Macrobiotic Life

“How to be healthy and happy? By understanding what life in this universe is all about. How to understand this complex universe? By reducing everything into yin and yang. Doing so gives us a framework, a point of reference. This can be extremely useful. And fascinating.” ~ George Ohsawa

You can play this funny game a few minutes each day. Try to reduce all the phenomena around you and give them the yin/yang stamps. Then you can simply apply all the rules of the Universe upon them. It’s very interesting game and enormously practical activity. The whole I-Ching book is written around this topic. When to act, when to rest. When to add, when to take. In this context you shouldn’t see any problems in your life, only opportunities, lessons to learn. Because when we are down, we must automatically go up very soon. And by being down, we learn a lot. Accept this duality game and stop worrying about anything. Because you worry about the basic logic of the Universe, which can’t be changed, only understood, accepted and enjoyed. Our worries come from the ignorance of this principle. And this ignorance stems from our shifting away from the harmony. Mostly, this shift has the biggest origin in the daily food we eat.

Nothing is good or bad. All is relative and the choice is yours. Decide consciously. What do I want to take from this situation? What can you learn from this?

Why should you worry with such mind then?

From the growth, from the Truth point of view; it doesn’t matter if you agree or disagree with anything. Because it always helps you to find your inner Truth, to better define your Higher-self. If you agree with something, it means, you have found the Truth in the thing you agree with. If you don’t agree, you have realized that this is not your inner Truth and this helps you to define your Truth again, by negation, by seeing the opposite side, that you don’t agree with. Both are helpful lessons. That’s why awakened persons are always happy for whatever is. Because in each moment you are experiencing something and you grow based on this. In each moment of your life, you shape yourself according to your highest Belief. This is never ending process. It’s only, that most people do it unconsciously. But the choice is yours. Change, awake, be conscious. Let yourself decide about each step in your life – consciously – based on the new beliefs. Unlearn, throw away your old negative thoughts – about fear, despair, scarcity. It’s not that the negative aspects of life don’t exist, but why do you choose to think about them most of the time? Can you give yourself any answer to this question?

I strongly recommend this blog – covering upcoming civilization problems, economy, finance, spirituality, illusion, peak oil – The Archdruid Report.

John Michael Greer

The Grand Archdruid of the Ancient Order of Druids in America (AODA), John Michael Greer has been active in the alternative spirituality movement for more than 25 years, and is the author of more than twenty books, including “The Druidry Handbook” (Weiser, 2006) and “The Long Descent: A User’s Guide to the End of the Industrial Age” (New Society, 2008). He lives in Cumberland, Maryland.

Twilight of Money

The consequence of all this pyramid building is that there are not enough goods and services on Earth to equal, at current prices, more than a small percentage of the face value of stocks, bonds, derivatives, and other fiscal exotica now in circulation.

Over the longer term, on the other hand, it’s safe to assume that the vast majority of paper assets now in circulation, whatever the currency in which they’re denominated, will lose essentially all their value.

How the trajectory will unfold is anyone’s guess, but the possibility that we may soon see sharp declines in the value of the dollar, and of dollar-denominated paper assets, probably should not be ignored, and cashing in abstract representations of wealth for things of more enduring value might well belong high on the list of sensible preparations for the future.

You can find a lot of yin/yang thinking in his writings.

political power begins with raw violence and evolves toward progressively more subtle means of suasion

And this is author’s practical advice what to do to prepare for the coming times:

My advice remains what it’s always been — concentrate on acquiring skills, and the basic tools needed to put them to work. My point is simply that hoarding cash, or other forms of paper wealth, may well become even less useful than hoarding concrete things.

Other interesting reactions from articles’ comments

My guess is that the total amount of energy extracted from fossil fuels in our age is equal to all the muscular energy exerted by human beings in all the ages leading up to ours. Remember that when a planeload of tourists fly from Los Angeles to Egypt to see the Great Pyramid, they use as much energy as it took to build the Great Pyramid in the first place.

I’ve chosen to participate in the abstract money games that structure life in late industrial society, as there are certain things I want to do and certain resources I value that would be out of reach if I was a hermit, or otherwise living outside the money economy. I don’t take those games seriously; I use them because for certain things, they’re the only game in town just now. Their raw absurdity is simply another detail.

It’s not necessary to stop using money to get out from under the spell that makes people think it’s the same thing as wealth; just treat it as a tool, and remember that its only value is the willingness of other people to take it in exchange.

