“THE PARADISICAL DIET IS NOT ONLY SUFFICIENT, BUT IT BRINGS YOU HIGHER AND HIGHER, INTO PHYSICAL AND MENTAL CONDITIONS NEVER BEFORE EXPERIENCED.”
— Professor Arnold Ehret
“THE GREATEST VALUE OF THE RAW-FOOD DIET IS ITS TRANSFORMATIVE VALUE. TO A GREAT EXTENT, WHEN YOU TAKE UP THE RAW-FOOD DIET, YOU BECOME A NEW AND DIFFERENT AND BETTER PERSON. YOU DON’T JUST STAY THE SAME OLD PERSON ONLY A LITTLE HEALTHIER. YOU BECOME, TO A GREAT EXTENT, A NEW BEING WITH NEW INTERESTS, A NEW PHILOSOPHY AND OUTLOOK ON LIFE, NEW GOALS AND NEW DESIRES. YOU BECOME MORE OF YOUR ESSENCE, YOUR TRUE NATURAL SELF. YOU BECOME A PERSON WHO IS MORE A PART OF THE ONE GREAT LIFE OF NATURE AND LESS OF THE CONFUSED HUMAN WORLD. YOU BECOME LESS ‘OF THE WORLD’ AND MORE ‘OF THE EARTH.’ ”
— Joe Alexander, Blatant Raw-Foodist Propaganda
“FOR EVERY DISCIPLINED EFFORT, THERE IS A MULTIPLE REWARD.”
— Jim Rohn, success philosopher
I feel it is an essential part of my purpose on Earth to let people know that they can eat 100% raw food — that it is possible, magical and sustainable. For me, eating 100% raw has allowed me to master many of the lessons necessary to achieve an absolutely extraordinary level of health and to open wide the doors of hidden possibility. It has not been easy.
Is 100% raw extreme? To humans … yes. But not to wild animals in nature. It is the way food has always been done. Raw is the way Mother Earth prepares food for her children. Remember: life is extreme. It’s life or death. If you want extreme transformations in your life, you need to start taking extreme actions. This is no dress rehearsal; this is the real thing. People are dying. The major diseases in America are related to the way people eat. People are looking for the answers. People are sick and tired of being lied to (figuratively and literally). The Earth is being trashed with pollution and it can be reversed by simple fundamental changes. Permit this challenge: get out on a limb, you will discover that is where all the fruit is!
Anything that would tend to limit your greatest gift — the power to think and reason clearly — should be eliminated above all things. Any quantity of demineralized, weak and/or unhealthy food, clouds the mind to some degree and leaves a residue of debris in the body that dampens the electrical circuitry in the brain.
The time is upon us to become more discerning in our food choices. The threat of pesticides, the danger of animal products, soil demineralization and genetic engineering can no longer be ignored. Yesterday’s cooked-food diet won’t cut it today. The standard animal food, processed diet is a gamble; we never know what is truly in the food.
Let’s look at this process as starting a new diet while avoiding implied limitations. This is not about denial. 99.99% of all the food on Earth is raw plant food. Eating a natural food diet is the ultimate freedom. There is such a variety of raw plant foods on this Earth it is astonishing. Have you ever tried a black sapote, cherimoya, durian, eggfruit, elderberry, galia melon, habanero pepper, jackfruit, lemonade berry, loquat, lychee, mamey, mountain apple, pomegranate, prickly pear, sapodilla, suriname cherry, or white sapote? Have you ever tried butterleaf lettuce, chicory, dandelion, dinosaur kale, fennel, lamb’s quarters, lemon grass, miner’s lettuce, nopal cactus, sorrel, watercress, wild mustard, wild onion or wintercress? Obviously I have only just touched on some of the variety of edible plants that are out there. You could try a new fruit and vegetable every single day for the rest of your life and not even come remotely close to trying them all!! There is too much abundance!!
For me, a 100% raw-Sunfood diet is the ultimate high. People are intelligent and they understand that they should be feeling great all the time. The depressing effects of cooked foods and animal products are a major reason why people resort to intoxicating liquors and drugs.
The question of going 100% raw is a question of cleverness, metabolism, persistence and spiritual certainty. We cannot be healthy by denying ourselves or feeling guilt. Have the maturity to adjust your lifestyle to accommodate your diet while enjoying the process. I often tell my seminar listeners, “The old habits die hard, but they do die!”
