Sunday, September 28, 2014

raw foodism: raw farina recipe




all praise is due for this opportunity to engage with food, with worship through food, with shepherding this mosque of body i reside in...with getting strong enough to leave when its time...

wasn't my intention to make the farina, but it made sense. the resistance of the blender i use led me to this. so all praise is due for this challenge that opened new opportunities and has allowed me to get deeper in patience...

ingredients: 
cauliflower
macoun/macintosh apple
sea salt
water
coconut oil
raw peanuts
raw honey/maple syrup
cinnamon 

recipe: 

soak a handful of raw nuts in water overnight.
soak a portion of a cauliflower overnight.

chop the flowers of the cauliflower.
place em in the blender with some water.
pour a couple tablespoons of coconut oil.
sprinkle sea salt. 
peel and chop apples; place in blender.
place soaked peanuts in blender.
sprinkle cinnamon. 

blend all.
add water as needed to give it thick soupy texture.
once blended, add honey. 
blend. 
set aside in a bowl and leave refrigerated overnight.

next morning, place bowl in sun, and leave for 1-2 hours. 

before you chow down, pause, center, descend into the
Air Land Liquid Atmosphere Heat (ALLAH), you emanate from. 
meditate on the common origin of you and the food you are about to eat.
meditate on all the hands that touched it - sun, soil, water, ants, bees, farmers, 
drivers, produce staff, preparers of your meal.
All praise is due... 







Thursday, September 25, 2014

99 names: ar-Rahman-the All Merciful


the all merciful. ar-rahman. to forgive the thief and the liar, the murderer and the rapist. to forgive, to let go. to forgive is to let go, to not be bound by the experience of lower frequencies. they are binding.

i saw this documentary in the past, where the family of a victim of a murder linked with the murderer, visited them in their supermax, while they awaited sentencing, a lifetime in prison, or death by a needle. the reason, the victims said - the man who lost his brother, the woman who lost her son to some dude playing god - is that they needed to sleep at night, that they were so deep in turmoil, consumed by hatred and anger, that the only thing that could save them was to let it go by forgiving the murderer.

the truth and reconciliation committees set up after the lift of apartheid in south africa, performed a similar function. it created a medium for the victims of apartheid and the perpetrators to have exchange.

murderer, buju banton sings in his song by the same name - death is on your shoulder/kill i today, you cannot kill I tomorrow. he's right. there's no killing the I. the infinite, the place from which ar-Rahman can be found. all praise is due...

mercy, connotes letting go. to have that moment of peace, because life itself is the Great Equalizer. chief seattle, in his letter to the president (which may or may not be fictitious), said to president jackson, a century and a half ago, that you could continue killing the rest of us indians, whose land you trampled on, but you still have to deal with the trees and the rivers and the mountains, and air (Air Land Liquid Atmosphere Heat  - ALLAH). that this approach to living was anti-life, an antibiotic that wantonly destroyed all in sight. that, unless the conquistadors learned how to be a part of life, instead of seeking to control it, death.

death is everywhere, depechemode lamented in their 1994 album, violator. there are flies on the windscreen. it's true. there are rats running wild in the subway platforms, roaches sneaking past genocidal chemist formulations, mosquitoes who refuse to acquiesce to ddt sprays and their offshoots that sprinkle the heads of new yorkers, who mistake the mist for acid rain.

in a culture where murder is honored by stars and stripes if you kalnishkov muhammad's, mercy is needed. in a culture where the i is the greatest cause of worship, mecy is needed. our idols that we bowed down to - jay, jolie, b.pitt, drake, p.hilton, nikki - the same ones we adjust our faces to in the mirror, are for purposes of worshiping the zenith of lower self - me, myself, and i. have mercy.

mercy is needed because we need to survive. we need to get past the great illusion and the only way to do so is to walk in beauty, to walk in ar Rahman. when you walk in ar-Rahman, then judgement is unnecessary, grudges, unnecessary, jealousy, unnecessary, because expectations cease to exist other that which recognizes the divine in all. so have mercy on the murderers, the fronters, dudes and chicks who are so deep in their idol-worship of rock/rap/porn/gang/famous-author-film-maker-academic-designer-etc-famous-famous/limelight/ that they forgot how to be them-Self. mercy.

have mercy and maintain focus. have mercy and support and give, but avoid succumbing. have mercy, but watch who you bring to your house, into your bedroom. have mercy and act to free the world of prisons and bombs and high heels and running-trains and lies...but watch what you read, and how you spend your time and with who, cause osmosis, cause mercy will soon become an idea and a thought rather than path.

bismillah ar-Rahman




Wednesday, September 17, 2014

99 names of ALLAH



in the name of ALLAH, the most merciful, the most compassionate...