There’s a great passage in one of Schumacher’s books about that moment of insight where one realizes one’s teachers don’t actually know what they’re talking about. That ought to happen much more often in economics classrooms than it does.

It’s a mistake to chalk up to conspiracy what can be explained by stupidity.

When an accountant discovers that the till doesn’t balance, she checks her figures, finds the error, and corrects it. When an economist discovers that the till doesn’t balance, he invents a theory to explain why it shouldn’t balance. There’s no question in my mind which of the two is the useful response.

1. An increased tendency to let things happen rather than
make them happen.

2. Frequent attacks of smiling.

3. Feelings of being connected with others and nature.

4. Frequent overwhelming episodes of appreciation.

5. A tendency to think and act spontaneously rather than
from fears based on past experience.

6. An unmistakable ability to enjoy each moment.

7. A loss of ability to worry.

8. A loss of interest in conflict.

9. A loss of interest in interpreting the actions of others.

10. A loss of interest in judging others.

11. A loss of interest in judging self.

12. Gaining the ability to love without expecting anything in return.

Dr. Mandelbrot in 1980 discovered the infinitely complex geometrical shape called the Mandelbrot Set using a very simple equation with computers and graphics.

The mathematical discovery of the Mandelbrot Set (M-Set) in the visually spectacular world of fractal geometry is presented by Arthur C. Clarke in this unusual documentary.

The M-Set seems to identify the hand of God in the design of the universe itself.

http://en.secretchina.com/health_science/3501.html

Read the text for this video here.

This text has enormous wisdom for me, and I highly recommend to read the whole book, which I take it from – Thought Power / How to Control Thoughts. It’s an older yogi text. You can read there a very detailed description of the power of the mind and how the thoughts, imaginations, habits, actions, destiny, man’s character do work. We live in a big illusion. All the material things are just manifestations of our thoughts – even our body, our life, heaven & hell, we project everything and we are unconsciously believing in all these projections. But the Way to Change is known to us. Read this short excerpt for yourself:

The nature of things around you is as you think it to be. Your life is what you make it by your thoughts. Thoughts are the bricks by which you have built the building of your personality. Thought determines destiny. The world around you is the reflex of your thoughts.

You experience as you think. Your own imagination plays havoc with you. You have made yourself timid by entertaining the thoughts of fear. Do not become liberal in imagination.

You are affected by things only in accordance with your idea about them. The mind sees value only in that in which it has intense faith. Though all of you see the same object, everyone of you attach to it different values. According to your mental propensities you think.

Thought is a creative instrument, and man becomes what he thinks upon. Character is thought-formed. You are born with what you have thought upon, and your present character is an index of your previous thoughts. You create your future by your thoughts now; if you think nobly, you will be noble in conduct. If you think basely no environment will make you different. Thus, thoughts and actions are interdependent. Be vigilant and allow only good thoughts in your mental field.

Every one of you have a different conception of duty, value, enjoyment and liberation in accordance with your different convictions. You strive after your own ideal.

You work in accordance with your long-standing and intensified thought and belief. You accomplish and achieve the object of your own desire. Do not let your mind become denser and denser by allowing it to be engrossed in gross forms. Follow the abstractive process by cherishing the thoughts of virtue.

Your present life has three aspects, physical, mental and spiritual. You are tenaciously attached to the physical aspect. Be above physical sensations and other appetites by cherishing the thoughts that you are not body alone, that you are residing in the temple of a body for a short period only. Be above mental titillations. Subjective action functions in the world of thought.

Send out a steady stream of thought and good-will to all creation. The energising motive behind every thought should be service and friendliness.

Your mind is omnipotent. It is capable of accomplishing everything. As you imagine within your mind, so things happen forthwith. Whatever is intensely thought by your mind, that comes to be materialized and effected.

Your thought is endowed with creative power. It can evolve objects from within itself. It is the only creator. Nothing ever will be created or recreated except through mind. Thought is the material out of which things are made. All matter is but materialization of consciousness.

No other being is responsible for what you acquire, as everything is the consequence of your thought. The cause of whatever comes to you in life, is within you. No other agency can bestow favours on you, unless you deserve them. Whatever you get through others, is the outcome of your own thoughts and efforts. There is nothing in the world which you cannot achieve, when your thoughts are flowing in the right direction. You should neither become a pessimist nor a misanthrope.

Creative power is the privilege of every mind. Your own efforts guided by your aspiration are the warp and woof of your destiny. Do not possess a dissipated mind by cherishing weak thoughts. Superficial mind cannot acquire depth of insight.

