When people no longer trust themselves,
they begin to depend upon authority.

Tao Te Ching

This is an issue that seems to come up a lot on this forum around raw food authorities or gurus. People come to the raw diet to improve their health or to heal from sickness, and in doing so, want to get exactly the "right" diet or the "best" possible diet from them. And if you were like me, you probably read some books from raw authors to see what they had to say, and then picked one that looked like it might work for you.

The basics of raw foods is eat food that digests well for you in its raw states, so for most people this means eat the foods that even the cooked food eaters eat typically raw - fruits and salads vegetables. Outside of eating fresh fruits and salad vegetables, the other raw foods fare (dehydrated foods, superfoods, fermented foods, etc) are typically only necessary for people to make the transition away from cooked food.

But anyone who started out from a cooked diet to trying to eat only fruits and vegetables only on day one of their raw diet found that this was impossible for them to do. Why? Because their bodies were adapted to eating cooked foods, and the feeling that cooked foods gives the body to let the body know its full. And with simple fruits and vegetables, these signals are different, plus their is a whole addictive side of cooked foods that most people aren't even aware of.

And so various people have found techniques or methods that worked for them, for where they were in their healing process when they started raw, and since there is no one "right way" to get to raw, there are a multitude of different methods and techniques. And since there is often ego involved on the part of the authors, there is contention and debate among the so-called authorities and gurus, as well as contention debate among their followers.

What if there is no one "right way" to become raw, or to stay raw? There is only what works and doesn't work, and there are many raw diets that work and several orders of magnitude more raw diets that don't work.

So where do you go to find out what works for you? If you listen to the Tao, going to the outside authority means that there is total loss of trust to the inside authority. And until the relationship is healed with the inside authority, there is only a very small chance that anyone is going to have any luck succeeding on the raw diet, even if they happened to meet an outside authority that has many followers that are succeeding on their raw diet.

What does it mean to listen to the inside authority? Well, this does not involve thinking or conceptualization or mental comprehension or understanding. What it does involve is feeling what is going on in your body, and feeling how you feel when you eat certain foods in your diet. Any raw authority or guru that doesn't teach about feeling and listening to the body is teaching from their head, purely conceptual ideas and mostly likely providing a low chance of a good outcome on the raw diet.

And if you can't feel anything right now, because your lifestyle and diet has made you numb to your body, what can be done? I suggest hatha yoga, breath consciousness, and meditation as a way to quiet the mind, to get still on the inside, so that feeling might become possible. Removing stimulation as much as possible from the lifestyle and diet will also help get the quiet and stillness necessary to feel what's going on inside.

This is a start. Look to the internal authority. If you can't hear or feel that internal authority, see what you can do to get quiet.

Here's the rest of the passage from the Tao Te Ching:

When they lose their sense of awe,
people turn to religion.
When they no longer trust themselves,
they begin to depend upon authority.

Therefore the Master steps back
so that people won't be confused.
He teaches without a teaching,
so that people will have nothing to learn.

Thanks, Bryan, for the gentle reminder.

Good post, Bryan. What you've written ties in to some thoughts that have been on my mind lately, while I've been reading all of the posts about gurus, role-models, etc.

It seems to me that our school system, political system, and entertainment media have all conditioned many people to look to outsiders to guide them and provide them with a map for behavior and living.

Almost as though they are still children, or child-like.

Our culture's citizens have lost the ability to listen to internal authority, and it shows.

Fortunately it is possible to regain and re-awaken this voice. And that is the key to actually discovering what works. It's amazing and astonishing to see how people will override their own feelings, intuition, and even their own pain, because they trust outside authority more than themselves and have given their power away.

The remarkable thing is to see the transformations that are possible when this shift and awakening takes place. It's a re-birth and a beautiful thing.

Excellent Bryan! I hope folks take your good advice to heart.....to their OWN heart.

