MY JOURNEY

Letters to the Editor

b-ELI-eve!

I feel as though I would not rest tonight if I did not write to you and tell you ...”Thank you.” I know you must receive thousands of messages every day via FB and through other modalities...but I still had to send one as well. I just wanted to tell you that 11:11 magazine has helped me fill a once clouded space, in my soul. I feel connected to a com- munity now and I have hope that my light will grow brighter within. I was so lost and frustrated...I always felt there was something greater out there and that I was somehow attached to something I could never see. I now know that I was unable to see “IT” because I had not been awakened. I became a mother last year to Eli Gabriel...he was born on 11/11/08...the minute I saw him I knew I was beginning a journey. But not in the usual way a woman does when she becomes a mother. It felt different somehow… Almost magical.

I did suffer with postpartum depression and because of that I started going to therapy. It was there I first encountered my “higher self” face to face. When I walked through my therapist’s door, I felt certain and sure of my being there, as if it was meant to happen. Through EMDR and bilateral stimulation I was able to process things and clear the noise and cobwebs from my brain. I have learned so many things there but perhaps the greatest was my learning to seek knowledge. One day after a difficult session I was at Barnes and Noble...I was pushing my son through the store and thinking of the day he was born and all that had changed in my life since then. I was imagining the day of his birth when my hand brushed against your magazine...11:11 and it took my breath away. I mean...there I was thinking of that day 11/11 and no sooner does my hand gravitate towards this magazine! It was a life changing moment. Nothing has been quite the same since. I am having difficulty figuring out what all this means for me and I am continu- ing to read and learn all I can. I am saying “Yes” more and “No” less, I try very hard to trust in the “I AM” and I am breathing one breath at a time. But it is so hard to let go of all I have ever known and to trust in what I have never encountered before. All I know is that it “feels” right and natural. So I will trust and see where that leads me. Again, thank you for doing what you do and for all you have done to “Be” the Change.

Laura Kennedy-Griffin Biloxi, MS

Conscious Living as Compassionate Action

My schedule for many years has been quite simple. I begin my day at 4 a.m. with a few stretching exercises. Then, I practice various yogic postures and pranayama. Once I have finished this routine, I meditate for two hours. When my day officially begins, I am ready to take on the world. In the evening, I concentrate exclusively on three hours of meditation before retiring.

Simplicity in thought and action is a form of divine poetry. I have owned a small cabin in Spain for the past two years, and my goal is self-sufficiency. My life is defined by my relationship with the earth; yet, I feel that my simple existence is a form of worship, a prayer to God in the highest sense. I am writing a love poem to the Lord with the story of my life. The light of wisdom is the poetry of our soul, and

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enlightened living opens a window that transforms the world of time into the radiance of eternity. The sacred quality of existence is not a theorem created by thought, rather, like the fragrance of a rose, it is a truth that must be lived and experienced.

Recently, I purchased a small piece of land next to my cabin. For the past six months, I have let it be known that I would happy to take care of abused or unwanted animals. I am building a barn to serve as a shelter for all of my companions on the path.

Whenever I see an abused, unwanted, or malnourished animal, my heart is torn to pieces. The least that I can do is offer my friendship to the lonely and unwanted creatures of the world. What is the point of life if we cannot give our love unconditionally to our fellow beings? There are no strangers in life, only friends we have not yet met.

The vegetarian diet is one aspect of the simple life. Long ago, I decided to live in the vegetarian way, without killing or eating animals; and lately I have largely ceased to use dairy products. I have allied myself with the vegans, who eat no animal products, butter, cheese, eggs or milk. This is all in line with my philosophy of the least harm to the least number (and the greatest good to the greatest number) of life forms.

I have aimed to keep my diet at fifty percent fruit, thirty-five per- cent vegetables, ten percent protein and starch, and five percent fat. The kind of fruits vary with the season; its proportion of my total diet remains substantially the same. Of the vegetables, I have tried to have one-third leafy green, one-third yellow and one-third juicy. This has ensured me a rounded quota of essential nutritives. In the summer, fruits and succulent vegetables are at least three-quarters of my diet- --in winter, perhaps a third to a half. My protein comes from nuts, beans, olives (in great supply in Spain) and the proteins contained in vegetables and in cereal grains and seeds. I believe that a far smaller amount of protein is necessary and healthful than is usually advo- cated. The craving for foods with concentrated protein is an acquired and dangerous habit, in that it over-energizes the human organism and overloads the system with acid-forming elements. My “fats” are essentially derived from vegetable oils-----olive, soy, corn, peanut or sunflower. I have a high opinion of the efficacy of olive oil. Avocado pears are also an important source of vegetable fat for people living on the vegetable diet.

In my search for simplicity, I have chosen the direction of a mono-diet, as opposed to elaborate variety. To eat little and of few things is a good guide for health. I have also discovered that the closer one gets to the mono-diet the easier is the process of digestion.

Apply to vegetables and fruit the principles of wholeness, rawness, garden freshness, and limited variety at a meal, and you have the theory of my simple diet. In practice, the theory gives me a formulated regime: fruit for breakfast, soup and cereal for lunch; salad and veg- etables for supper.

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