Control the roving mind by entertaining one flow of thought. All that is intensely thought by you, will come to you early or late, in accordance with the effort you have put in to acquire it.

The extent of space as well as the duration of time are relative to your thoughts and emotions. You experience as you think. If a moment is imagined to be a long period, it is experienced as such and vice versa. The same period of time is experienced as a long age when you are in trouble, and as a moment when you are happy.

You are surrounded by the forces of antagonism. But if there are no thoughts of antagonism in you, you can easily return a blessing for a curse. Thus you can control all the forces of antagonism. Struggle hard and check the unwanted mental rush.

The world around you is only what you believe it to be. Your perceptions are coloured by your thoughts. Your mind perceives and continues to perceive the things in that very form in which it imagines it to be with full faith. Pierce through the steel-armour of biased thoughts, and try to see the divinity in every object.

It is by thought alone that you get into delusion, undergo the experience of birth and death, are bound in the world and become released from it.

All your states of happiness or misery in heaven or hell, are effects of your own thoughts. Early or late, in this life or lives to come, all your passing thoughts will be realized. So, discriminate nicely.

Your present state has been willed by your thoughts. You can change the present state into another by your own thoughts. If you believe that you are separate from the Absolute, you are so. If you think yourself to be Brahman you are so. You limit yourself by your thoughts.

With each divine thought, the mind rends the thin rinds of the visible and finite and comes out into eternity, but you are so negligent about your mental factory.

I asked Klara for permission to post her beautiful words:

A couple weeks ago in our shul (synagogue) the rabbi was speaking about what exactly was this Tree that Adam and Eve sinned by eating from. He said there have been many conjectures, but his take was this – it was the Tree of More Than Enough – G-d have given Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden everything they needed for sustenance – but they didn’t need to eat from the Tree of Knowledge – but they did eat and now we “know” but we don’t – we’ve lost the innocence to know what is good for us – and our job now on this earth is to correct that – we’ve gone way overboard and disease and waste and destruction is rampant.

Now some of us are trying to figure out what it is that we really need – and there are wonderful organizations trying to help in all kinds of ways for the big picture. And more and more individuals are trying to change in their own individual lives. I’m glad mb is part of that in some ways – tho it hasn’t declared it quite officially – if there is any official mb stand – I do believe eating every edible part of the plant is part of it, not overeating is part of it, not wasting is part of it, chewing food well to get the most out of it is part of it – that’s in the big picture.

But in the small picture, I, at least, am still challenged – I still don’t know what eating til 70% full means, I still don’t always eat because of hunger, but rather because the food is so delicious, and I still eat much wider than I need to – ah, need? I still need to figure that one out, too!!!

Klara

You can visit her personal blog. Or you can join her Yahoo discussion group MacroloversOfJerusalem.

Stay loose. Learn to watch snails. Plant impossible gardens. Invite someone dangerous to tea. Make little signs that say “Yes!” and post them all over your house. Make friends with freedom and uncertainty. Look forward to dreams. Cry during movies. Swing as high as you can on a swing set, by moonlight. Cultivate moods.
Refuse to be responsible. Do it for love. Take lots of naps. Give money away. Do it now. The money will follow. Believe in magic. Laugh a lot. Celebrate every gorgeous moment. Take moonbaths. Have wild imaginings, transformative dreams, and perfect calm. Draw on the walls. Read everyday. Imagine yourself magic. Giggle with children. Listen to old people. Open up. Dive in. Be free. Bless yourself. Drive away fear. Play with everything. Entertain your inner child. You are innocent. Build a fort with blankets. Get wet. Hug trees. Write love letters.

There are two steps to manifest anything:
1. Visualization process, feeling you are already there
2. When things start to manifest, to come into your life – have courage to say Yes

Be courageous
- step out from your comfort zone
- become vibrational match for something new
- don’t block yourself from new things coming to you = courage -> say YES to new vibrations bravely

It’s not about right thoughts. Thinking about things you want, again and again. It’s about vibrations from whole your body, heart. Vibrate the energy, feeling you want to experience. Vibrate without thinking – more like feeling.

Don’t feed your fear. Abundance vibration is fearless. When you fear something, just change your vibrations about it. You are the Creator of your Reality. Live consciously.

When you visualize your new reality, you must imagine yourself BEING the kind of person who can attract and hold on to all the good stuff you wish to manifest. That means you’re going to have to work on yourself and grow into that kind of person.