-David Z. Mason

WWW.RawFoodFarm.com

In western terms "listen to your gut" the easterners just have to come up with these fancy names for things, like Tao, or maybe Tao means gut . . . well after looking it up, I would interpret Tao as being more like "the force" in Star Wars.

Beautiful post, Bryan-- thank you! Everything you said totally resonates with me, with my inner authority, and with my 'gut' too. ;-)

I especially like this part, so I'm going to repost it:

>So where do you go to find out what works for you? If you listen to the Tao, going to the outside authority means that there is total loss of trust to the inside authority. And until the relationship is healed with the inside authority, there is only a very small chance that anyone is going to have any luck succeeding on the raw diet, even if they happened to meet an outside authority that has many followers that are succeeding on their raw diet.<

Sharrhan:


[www.facebook.com]

Yes, I agree...your words speak truth. I love to read ANY books on raw food lifestyles..but only to get a different perspective and to internalize and customize any good info the resonates with in me. Also, some of those people have some great RECIPES!!! :0, ,

Well we're dependent on a complex system to provide all our needs that we understand virtually nothing about. Independence is a pipe dream.

"
We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology."
- Carl Sagan

I truely believe what you've written, and in a sense, Abaham Maslow (psychologist) called it 'self actualisation'.

It is good to have confirmation and support in our life changing dietary journey though. This is particularly so when first starting out, due to the attachment to what we've been taught concerning nutrition, addictions (as you mentioned) and cleansing crises which all lead to self doubt.

I agree with most of what Bryan says, and I agree with communitybuilder too.

We must decide for ourselves what foods and what diet is best for ourselves. But I believe it's also true that information from sources outside of ourselves - including science and technology - can present options and information that we previously were not aware of. WE can make the best choice, but it's always easier to make the best choice if one is aware of all the choices and information available. If that were not so, what use would we have for a raw food forum?

I love most of what Bryan has to say. And I love Bryan's post above. But the following paragraph appears to me to be somewhat incongruent, and perhaps not completely correct.

"The basics of raw foods is eat food that digests well for you in raw states..."

I agree. (I also believe that adequate nutrition is very important and a very fundamental basic of a successful raw food diet.)

"...so for most people this means eat the foods that even the cooked food eaters eat typically raw - fruits and salad vegetables. Outside of eating fresh fruits and salad vegetables, the other raw foods fare (dehydrated foods, superfoods, fermented foods, etc.) are typically only necessary for people to make the transition away from cooked food."

There's no mention here of nuts and seeds. For me, nuts and seeds do NOT fall into the category of foods that are "typically only necessary for people to make the transition away from cooked food".

And it's not just me. MANY people have long ago made a successful transition from cooked food to raw, and they DO eat nuts and seeds. I don't know of any raw food eater poll results that would suggest that most do NOT. If I were to guess though, I'd say that most DO.

Bryan, you seem to be saying that 80/10/10 is the typical raw food diet after transitioning, and I simply don't agree.

If one were to say, "Well, people who eat nuts and seeds are 'typically' not yet successfully raw", or "They're 'typically' still transitioning", then we'd be back to disregarding people's ability to make that decision for themselves.

Nuts are often available fresh (not dehydrated) where they are harvested, and though most store-bought nuts/seeds are dehydrated, these are usually still living and nutritious if they aren't processed in some additional way. If they weren't living, they would not sprout and have the capability of growing into plants. And they can be sprouted before consuming, if preferred. In the sprouted form, they are not dehydrated.

I'm saying this in the spirit of the main gist of Bryan's post. It's up to each of us to find the answer for what works best. For me, I find that nuts and seeds digest much easier than greens, which I have to eat more sparingly. I don't claim that's typical, but I do believe that some combination of fruits, nuts/seeds, and greens is probably very typical of a successful raw food diet.

And just a note: eating nuts and seeds has never made me fat. I'm thin, used to be overweight, used to be an overeater - until I started regularly eating nuts and seeds.

