What Do Vegans Eat Anyway?

During the years of the Great Shift, our diets are evolving right along with us. Vegetarianism has grown in popularity, for reasons of both health and compassion for animals. I myself have been a vegetarian for 35 years and primarily vegan for about 12 of those years. People often ask me what I eat. Some ask the skeptic’s question “What do you eat for protein?” but others are really curious about what makes up a vegan’s diet. With that in mind, I thought I’d share a sample menu of what I usually eat in a week, with the disclaimer that this is not a recommendation or a framework from any particular dietary regimen. It is what I have come to from years of variations. I change things up whenever I come across exciting new recipes.

I became a vegetarian mainly because of a reluctance to contribute to the suffering and death of animals, but I was also concerned about health issues and sustainability. When I first made the change, I ate lots of eggs and dairy, thinking I needed to have that protein to make up for lack of meat. I soon discovered it was unnecessary because veggies, grains, nuts, etc. provide plenty of protein. In fact, recent studies have found that Americans eat too much protein, which can be detrimental over time. So I cut back on eggs and dairy until finally I dropped them from my diet entirely (except when I can’t access any other vegetarian options while traveling).

Vegetables, fruit, grains, nuts, seeds, tofu, beans, and legumes are the basis of my diet now. I was a raw-food vegan for several years, and my diet is still about 70% raw, but I have added back some cooked meals as well. 99% of the food I eat is organic. I also buy locally grown whenever possible, which is easy in the summers when local farmers markets have flavor-full, nutrient-dense organic vegetables and fruit.

Breakfast: Large fruit & greens smoothie that includes 1 cup coconut water, 1/2 banana, 1/2 orange, 1/2 pear, 1/2 apple, a handful of blueberries & strawberries, 2 romaine lettuce leaves, 2 dinosaur (lacinato) kale leaves (destemmed), a cup or two of spinach, 2 tablespoons ground flax seed, 2 tablespoons flax seed oil, 1 tablespoon chia seeds, 1 teaspoon each raw hemp protein powder and spirulina. Some people might be put off by the greens added here, but they really don’t overpower the fruit, and you can always adjust amounts to personal taste. (Greens are key health foods, especially raw—include them wherever you can.) Hemp, flax, and the other add-ins balance out the sweetness in the fruit and help to give me sustained energy for many hours.

Lunch: Protein smoothie: 1/3 cup almond milk, 2/3 cup coconut water, 1/2 cup frozen blueberries, 1/2 large banana, 8 walnut halves, 1 tablespoon each: raw pumpkin seeds, raw chia seeds, raw hemp protein powder, raw almond butter, flax oil. Blend on high for 1 minute.

Sample Dinners: Every night, I have an oversized bowl of salad that includes 4 or 5 kinds of lettuce, arugula, dandelion greens, watercress, sunflower sprouts, and dulse, with a dressing of olive oil and lemon juice, and ground raw pumpkin seeds mixed in. Main course could be one of the following: 1) raw basil pesto with cooked quinoa pasta; 2) cooked zucchini-mushroom-tomato sauce with crumbled tofu, served over quinoa pasta; 3) sprouted raw wild rice mixed with chopped raw carrots, red pepper, celery, zucchini, dinosaur kale, walnuts, sun-dried tomatoes, olive oil, lemon juice; 4) cooked curried red lentils with brown basmati rice; 5) raw veggie sunburgers with sliced heritage tomatoes; 6) quinoa avocado salad with raw red pepper, scallions, carrots, pumpkin seeds, cilantro, olive oil, lime juice; 7) soups such as raw cucumber-spinach or cooked spicy black bean.

Snacks: Celery with raw tahini or hummus, nuts, fruit.

As I say, this is just a sampler of possibilities. There are dozens of wonderful vegan recipe books available. Ultimately, the idea is to find food and recipes that are enjoyable and fun to eat. Tastes are very individual, but contrary to popular opinion, it is possible to eat vegan food that is both life-enhancing and delicious. Ultimately, you have to love what you eat because that energy is also digested with your food! Bon appetit!

Midpoint 2012: Evolving at the Speed of Light

My experience of the long-prophesied and much-talked-about year 2012 has thus far been beyond anything I could have imagined even six months ago. The prevailing feeling has been of infinite possibility and limitless expansion. I have a heightened sense of my own ongoing transformation, day to day, even minute to minute. What I once considered impossible or unlikely (learning how to dissolve pain or fear) has flowed easily into the realm of my own experience. I am evolving, and it’s happening so fast that I am aware that I am evolving. And I’m not alone.

