THE PLATE AS MASTANA

I wrote an editorial on LIGHT LINXX this morning, and thought I would continue the thoughts here when I segued into our shamanic eating experiment.

"We're drowning in a sea of riches, and starving from lack of a reason for it. An instinctive sense of meaning has been lost, a void that we barely understand, yet feel intensely." CLICK FOR FULL ARTICLE they say in this article from GreenStar, a non profit organization intent on bringing technology to all. You can read more about them at GREENSTAR.ORG because they are uniting some pretty interesting people.

Anyway! As shamanic practitioners of modern society we are the mixers, the weavers. We walk in both worlds, and are finding a way to bring it to the hearts and minds of western man and woman. We are leading the way back to the natural ways and into a balance with the planet and within ourselves WHILE living in a modern world.

So it stands to reason our next step is to find that balance within our bodies and the food that feeds the body, and food that truly feeds the body feeds the soul. We are going to be feeding our souls. How cool is that? It is awesome!

Come into this month of eating naturally, eating indigenously, eating to find a way to feed yourself, and understand it is not about deprivation in the least!

Come into this without reading labels or counting or weighing anything or measuring, because what you choose to buy is without a label! It's grown, it's fresh, it's living. This is living food. This isn't raw. This is natural. This is accessible nutrition. (Ok, some of the dried and dehydrated is packaged, but don't split hairs, you know what I mean!), and do your food preparation as a meditation. When I said that Christmas day I was in the kitchen all day, it wasn't a complaint! I enjoyed it!

I hadn't realized how much I had missed the art of food. Food had become an enemy, something I didn't trust anymore. Food confused me. It baffled me. I ate because I had to, but it didn't feed me anymore. It hadn't for a long long time!

I looked around at all the color and the lifeforce in my shopping cart, and then on my kitchen counters, and realized how much I had missed it! Food preparation is an art! Come into this as an expression of your art, and the love you have inside yourself. So, as your art and self expression has developed in your mesas each week, let that now come out into your kitchens~we get to marinade, and soak and spice! Let this become a joy, and not a torture or to be survived. It so isn't that sort of engagement!

See, diets have become synonomous with deprivation. Something to survive, or endure so that we can "go back to" or "go off". And that's NOT what this is about. This is about clearing our palletes, much like clearing the mastana.

What is the story of the food, or food group, what is the fear connected to it that keeps you locked in it?
So, as shamans we walk INTO the fear to get to the other side, and call our power back to us. We ride it, and then it no longer owns us. The journey to the other side is empowering.

When we moved I donated all my "sets" of china and dishes. Maybe that was about turning 50 and getting rid of the rules about matching sets. I don't know, but I was tired of worrying about maintaining matching stuff. I was tired of the rules and the limits. Lot's of things happened when I got rid of the dishes but that's another story.

I went to Ross and TJ Maxx and bought random bowls and plates of all sorts of shapes and sizes and colors, and continue to whenever I see one that catches my eye. They are cheap, sometimes as little as 50¢. I love the art of them, and the expression. I look for handpainted, I look for color! I buy fluted, and square, I buy like a child, looking for what delights me, and nothing is ever more than $3.00. I only buy one of any design. I buy as if my plates are my mastana cloth. Understand me?

My family has come to enjoy them too, and if a plate chips I put them under my plants, or use them for the pets. The world is full of beautiful plates! In nature we might pick a beautiful leaf to eat from-would we lament that the leaf is gone? No. We know that the jungle is full of beautiful leaves, and there are more. We want to combat the habit of scarcity and hoarding and get back to feeling supported, and it can start with little things.

When I made breakfast this morning, I began to bring out COLOR to add to my plate, not food groups, or calories, not carbs or proteins, I brought out color and texture and moved it on my plate like I move things in my mesa! It is so freeing!

I cut up half an avocado, I added a handful of blueberries and some blackberries. I pealed a tangerine and added a wedge of lemon. It's gorgeous! I felt that I needed some grains this morning, so I poured some natural granola in a small fluted blue stone bowl, and added some orange juice. It had cranberries in it, and almonds and I cut up some fresh mango. I sprinkled some shredded coconut on it too! It started to feed me AS I ASSEMBLED IT! That's what our food should do. Did it take alot of time? No way. it was playful and beautiful and a delight to do. I was already eating it as I prepared it! That is mindfulness. That is food as art.

We purchase processed foods to speed things up. Why? What are we doing with that extra time we are saving? Are we doing something valuable like connecting to people? Or are we sitting in front of a television? Are we reaching into the earth and planting flowers, and taking magnificent walks, or are we convinced that it's better to exercise in a gym and have we been convinced that sunshine is harmful? As we walk into one societal fear and limitation, we will wake up to others, and trust me, we will laugh as we go!

Ya think this is why the Gnostics called him the "Laughing Jesus"?