Sunday, May 6, 2012

Delightful green juice!

Ohhhh it's such a light refreshing breakfast drink (or take it on your hike or to work/school)... Mmmmm! Jai Ma (blessings to the Earth)!


I used a bunch of baby collard greens, 3 juicing carrots, 4 skinny spears of asparagus, and 3 apples. Parsley or spinach would be excellent mild greens for this drink, or kale or dandelions for a "greener" taste and effect. So daintily sweet and mild, delicious. Ginger would make a lovely addition as well!

Happy juicing, happy living, happy loving!

Love for all~ laura

Thursday, May 3, 2012

Grow your own kombucha SCOBY

Directions: take one bottle of original/plain kombucha, put in a big jar with cooled black, green or white tea, a few tablespoons of sugar, and cover with a cloth napkin and rubberband it on the neck of the jar. Let Scooby grow for a few weeks, add a little sugar here and there and watch him fizzle and munch it up! Then you will eventually have your own kombucha "mushroom"! Hooray!
Sent on the Sprint® Now Network from my BlackBerry®

Tuesday, May 1, 2012

Sometimes It's Lonely To Be Extraordinary

I am probably one of the most cheerful people you'll ever meet. I am quick to laugh and even quicker to smile. And it's all genuine, baby. I have joy in my life, even when I don't have immediate happiness, but most moments or most days I have happiness and joy. The difference being that happiness is all pervasive and in response to the total experience in the moment, joy is a deeper satisfaction that can be there like the sun in your heart even when you are less then thrilled about external or internal circumstances- like a stomachache or migraine or a break-up or car accident or your music being inadvertently and irrevocably lost.

I wear my heart on my sleeve, it has always been a quality of mine, and I think at times like this its clear function is to be useful to others, should they be able to see anything of their own experience within mine. I hope this is useful in some way to bring ease to others... This is about the down-side of living fully, which actually is like a pebble in the ocean of bliss. However, when you step on the pebble or stub your toe pretty badly on it, its easy to feel pretty sorry for yourself. I'm here to say, first of all, there there, it sucks and I know because I have been there. Secondly, don't linger there more then a moment, because everything else is so amazing and it beakons you forward to ever expanding states of wonderment, so really, self-pity is a waste of your precious time and energy.

Being an individual, while I hold to this day that it is THE path to the greatest happiness, highs, adventures, satisfaction and fulfillment in life, isn't always easy. I can easily see why people choose to hide into the shadows and conform at all costs, if no other reason then to feel like that aren't alone. Ahhhhh... the oxymorons that fill reality. If we duck underneath the blankets of conformity and hide our true extraordinary identity to fit in, we'll never still quite feel like we do fit. When we finally say screw it and throw off the pretentious masks, we will feel free, and find greater fulfillment. But there are some tough things that happen when we do this.. once we pass through them, we become even happier and feel connected to others in new, more real and deeper ways then we ever imagined...

THE EARLY CRANKY STAGES OF CONSCIOUSNESS:

I remember getting very pissed off, getting on a soap box. Hell, I can get up on that soap box at any moment if I don't watch it, if I am in the right company. Seriously, anyone who is conscious knows that, no shit, politics, bureaucracy, our food system, TV, our whole culcture has a lot loop holes and none of it is designed or functions to do anything that it is supposed to do for whomever it is supposed to be doing it. This was what happened, when I started to wake up, become more conscious, get informed and make empowered choices for my liffestyle and health. You may have gone through an angry phase too, you may be pretty pissed at "the man" right now. I recall time that feels so far away from who I am now because it is common. I was a bitter and militant little vegan warrior, man was I pissed. I am still not okay with the attrocities of the factory farming industry. But instead of being bitchy and turning everyone away like a barking dog, I choose to opt out, I believe in the boycott, man. I live sweetly and happily, healthfully, and without supporting that cruelty. I have inspired more vegans since I stopped being pissed off and started just living in line with my truth. In fact, I never inspired one before, now, several, who in turn inspire others. That's a huge impact! Instead of pissing and moaning about how you hate Walmart and then turning around and shopping there, put your money where your mouth is. The only color "the man" sees in America's heartless capitalistic system is green, baby. So vote with your buck. Don't whine about having too few bucks, because if you only have a few votes, then you had better use them even more thoughtfully!!

So hopefully you will learn to turn the fire of your anger into joyous passion for the wise, compassionate and conscious choices you decide to make. In your passionate joy, you WILL catch more flies with honey then your piss and vinegar, I assure you!

WHEN YOU DISCOVER WHO YOU ARE, THOSE WHO WANTED YOU TO BE WHO YOU AREN'T WILL GET BITTER AND RUN:

Family and friends alike with which you had bonds over habits that fall by the wayside as you move forward and become more self-aware, will either attack your new ways of seeing the world, accuse you of being a punk or hippie, or simply stop being part of your life. This is a difficult experience, but neccessary. The truth is that we have to learn that nothing is solid and permanent. We aren't a solid object, we are a constantly changing river. So as we change, our energy changes.. think of it as frequency, or as a color or a chord. As our texture changes, the textures we will be attracte to will change. It makes good sense, of course, but it is hard to let go. Letting go of people we thought we'd always have a deep bond with is very painful, but here is the lovely part- we let go of the connections that are keeping us stuck in the mud and not mutually beneficial, and we will find that new, deeper, more inspiring connections will have room to arise. This is really satisfying and amazing. This isn't just something that happens when you first commit to being completely uncompromised in who you are, oh no! It keeps happening over and over, but generally gets easier to handle and relatively painless in most circumstances. As much as you lose, you will gain so much more love and connection then you ever really had.