Forget Charles Darwin—this is super-evolution, 2012 style, and no one gets left behind! It is a collective evolution wherein we are all expanding into the improbable and impossible—into our wildest dreams materializing in physical form. The magnificence of our own divine potential is flowering right before our very eyes. As we evolve, labels, roles, belief systems, and separations of all kinds are falling away. We are becoming our own teachers, healers, and gurus—our own luminous pieces of God consciousness on Earth. We truly are “the ones we’ve been waiting for.”

Recently, I took part in an online interactive chat session and live streaming video with Panache Desai and hundreds of people around the world (many got up in the middle of the night or before dawn to participate). The oneness and love shared, and then transmitted outward from participants to all beings everywhere, was phenomenal. The energetic shift was palpable. During his weekly webcasts, Panache often guides listeners to create these expansive circles of energy and light. Many spiritual groups use healing, prayer, or intention circles on a regular basis, and with the Internet, these kinds of circles grow and their effects increase exponentially. Using technology combined with psychic connection to share/send the energy of love and light brings more and more people into conscious awareness of oneness. Increasingly, individuals are sensing that something greater is possible—a fifth-dimension world based in compassion, sharing, and loving-kindness for all beings. We are beginning to live that truth in our daily lives.

In the midst of tumultuous changes on the planet, we are alchemists, working miracles, one by one and ten thousand by ten thousand. Metaphoric metal is turning to gold. People are throwing aside crutches of all kinds, physical or nonphysical, and walking unassisted into the manifestation of their own visions. Imagination is the magic wand we wave, and spiritual energy creates the new world before us. The mind alone cannot conceive of the wonders yet to come. It is the heart that leads the way. From a place of love, anything is possible. All it takes is belief—in ourselves, individually and collectively, and in the infinite guiding wisdom that holds us in oneness in the cosmos.

Earth is on track for spontaneous evolution into higher consciousness; together, we are creating an en-Light-ened present unlike any time-bound past that has preceded it. We are stepping into magnificence, into living our soul selves in every moment. I feel the truth of this deep in my own heart because I experience it every day. The miraculous is everywhere. Finally, we are one with those miracles, eyes wide open, hearts wide open. It is a time for celebration!

“We are one heart, one love, and one spirit. We are one consciousness expressing itself in 7 billion different ways.”—Panache Desai

Fear Less

In Jan Frazier’s book When Fear Falls Away, she describes a sudden falling away of fear, just before having a repeat mammogram. The subsequent awakening she experienced changed her life. It is something we all dream of: to live with unshakable trust in the universe. I believe that we are now entering a period in the Earth’s evolution in which that is possible, not just for yogis or shamans, but for every person on the planet. Individual processes may not be as instantaneous as Jan Frazier’s, but I think the ultimate experience of trust in something greater will be very similar. I believe this because I feel it happening to me.

Recently, after intentionally stepping away from external busyness in the “real” world (see blog post “Unplugged and Reconnected”), I found that a door opened within me through which life poured through in boundless exuberance. The perfect books and spiritual workshops presented themselves to me with free-flowing synchronicity. In addition to these, the time that I sat alone in silent meditation and contemplation in my backyard was deeply transformative. I spent hours there each day, sometimes working in my garden, sometimes meditating, sometimes just breathing in the beauty all around me—the flowers, the trees, the sky, the clouds, the birds. A tiger swallowtail butterfly floating into the yard would make my heart catch in my throat at the miracle of its very existence. A single ray of sun penetrating the dense green shrubbery to form a patch of shimmering golden light on the grass would fill my eyes with tears. It was if I were absorbing the magnificence of the world through my very pores.

Gradually, as these magic moments continued, a deep loving connection to something larger than my own life became my prevailing experience. I have had such moments frequently in recent years, but something new was beginning to shift within me now. The connection to Source or Spirit was less fleeting, more a part of me. As the external world continued to be rocked by the changes inherent in 2012 and the Great Shift, I found that, within me, everything that was not trust in the presence of Spirit in all things began to dissolve. Old rigid ways of perceiving the world fell away. As did fear. I was not completely fearless (impossible—I am human), but I feared less.

Months later, after continued inner journeying on my own and at various spiritual gatherings, I find that this opening/shedding process has continued. I am no longer run by fear. Instead, at any given moment, I can connect to a spacious silent place within where peace and a trusting calm exist (see previous post “Infinity”). And I truly believe that now is the time when we all can find that inner space and open our hearts to a greater trust, a greater love.

 

Unplugged and Reconnected

Not long ago, I decided to unplug myself from technology for a month. I took a mini-sabbatical from computers (including all email and editorial work), TV, and radio (I don’t own a cell phone). It was with a huge sigh of relief that I did this. My days had begun to be filled with such constant busyness that even finding time to meditate or take long walks seemed difficult. When I stopped sitting for hours in front of the computer, my life opened up all around me.