It may be best to stabilize at 70% raw, then 80% raw, and continue on from there if you choose. We want to avoid the “yo-yo effect” — doing 100% raw and then binge eating and then returning to 100% raw. We also want to avoid eating excessive amounts of nuts, seeds, sweet fruit, or prepared raw food in order to meet our current fuel (calorie) needs to stay 100% raw. One must critically evaluate whether 100% is realistic based on one’s current fuel (calorie) requirements (eating raw radically decreases calorie sources which may be healing, yet unbalancing in the short or long term). Set a level of raw, organic food consumption that is appropriate and realistic for you now.
When you reach a stable level of 95% raw, it will be fantastic. You may experience that the body eventually starts to push towards letting go of all cooked foods in the diet — and this is in the natural course of things. After many years on a high-raw, but not all-raw diet, the body becomes more refined and goes into an immediate “detox mode” as soon as any cooked food is ingested, leaving one functioning at less than optimal capacity.
My experience had been that by eating 95% raw food, I received 95% of the amazing results. After being comfortably eating 100% raw food for several years, it seemed that I was receiving 1,000% of the results.
A 100% raw diet is a wonderful goal if it is appropriate for you. I feel blessed to know that it is possible. I know many people who have been eating 100% raw foods for 5, 10, 20, 30, even 40 years and longer, and who have attained an incredible level of health and vitality. I know many people who have been eating 70–80% raw foods for 20, 30, even 40 years who have also attained an incredible level of health and vitality. Once I had set the goal, I did not go 100% raw foods immediately. I went 95% raw overnight and then gradually weaned myself off the last 5%. Previously, I had been eating an 80% raw organic vegan diet.
In general, I have found it is better to give individuals shorter-range goals, such as going one day, one week or one month 100% raw. And this is great for cleansing. It is best to envision that goal, than to envision going a lifetime without cooked food. Once the initial pattern is established, then one can duplicate that pattern — it becomes a blueprint for success.
As I mentioned in Lesson 12: Transition Diet, the key to transitioning to raw food is to experiment on a small scale. First, set a goal to go raw for three days, then expand that to a week the next time, then a month; keep expanding all the time. Write your raw goals down and commit to them. Then see, after achieving your goals, how much further you can go. Make a commitment that requires you to surpass your physical and emotional obstacles. Refuse to consider any other option except your goal of vibrant health.
What is fascinating is that the temptations of cooked food begin to lose their strength. The former “pleasures” associated with cooked food will automatically reverse as one continues to step outside of the old comfort zone into the raw realm. It is not that one has to discipline oneself forever to stay away from the “pleasures” of cooked food, it is that one is no longer attracted to those foods. They are often discovered to be no longer pleasurable, but instead lifeless and devoid of nutritional and spiritual strength.
The best time to begin is always right now. Teddy Roosevelt’s most famous saying was: “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.” The best place on Earth, the greatest opportunity in the world, is right where you happen to be right now. You are sitting on your own fortune — your own “Acres of Diamonds.”
Let’s make the change now! Your life is too important to allow your diet to fall to a point where it finally takes your desire for survival to overcome your appetite for “poor” foods.
The fruit of a rare Sonoran desert plant: Night-blooming Cereus. This is one of my favorite desert (dessert) foods!
There are many things you do now which would have seemed difficult to you ten years ago. Those things themselves did not change, but your idea of yourself changed. What if you were to think things differently today?
It is going to take courage. Where there is no joy there can be no courage; and without courage all other virtues are meaningless. Enjoy the process and let Nature take its course. Nature’s smile is for the joyful, the courageous, the disciplined and the all-daring.
Complacency is the great enemy of possibility. Just keep taking action. Focus all your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new habits.
It is going to take a view to the long-term. The ability to think long-term, to be long-sighted, depends on the ability to delay gratification. The ability to delay gratification determines how much spiritual power we have over our physical body. Delaying gratification is a sign of wisdom and maturity. By delaying food gratification you start making incredible strides.
Self-discipline has been defined as the ability to make yourself do what you should do, when you should do it, whether you feel like doing it or not.
To become a raw-foodist, you must have the desire. You must be willing to pay the price. The price may be much or it may be little, but you must condition your mind to pay it (and pay it gladly!), regardless of the cost. Remember Andrew Carnegie’s saying, “Anything worth having is worth working for.”