YOU HAVE TO SEE YOURSELF EXACTLY AS YOU ARE, IN ALL YOUR BEAUTY AND FULLNESS, IN ALL YOUR VULNERABILITY AND SHAME:

As you become more awakened to who you are and who you aren't, you will see more nakedly the underlying emotions that motivate and motivated your choices. You see fatigue, disappointment, loneliness, lack of self-esteem where they raggedly poke and jab you. You see your desire for acknowledgement, attention, connectedness, love, respect. You see yourself in the  past and may feel pretty foolish about your actions and motivations. You may see yourself right now and feel  pretty foolish about the motivations of your actions. And sometimes you will still choose those actions. And sometimes you just won't. You'll begin to see that we are all in similar boats and that every action has a motivation, maybe its pretty simple and pure, maybe its pretty selfish and screwed. We are all motivated somehow, or else no one would do a damn thing! We want happiness, fulfillment, to love and be loved. That comes with being alive, if you don't want that stuff, are you going to care about living..? Perhaps, if you are REALLY conscious, but for the rest of us, we shoudln't feel stupid for wanting to love and be loved, or wanting genuine connections with other beings, or wanting to be known and appreciated for who we truly are instead of who we think we should be or who others want us to be.

EXTRAORDINARY BEINGS NEED EXTRAORDINARY EQUALS, WHICH MEANS YOU NEED TO FIND RARE GEMS AND NEEDLES IN HAYSTACKS:

I'm not the only person dealing with the realization that finding people to really deeply connect with is like winning a miraculous lottery. But the universe specializes in this sort of thing. It is hard not to feel discouraged at times, but the truth is all things are possible. Trust, I am sooooooo incredibly thrilled and ready to be blown away by meeting my amazing equal, I am ready for an extraordinary man to sweep me off of my feet. Under no circumstances should we ever compromise or feign interest or true connection where it doesn't exist just to numb the loneliness. Swami Nirmalananda always said that deep happiness with just a touch of melancholy is the perfect recipe for fast spiritual evolution. There is something powerful about longing. So worry not. Without self-pity, but with strong longing, we do attract the kind of beings we want to know and be near, that want to know and be near us. Patience is a bitch of a lesson, at least for me, when it comes to passion and finding real love...

IT IS ALWAYS WORTH BEING YOUR EXTRAORDINARY SELF:

" If you’re not aware that what you put out
 Is what you get back
 That you make the world through the way you act
 You can’t harness the awesome power of that fact"  ~Ani Difranco  (If Yr Not)

We have to be ourselves. If we fight it, we fight the truth, and the truth has a funny way of resurfacing over and over, no matter how hard we try to swallow it down, bury it, burn it, disconnect from it, kill it... it can't be destroyed. The little bit of difficulty or pain we have to face is nothing compared to the indescribable freedom of finally being fully alive without all the heavy-ass baggage of inhibitions and other junk hanging around our necks.

"And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom." ~Anais Nin

"And honesty is the hardest part
Yeah honesty is the highest art
And honestly i myself just started
And eureka I'm less broken hearted" ~ Ani Difranco, (Promiscuity)

Even when you are lonely you are never alone. And by being yourself you will find more people you truly connect to. And you will inspire people around you to live more passionately everyday. You will brighten lives with your very existence. Smile to the moon, breathe the fresh air in like love itself, see the trees at dusk silently witnessing you with total compassion. All of nature bends around you in tender loving embrace. You have loved ones, you have friends, and you will have all you deserve. Everything will come in its perfect timing, like the changing of the seasons, and the broader your perspective, the more you see how all the pieces fit and why you couldn't have what you wanted at the time. You will get better then what you wished for. Better then you could have created is what the universe will meld into place for you. Just believe in the beauty of life and it will come to be.

"What comes is better then what came before" ~Cat Power (I Found a Reason)

The Water Isn't Going to Drink Itself.... (poem)

The water isn't going to drink itself, kids,
happiness won't bite you, don't fear.
The groceries aren't going to shop for themselves,
and the dishes aren't going to disappear.

Fulfillment doesn't come on accident,
Life isn't going to live itself,
You can get pissed about your circumstances,
and just decide to collect dust on the shelf.

You can decide to live in playful joy, or
You can see the world with cynical eyes
You can choose to explore and live and love
or to suspect everyone and everything of lies

It is all up to you how you live
just know that you ALWAYS have a choice
that only you can decide for yourself
if you will be mute or have a voice

You can pound your fists and pitch a fit
say it isn't fair and you're sick of it
or you can simply grow up and begin
and see that life is only ever what you make of it

Happiness isn't found in some magic time
without work or chores or wants or needs
the only place where happiness is ever found
is simply in wherever and whatever you happen to be