For me the wish to eat solely raw plant food arises from the simple, direct experience of eating that which like myself is alive, radiant and vital. Consider for a moment the radical concept of eating only fresh plants in any of their amazingly diverse and beautiful forms, if every meal consisted completely of fresh vegetables, fruit, nuts and seeds. Imagine how vibrant and alive you might feel. Like pouring water into water, eating raw plant food is a seamless assimilation of pure life energy - living food for a living being - now doesn’t that just make good sense? Why would a vital human being choose to eat dead, heat processed food if it wasn’t absolutely necessary?
Everyone knows what it feels like to eat a crisp, juicy apple. As soon as you take the first bite, a sensation of flavor and vitality overwhelms the mouth and the entire body. It is an undeniable experience. As the teeth crunch through the apple flesh, thousands of minute swollen cells of juice burst forth spraying the mouth with a slightly sour sweetness. It is as if the experience of eating living plant food itself were demanding you to wake up. This is not a dead, cooked up experience. The same goes for eating fresh celery, persimmon, avocado, kale or any other raw plant food. Is this not the experience of eating real food?
We humans can get along for a good while on practically anything - cheese sandwiches and coke, fast food and coffee. But is that all we really want out of life, to get by feeling good enough? All of us have the potential for experiencing great health, vitality and clarity of mind - nothing less than bliss, in this very body. Perhaps we forgotten this or have come to think of abundant health as a myth as the experience of discomfort and agitation in our bodies became ever more normal. If we are completely honest with ourselves, I suspect all of us intuit that the experience of health is a conscious choice and that choice is up to us.
My intention for writing this article is merely to share with you yet another possibility, a way nourishing oneself which I have found from my own experience to be utterly trans formative. I would be selfish if I did not occasionally speak out about what I have discovered. For more than five years I have eaten only raw plants. My experience of being alive in a body is one of great wonderment and joy, as well as vitality. On a regular basis, for no other apparent reason, I experience a rush of bliss travel from my toes up through my legs, leaving me feeling peaceful and content, confident in a body that has discovered great pleasure within. Through these experiences I have naturally come to know my body as empty and luminous though still grounded and strong. A couple years ago I walked over 100 miles in five days, over three mountain ranges, carrying my heavy pack in snow that came up to my knees. I love to run up mountains and swim in cold lakes. Recently, out of mere curiosity, I had my blood checked to measure the relative levels of various nutrients such as B-12. The results showed that with my raw-vegan diet, from the medical perspective, that I was healthy and not deficient in any regard. My experience of life has not always been so vital. In my early twenties I struggled with chronic fatigue and up until five years ago I had gotten used to often feeling low in energy.
Is the diet of eating solely raw plant food for everyone? I think it can be though not everyone in their present condition will find it immediately beneficial. As each of us are in the midst of our own ongoing, dynamic transformation, optimal diet and nutrition is as well something that would necessarily seem to be a dynamic journey of continuous discovery and refinement. For those who are experiencing much mental and emotional turbulence in their lives, perhaps the sheer vividness of a pure raw plant diet would be ungrounding. For them, eating cooked food with its sedating quality might be temporarily healing. Yet for everyone, knowledge of the raw food diet can act as a reminder of what potential lies within, of the ultimate evolutionary direction that beckons us. Mystical teachings of all religions and spiritual traditions describe our truest most exalted condition as being luminous and ecstatic, hardly a state of being that would require us to consume animal flesh and other sedating foods in order to have health. While we may not be quite there yet, isn’t it important not to lock ourselves into some fixed concept of who we are and what we absolutely need? Let us stay open to the possibility of continuous healing no matter what our present condition is and to the truth that we actually are divine, that the kingdom of heaven as total fulfillment has always been complete within us.
There is currently a popular trend in nutrition to study what we as ancient humans ate as well as what other animals in our primate family eat in order to determine what is optimal for us now (i.e. the ìpaleo-diet”). There is no doubt that this is an interesting and informative endeavor that suggests much evidence of support for both raw and cooked, vegetarian and carnivore diets. Yet there is something crucial missing from this approach when we take this information as a direct dietary prescription. Humans have been acting and living in all sorts of ways for a very long time. That we as a species have waged war, treated each other and animals with cruelty, and exploited the opposite sex as nearly every society in the past has done is this enough reason to justify and encourage such a way of life now? Obviously not. What makes us extraordinary as human beings is that we have the ability to think and feel consciously, to make decisions that transcend base impulses and habitual patterns. Our past will always influence and inform our present experience but whether it limits us in the future is simply our choice. Through the power of our mind and deeper heart-intuition, we are able to create and experience a life and society that this world may or may not have ever know. How we create our future is up to us, not those who lived before.
As this is only an introduction to this profound way of eating, there is much to understand that is beyond the scope of this article regarding how to successfully thrive on the raw plant diet. As with any diet, there are functional and dysfunctional ways of going about it. To introduce one functional approach to the raw plant diet that has worked for me, I have found that a balance of: relatively low-moderate glycemic fruit (i.e. apples and berries), an abundance of highly mineralized fresh greens (i.e. kale, nettle, romain lettuce) along with some nuts, seeds and avocado to be key to making this diet successful. Rainbow Green, Live Food Cuisine by M.D. Gabriel Cousins and The Sunfood Diet Success System by David Wolfe are two books that I have found especially helpful in learning how to nourish oneself in this beautiful way.
As powerful and healing as the raw plant food diet may be (or any healing diet for that matter), it is only a piece in the puzzle of complete health. We are so much more than what we eat food is only the beginning. May all have great health.
By Sergio S.
Sergio is grateful to live in the community of Ashland among so many who are passionate about health, healing and waking up. He and his partner Lisa have just started a business called “Pure Pie,” catering fabulous, guilt-free, nourishing live desserts to the people of Ashland. Feel free to write him at singlegreatwish@hotmail.com.