As you find yourself ready, it is time to cross the border; to sail out into an unknown sea; to commit to reaching a 100% organic, mineral-rich, balanced, raw, Sunfood diet. As you’ll see, you will not fall off the edge of the world. You will have to overcome the stormy seas of negativity and the waves of peer pressure, the perilous storms of accusation and the scurvy-ridden sailors of mediocrity, the glide down the wave-crests into the wave-valleys of detoxification, but afterwards it all will appear before you a new land, a land transformed into a paradise, a land explored thus far by only the curious and the brave! You may well discover the timeless truth that when you change, the world changes automatically. You will look through different eyes. You will be transformed into a new being! Commit! There is no strength in compromise.
If you choose, you can reach a point where you are able to do all you need to do in the external world (social food visits with friends, business luncheons, etc.), yet have no inner food conflicts because you will have attained a new consciousness. Your insights will be powerful. You will make statements with great certainty without knowing how it happened. Uncanny events will become commonplace.
When I let go of cooked food, life became even more exciting. After many years of eating exclusively raw foods, my mindset became more resolute, flexible, clear, free of doubt; my body became lithe, supple, sensitive and filled with energy. My yoga practice was completely transformed. I gained a proficiency to push myself beyond all perceived physical, mental, emotional and spiritual boundaries.
I woke up after napping in my backyard one day with a bird bouncing around my head and face. We just looked at each other. When you go raw, the animals do not look at you as something strange anymore, you do not carry the obvious smell of civilization’s diet. You become more of the continuum of life — one with the animals. What price can you put on a unified connection with Nature? It is priceless.
1 Many raw-foodists ask me why people do not go 100% raw. 100% raw does present challenges. These challenges may be overcome through knowledge, persistence, effort and discipline. I have discovered the following 10 reasons why people do not eat 100% raw:
1) They are not ready, their body and mind has not adjusted. Their favorite cooked foods still taste better than their favorite raw foods. With time, the taste buds change, the body acclimates to new, cleaner foods, and progress with raw food becomes easier. Everyone should transition at a pace that is outside their comfort zone, but not in their shock zone.
2) They do not have the metabolism for eating all raw foods and are unable to find a balance point even though they are well educated on the subject and have tried many different approaches over many years. This is natural and normal. The information in this book is not the truth. It is my best approximation based on years of research and experience. As long as we are conscious about our food choices, eating organic, mineral-rich raw food and seeking out that perfect health balance, we are making progress. An 80% raw plant diet seems to be a more workable approach to more people and is, in fact, enough to save the planet.
3) They require more education on the subject. They don’t realize the importance of eating 100% raw plant foods and the magic in it.
4) They simply are not serious. They talk, but never do. They want to make an improvement in their life, but they are not willing to make the necessary effort.
5) They don’t know how; they are confused by conflicting opinions on diet. They don’t understand the idea of eating 100% raw plant food.
6) They haven’t accepted 100% responsibility for their lives and their health, happiness and longevity. They don’t feel they are worthy enough to be extraordinarily healthy. They don’t feel they deserve it.
7) They don’t go 100% raw because of the fear of rejection. They fear their friends and family will reject them and their new lifestyle and/or that the opposite sex will reject them.
8) They fear the unknown. Eating 100% raw is the unknown for most people, and for that reason, they fear it instead of embrace it! Eventually, we have nowhere to go, but into the unknown. Which do you prefer? A known hell or a strange heaven? The way you are going now is leading down a specific path — a destiny. One day you will arrive … the question is where?
9) They get unbalanced because they do not exercise and/or eat a healthy combination of green-leafy vegetables, sweet fruits and fatty foods. Thus they return back to familiar food habits.
10) The inability to face their suppressed emotional issues when they arise. One of the major challenges I have seen in people going 100% raw is facing suppressed emotional trauma. A 100% raw plant-food diet presents your emotional issues to you — it brings them right to your consciousness. These issues often involve one or both parents. To win through, one must have the courage to face these emotional issues squarely and release them. Holding on to 10% “comfort foods” in the diet can be helpful, as it will slow the emotional traumas from arising too rapidly.
2 Get out your journal. Do any of these ten reasons apply to you and why? How will you face or overcome these challenges? Record the answers in writing in your journal.
3 Remember: Going 100% raw is great, but it is also beautiful to give a 100% effort. 100% raw is not for everyone. Decide what works for you in your lifestyle.
Opposite: a magnificent Kirlian photograph of a speck of organic raw cacao powder.
