy is everywhere. The food can help align us with it, but the real balancing comes in the living of our lives- the relatedness to other people-the things we do and especially the way we do them-what we think-what we feel and how we respond, etc.

The part of all of this that I notice to be under discussed and probably least understood is the effects other people's balance can have on each of us. You made referrence in one of your entries about the "flack" you get in school because of the way you chose to eat. You will get this in all stages of your life. People tend to want to bring you to their own level. People do not generally take kindly to reflection. If you are or do things that reflect their own (dare I say) imbalance, be prepared for the resistance. This is not to say you should be cut off or "above" but simply to hold your own--contain and carry your own yin and yang.

Use the food gratefully, respectfully and with all the gratitude you can generate. Listen to it and your self. It speaks quitly for the most part. It can also yell, as you may concur. The food and the universe are on your side.
You do not need to force it---unless of coarse you enjoy being forced. Finding and containing one own's yin/yang is "the balance".

You will be challenged from within and from without. There will be times when it seems like to much work to maintain your own. There will be times when others will not want you to maintain your own. It can be taken from you and/or you can give it up. Maintaining you own is the substance of living. It can be daunting and unbelievably exciting.

Take care and take it slowly. There is much ground to cover and if you go too rapidly you will miss some very sublte but impotant things. The small things add up to the big picture.

Manymoons