At the same time that I closed the technology door, I opened another door—to the natural world outdoors and the world of spirit present everywhere. Outside in my backyard, I gardened, read, meditated, or just gazed at passing clouds in the sky or the sun on the flowers in my garden. I often felt transported to another dimension where only infinite variations of light were real. Life seemed as fragile and precious as a flower petal or an inhaled breath. There were moments when all I felt was gratitude for the gift of being alive.

In my journal I wrote: “We have this one lifetime to live in a human body, to look through human eyes and see the beauty of the world. I just want to drink in the wonders all around me, to feel in my heart each exquisite detail of flower, leaf, and cloud. I could look at the sky forever and never come to the end of its magnificence. Every bird and butterfly and bee is a tiny miracle. In the swirling center of each flower is a sacred universe. I am so blessed to have this life on Earth. I don’t want to miss a thing. I don’t want to lose a second looking at a computer or TV when the world and all its breathtaking beauty is just outside the door.”

Along with the wonder and awe came a deep connection to the living spirit that existed in the natural world all around me. The spirit within me embraced the spirit everywhere outside of me, and I stepped into a profound experience of oneness that expanded with each passing day. I found that within each exquisite detail of the universe that I perceived with my physical eyes was an invisible thread that led to the infinite Source of all things. William Blake described this perfectly: “To See a World in a Grain of Sand/And a Heaven in a Wildflower/Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand/And Eternity in an hour.”

So did I renounce all technology for the rest of my life after discovering “God in the details”? No, of course not. We live in a human world that has manifested global communication via the Internet. If it doesn’t overtake your life, it can be a wonderful vehicle for experiencing worldwide interconnections. The key is balance, as in all things. I still check my email, visit favorite websites, and even listen to spiritual webcasts, but I’m now more in touch with when it’s time to turn off the computer and walk out the door into nature’s paradise.

Wake-up Call

For years now, I have been awakened at 3 a.m. by neck pain that often culminates in a migraine headache. Lying down seems to make the pain worse, so I usually get out of bed and sit in the living room. Often, I have taken strong medication to get rid of the pain, not always successfully. Headaches of one kind or another have plagued me since I was a teenager. Tension morphed into migraine in midlife. Having tried every possible traditional and nontraditional remedy, with little success, I had almost resigned myself to always living with chronic pain. It was a never-ending drain on my life energy. That is, until recently.

During a weeklong retreat in Costa Rica with Panache Desai (see recent posts: “The Silence Within” and “Infinity”), I learned how to rid myself of the pain through a deep meditation of “allowing and receiving.” When I returned home, I was initially nervous that I would not be able to repeat the miraculous releases from pain I had experienced on retreat. Admittedly, my apartment is not tropical, nor does it have a view of the Pacific Ocean! Thankfully, I was still able to get rid of the headaches most of the time, partially because of a shift in my own perception: I finally recognized that Spirit, or my Higher Self, wanted me up at 3 a.m. for a reason, and neck pain was an effective way to get me out of bed and into the receptive meditation mode.

As I sat meditating in the predawn hours, breathing deeply and letting go into “allowing and receiving” (and sometimes listening to Panache’s meditation CDs), I found that the pain would slightly abate but not disappear entirely until I had passed the three-hour mark. At that point, I could begin my day, not only pain-free but also filled with a deep joy and love for the world around me. I saw only blessings everywhere I looked. It was just amazing.

Clearly, then, I was supposed to practice allowing and receiving for three solid hours on a daily basis. (One morning, when I slept through the usual 3 a.m. time, a loud voice in my head shouting my name woke me up with a start at 4:30. No sleeping in!) After several days, it occurred to me that I was being firmly guided to follow this regimen not just to get rid of pain but also to learn how to allow and receive everything: anger, sadness, and fear as well as beauty, joy, and love. Challenging events, emotional reactions, stunning sunsets, loving friendships—they are all part of the human experience on Earth, and it is impossible to have one aspect and not the others. They are the intricately interwoven blessings of being alive. That perspective alone has completely changed how I experience life on a daily basis.

Through this meditation, I practiced how to live from a place of receptivity instead of resistance, gradually learning how to be in the flow of the energy of life, however it showed up. Allowing and receiving has seeped into my moment-to-moment experience. Each day, I open more and resist less. My inner default setting has shifted from defense to gratitude, from worry to trust. The accompanying insight for me is that physical pain is not inevitable. I discovered that it was the voice of Spirit within my body persistently trying to get my attention. At long last, I woke up and listened.