Aaah, Sunday ... the only day of the week that I refuse to schedule clients or answer business calls. There are usually odd jobs behind the scenes of running a small business that must be done regardless of calender days, but this one day is the closest I get to a "free" day.
Having unscheduled time makes eating raw foods so much easier; I remembered to soak sunflower seeds on Sat. night, so all I had to do was blend them up with bananas and spices and carob (recipes will follow as the technicalities of this site evolve): delicious. That, combined with a warm enough day to go outside in shorts to suck up a little vitamin D in our cold, wet Northwest corner of the country, gave me enough energy to ride my bike for an hour. And that magic of exercise then created more momentum to chop and chew huge salads and smoothies ... all because I had the TIME to do so.
Funny, I couldn't quite find TIME to vaccuum the house nor start my end-of-year accounting as I'd planned. Gosh, too bad! : )
Coinciding with this year of rawness is a personal project I've started which I call ForGiveness. I sought counselling to uncover some magic cause of why, in spite of massive educations and trainings, decades now of experience, and the capacity to work like a dray horse when necessary, I still have never really broken even, much less prospered financially. I have yet to discover such a panacea, but in the process a ritual came to me; to take whatever spirit guides/ angels/ archetypes wanted to come along, and revisit every incident where someone hurt me. I ask the person why they did it, and so far, every time I have gotten to see things from a different perspective. For instance, a teacher in jr. high who had been so cool and fun the year before suddenly turned moody and frankly just bitchy; I got busted in flagrante delicto talking meanly about her in line for lunch one day. In doing the ForGiveness exercise, she told me that she'd been going through the demise of her marriage and her behavior had nothing to do with us kids.
Now, did this happen historically? I could try to look her up and verify facts, but I really don't care if it's "true" or not. Whatever my subconscious picked up on, the point is that I gave us both the gift of putting down the resentment and judgements I've been schlepping around for some 30 years; that is the Give part of ForGiveness. Then the helpers and I and the essence of the other person "cleanse" the physical space where the incidence happened by imagining white healing light blasting away the anger, fear, envy, whatever. It feels great; this teacher and I hugged and now I remember her as the fun, funky lady she was and hopefully still is.
It also takes massive TIME to do such a thing. I took it in my head recently that this is the time to start looking for my one true Helpmeet, and so am focusing my ForGiveness work on all the boys and men who ever hurt me. Last night, because I felt so strong after a good day, I took on one of the motherlodes, a longterm mate that I really cared about. It was truly work to revisit pains from his perspective, especially since I am such a different person now that I can hardly believe some of the crap I pulled! Yes, so far the hardest part of any session has been to honestly ForGive myself. It gets a bit easier, though, with practice.
I share this technique and words of encouragement because one cannot clean up one's body without cleaning up one's mind and heart as well. Beware: anything of quality requires an investment of TIME, be it food or therapy or practicing an art form. I hope you, Reader, have enough TIME to play with these ideas!