All We Need Is NOW!

We live in a world with many mysteries. There's is a lot we don't know. We are at a unique place in history, right now. There are many different schools of thought about life and how we should live. There is information out there about religion, meditation, physical health, diet, finance, etc. All of these topics and most self help information focuses on one thing, the future. I would like to bring your attention to the now. Which is the now you happen to be experiencing when you read this. Your life is made up of a series, if you will, of nows. The now is all we have and yet it is always passing. That's like a trick or something. What we see in most of the teachings associated with the aforementioned subjects. Except for meditation, all the rest talk about the decisions we make or the choices we make and how they effect the future. The future doesn't exist. However, each moment bleeds to the next and we perceive this as a continuum. Which in many ways it is. My purpose is not to try to teach something I'm just beginning to understand, but again to use this as a metaphor for diet and health.

The concept of cause and effect must be acknowledged here. What we do today will be with us, to some degree tomorrow. I just said the future doesn't exist. And I stand by that statement. What I mean is, tomorrow is nothing until it is here and now. So, since we are fairly sure, that for the time being we will still experience day followed by night and so on. Different states of now. We do know that life will continue and therefore our pebbles will cast ripples in a still pond. This does not negate the concept of the now. In fact it teaches us to consider our choices. We decide to do something and wonder why it brings us hell. That something could be a lie or a choice made out of fear. A choice made from a state of unconsciousness is something we do quite a lot. We make decisions from fear of making more mistakes or to prevent ourselves from "screwing things up." This is sort of a loose description of a state of mind we might be in while making decisions. Think about the justifications created in our heads for some of the little things we do. We may say something like, "oh this won't matter much, it's just a little bit." Society reflects this in so many ways. This is referred to as "guilty pleasures" or indulgences. What I am driving at is this, the now is all we have. So how do you feel RIGHT NOW? How do you feel later? This last question doesn't make sense. Does it? How you feel in any given moment is a tough question. You'd be surprised the work necessary to get quiet enough in the mind so you can determine this simple feeling. The truth is, we don't know very often how we truly feel because our thinking tells us so many things we can't still the whirring in our heads long enough to truly know. We don't know our feelings, but instead our thoughts. Men especially have a hard time with this concept of feeling. We're thinkers. Not to say that women aren't. But women deal with feeling and intuition a bit more naturally and easily than most men. Excuse me for the sweeping generalizations. But with few exceptions they are true. Don't misconstrue this into meaning men are smarter or something like that. That is not what I am saying. What I'm saying is, we need to slow down. Quiet our thinking mind and allow the moment to be. Accept the moment for what it is. Act if you find it unpleasant, but accept it for what it is.

The choices we make always have ramifications. We chop down a tree and the cracking, thunderous sounds reverberate through the forest. That is a ramification, so to speak. But what else happens as we cut down a tree? We take away something valuable. Something that breathes in our waste or exhaust. Tress cool the earth and supply valuable oxygen. And yet we feel it's okay because we need to read about hollywood stars collective insanity. We compromise our entire ecological system so we can find out who's cheating on who. Or what the new fashionable color is. Or who shaved their head. What are we doing? I feel this unconsciousness propels us into the so called future, blindly. We do things and don't consider the ripples. All ripples, wether subtly or overtly reach the point of impact. Meaning, where ever the point of impact is the ripples come back to the center. This is not a catholic spanking of what goes around comes around. Or paying for sins or some misunderstood nonsense such as that. This is about, what you put in your "account" you will accumulate or live with. Making choices for the now should come from the now. Meaning, get calm, breath, then decide what is best for you and the people around you. A dear friend of mine who is very wise and teaches me all kinds of amazing things says this, "what's good for you, is good for everybody." This is a great way to think. Is the processed food good for you? Is eating it good for the planet? Or the people around you? Now this last question seems like it doesn't apply. But it does.

The human animal is a very strange one at that. We are the alleged superior race. We have the big brains! We can communicate! Look at some of the things we've achieved in this lifetime. There are some things to be very proud of and some things that really perplex us. The human animal functions resiliently in this world and I must admit I'm amazed at how well we do, on a day to day basis. Meaning, in spite of our choices, we still thrive. But are we at the top of our game? Are we really living or discovering the human potential? I don't think so. I think mental illness or psychological issues in society come from a collective "missing the point." We need to know some basic things. We have all the power and we possess the ability to do and achieve anything. What we don't realize is this power is here now. We don't have to exercise or pray or even meditate to get there. We need to start with simple practices like acknowledging the moment.

We eat foods made with all kinds of chemicals and all kinds of colors and additives to make something out of smaller somethings. Alone these little somethings don't taste like anything special. But arranged in a certain way, and viola'! We have a cookie or a pie. Eating foods which are manufactured much like the "Frankenstein monster." Assembling something from dead parts, to create something alive? Well we know that cake and cookies aren't alive , but if we take for this discussion the idea that everything has a consciousness, and that everything is made from exactly the same stuff. Atoms and molecules, etc. Then even this would have to be considered insanity. Think of this. If everything has a consciousness, then what is the consciousness of this "Frankenstein monster" cookie or pie we've created? Perhaps this is a bit sci-fi or too much of a stretch. Well I'm trying to stretch your mind and get you thinking differently. We eat these "creations" which are from various, disconnected elements. The food product is undigestible and lines our bodies with sticky waste, which douses our flame, dims our light, devitalizes the very human mechanism, AND TAKES US OUT OF THE MOMENT. Junk food plays an important role in helping us cope with our individual pain. It numbs. We call this emotional eating. What we should call it is, emotional deadening! This is what we do. We eat things which pull us out of the present moment. We often eat this way or have come from a lifetime of eating that way. Like me. I ate foods like that for more than 25 years. So, what would happen if we felt our pain? Would it consume us? Would it end our lives? What may happen if we allowed it to just be. We may acknowledge it and let it go. We just may begin to move on! To leave the past in the past. So lets try to get out of yesterday. It is gone and unchangeable. As for tomorrow, leave it till it greets you in the now. Visit the now. It's kinda cool. To quote Eckhart Tolle "nothing ever happens in the future and nothing ever happens in the past, it only happens in the now." The Beatles or John Lennon sang, "all you need is love." I agree because love only exists in the now. Eating whole, natural raw foods, we will slowly get used to not "drugging" ourselves with numbing foods and instead "come to life" in the moment eating healthy foods. I am not saying this is easy. Nor am I saying that raw food is the way to enlightenment. I am saying that eating healthy and including more raw foods in your diet is one piece of the puzzle that can bring us all to a higher consciousness. To a better place. Perhaps then we will realize that things like war aren't a solution and that everyone deserves to be healthy. Maybe then we wouldn't have a health care crisis because people will simply free of the need for drugs and doctors, for the most part. We just need the tools and information, which show us another path. One that doesn't lead us right back to ignorance. One that actually shines a light and says, "try this way, it worked for me and other's that have tried." Peace & love, Tom