I suggest always eating them organic though. In my experience, chems can concentrate in nuts and seeds and cause stomach distress.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/20/2009 09:11PM by suncloud.

Very good post, Bryan. So true.

PS - Although nuts weren't mentioned in Bryan's post, I didn't see a ban on them either. I saw 'digest well'. Fruit and salad-type veg 'digest well'.

Nuts...well, isn't it fair to say to say they digest...so-so? I think there's a place in 'the ideal raw diet' for nuts in small quantities - about as many as we'd eat if we had to hand-crack them ourselves perhaps. (I do often guzzle more than this myself but it's not optimum eating!).

Seeds...well, if we were eating the ideal raw diet, we'd ingest some seeds accidentally in our whole fruit anyway, so...seeds would be in there :-)



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 02/20/2009 09:41PM by debbietook.

Debbietook, just wanted to make sure that nuts and seeds could remain within the realm of post-transitional possibilities.



I agree that for many people, some raw foods are more difficult to digest than others. For me, fresh nuts are very easy to digest. Greens are not, UNLESS I eat greens sparingly.

Definitely, we need to look to ourselves for what works best. At the same time, listening to others and considering their varied experiences can be beneficial.

We should never give up on our own innate wisdom, to follow others blindly. We all have truth. We're all capable.

I agree, Suncloud. Nuts and seeds have never been a problem for me, as long as I don't overeat them.

Sharrhan:


[www.facebook.com]

Suncloud,

I ask people here to not make others an authority, and that includes me as being an authority. Nuts and seeds are a fine part of a raw vegan diet, in fact I eat them myself. However, I can't say they are a staple for me, as I can't seem to enjoy more than 1/4 cup of them at a time and have great digestion or not experience thirst.

I think a lot of newbies to the raw world focus too much on nuts and seeds because they offer a feeling full sensation that is not too dissimilar from cooked foods. This is because if you eat a bunch of them, say like 4 ounces of them in a meal, that they sit in your stomach for some time, much like a brick, or much like a hamburger. And with this brick in your stomach, you stay full for a long time and don't feel the need to eat right away.

For me, I'd rather eat the equivalent amount of calories from oranges. So rather than eat 4 ounces of almonds, I prefer to eat 10-11 oranges, which is the same number of calories, offers tons of energy, water, electrolytes, vitamins and minerals, and is easy to digest.

But I wasn't always this way. When I first started raw, I would certainly have enjoyed the 4 ounces of almonds.

Appreciated, Bryan.

Yes, we all change and evolve as we go along. And we're all a little different. What may be a "brick" for one person, can be a reliable, easily digestible raw food for another.

My experience with fresh nuts is that the cleaner I get, the easier they are to digest.

Many people have this same experience with fruit.

I don't expect everyone to eat like me. If 1/4 cup of nuts a day works for Bryan or anybody, or if no nuts works for anybody, that's OK with me.

But if someone eats a little differently, I just hope there's room for acceptance that all of our realities don't have to be the same. Another person's diet might not work best for me, no matter how well it might work for the other person. And it's not necessarily because one person has progressed further with their diet than the other person.

If we believe that our own raw food diet is the right diet for everybody, there could be an unlearned lesson awaiting us just around the corner.

And even the newbies. If someone finds that nuts are more effective than 10 oranges for helping them stay away from cooked food, I say, go for it! No one is wrong. I say it's good to try whatever, and find what's right for you. Could be that if nuts are overeaten, something was needed, and when it's filled, the overeating will stop. Just a possibility. (oranges have a lot of calcium, but even 10 oranges don't have much iron). All possibilities may be considered.

A raw food diet has tremendous possibilities. We can be open to all of them, and yet still say what works for us, as Bryan has done above.

(Thanks Bryan)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/21/2009 04:19AM by suncloud.

Excellent post Bryan you could not have said it better.

I like the quotes from the Tao Te Ching.

Cherimoya,

Love Peace and Happiness,