Steve Pavlina – Abundance – videos
How to visualize your new reality – article

Prayer inspiration from the Michio Kushi’s book – Cancer Prevention Diet.

I am grateful to the meal now being offered to me.
I am grateful to people, nature, and the universe for having made this meal available to me.
I now reflect whether I truly deserve to have this meal.
I now pray that, through this meal, I may achieve a healthy body and peaceful mind.
I now resolve that, through this meal, I will continue to realize my dream of love and peace in our eternal journey of endless life.

As I said previous days, these logs are not very interesting for you to read. But I will still post them, they are useful for me

5:30 Get up
9:00 Rice, boiled veggies.
12:00 Miso soup (with ginger) and rice with grated carrots (on a little oil, very sweet + added citron juice).
14:10 – 17:00 Going by bus to Brno.

19:00 Being invited by friends for a dinner. Two guys were cooking it and it was very delicious. Very different than I am used to cook. Always refreshing, these friend parties. These friends are also sticking to a very good rule – eating and serving small portions. Very good in the end. Smaller eating portions mean more jang behaviour and you will be more active and do more things in life with a happier mind, not dulled by too much food But you need a really strong discipline to stick to it, or you need to chew much better. I see the second option as the better choice for me
Also, it’s very interesting how the macrobiotic men are very skillfull. Many times they are cooking a little better than women, at least in the communities around me. But today, I have read once again, from Kikuchi, how the man shouldn’t be cooking, because it’s woman’s territory and man’s Nature is to produce another values. Woman + fire, man + steel? Something like this

We were eating miso soup and pressure cooked oat with lentil burgers, vegetables, pickles.

23:30 Sleep.

7:00 Get up.

Morning eye-yoga exercises, for my poor vision. I am deciding to stick to this morning pattern for 30 days – the very first thing after I get up, I will train my eyes.
Listening a lot of classical music – Dvo?ák.

9:00 Oatflake porridge cooked with hokkaido, carrot and leek.

I have burned my fingers like never before. I was removing the heat dispenser from the stove. But I accidently forgot to turn off the flame from the morning porridge cooking. So the flame was still there and I captured it with 3 fingers. What a shock, what a learning lesson I immediately applied cold water, ice, oil and propolis (the product from bees, very yin, used in my family for things like burned spots and I can say it really works). The good news is, it is on my left hand and I am right hand person and also I have enormously nice parents, that immediately helped me to prepare my next meal and wash dishes – it was a lot of fun with them – that’s how I learn to appreciate all bad things and find only positive in every situation It will hurt very soon, but I am looking forward for this lesson.
I should adapt this mentality to dentists too I am avoiding dentists, partly because of the macrobiotic “alibism”, that the tooth are able to grow and it’s not always good to use tooth-fillings. And also I am not sure what kind of fillings I should ask for and where to find a good dentist – but I see it all as excuses.

13:00 I am cooking shrimps for the first time, on a little oil, add garlic and precooked shrimps, cooked for 5 minutes. Eating them with semolina pastas and steamed vegetables.

16:30 Eating simple pastas with freshly baked leaven bread, strange combination. Barley malt with tea.

Meditating, reading, writing.
I am in love with Rumi poems – listening to this video again and again – after converting it into mp3.

20:30 Sleep (tired from the previous night)
The fingers still don’t hurt, interesting.

Inspired by Phiya, to start again posting my daily diary – what I eat, what I do. I will try to be brief. I don’t see too much value in these posts for other people, but for me, they will be very valuable in the future. And also it’s one way, how to build my discipline, with sticking to daily postings. I also encourage you to start your own blog, log your eating patters, thoughts. You’ll be thankful after few months, years, that you did it. And write, like nobody’s reading! Then you will be very honest and open and it will start to be really interesting

6:30 get up
13:00 miso soup (hokkaido, carrot, broccoli, wakame, ginger)
14:00 buckweed with kale, turnip
19:00 onion tempura, buckweed, blanshed broccoli, roasted walnuts
buckweed with barley malt
2:30 sleep

Lot of reading (Your hidden treasures – pdf yoga book), exercising until afternoon. Chewing wasn’t less than 70 Then I was walking outside a lot, quite cold weather (-3 *C), but sunny beautiful autumn. At the night, we decided to go dancing to the club (after a long time I was at disco) – good experience, I need to stretch myself a little bit more and not sitting infront of a computer whole days