99 names. it is said that the Essence, as revealed in the Quran, has 99 names, or attributes that describe the Essence. i would say Him or Her, but that reduces the 1ness to a human personality.

i have my own names for God/ALLAH. they don't add up to 99. they are names that made sense, that most accurately describe my understanding of God. they are:

the Essence
the One-ness
the Absolute
the Divine
the Everything
the Nothing

as a surrenderer - hands up, head bowed - in the babylon world, i am often in a struggle with the devil (my lower self - the name you know me by) to let go and ascend to the Great Nothing, or let go and give in to the world of senses.

 to defeat this lurking diabolic creature of complacency, i realize we need tools, techniques, strategies, to grow deeper in Purpose.

the 99 names is a way to reflect on the attributes of Essence as manifested in what is around us, what is observable, and in the process, grow us deeper in becoming Nothing.

my friend sabs, suggested it. said that she'd be reflecting on one of each of the 99 names.

that's 99 weeks, i said.

yeah. are you down?

yeah...















Thursday, September 11, 2014

medicine is community iv


in the name of ALLAH, the most beneficent the most merciful.

was listening to dr. clement of the hippocratic institute in florida, speak on the importance of eating right. he referred back to 5 generations ago, as the departure point, between when we knew how to eat and when we forgot, giving way to industrialization and greed.

5 generations ago, he said, you were a farmer. you worked the land. you ate what you harvested. you brought home crops that your wife prepared. but it wasn't just you and her. you were eating at that table with your parents and uncles and aunts and kids and... but we forgot how to live...

interestingly, dr. clement, whose talk was on food, made it a point to underline the lack of community as part of the problem in poor diet.

the hippocratic institute serves as a rest/rejuvenation/healing stop for many who seek another way to engage with food and life, one that could bring healing to their ailments. many go there with chronic issues that have been un-remedied by alopathic medicine.

the hippocratic institute may be a model for the kind of school/institution that could be central to an intentional community.

are you ready for this?

all of us have indigenous origins, meaning, we all have a connection to land in a deep and meaningful way, somewhere in our ancestry. for some, as dr. clement mentioned, it may be 5 generations. for some it may be 15 generations, before kidnap and transatlantic slave-trade, before columbus and the stick-up kids...

..whatever the case...we all have a soul-ar dna/compass that points in the direction of soul-living. our school/institution than will be that of traditional medicine, of soul-living.

are you ready? what kind of medicine can you offer? of course the greatest trait in the medical arts is humility, whatever your craft.

the intentional community will have at its center-piece this school/institution of healing, of earth-shepherding, and central to this will be music-therapists tuned into Essence-frequency, art-therapists, herbalists, story/essay/journal-writers who re-create storylines, massage-therapists, listeners, farmers, shepherds...we can use all the medicine we got...


raw foods: cashews



all praise is due for this opportunity to engage with food on this frequency, to build health, to tap into the laboratory that is this body, to have the tools - $$ - to do so - and the access to medicine to experiment - grocery stores.

the last couple days, i've been going through 8oz bags of raw cashews. there is a sweetness to the soft nuts. after swallowing, they are buttery and thick in the body. the after-taste is fatty.

there's a great deal of work my digestive system is engaged in with cashews in a way it is with almonds and carrots. the factory sets off and smoke out the chimney. excess gas indicates work, indicates a lot of labor involved. cashews seem to be a lot of labor.

perhaps cashews are one of those foods that become more bio-available for the body when lightly cooked, that become alive under fire. is this possible? can fire bring about life?

according to a.t. hovanessian, (one of the champions of the raw diet whose 1970's book on raw eating seems to  be a cult classic in the raw world), anything cooked is being placed on a funeral pyre.

i've been eating raw cashews as a way to get a more fatty source into my body, other than my goto avocadoes and walnuts.

cashews, the soft sweet buttery nuts, are the staple ingredient in many raw recipes and restaurants. most raw desserts contain them and according to wikipedia, they have a high sodium content, which makes them an ideal thickener, which makes sense, since everything from raw ice creams to raw pies seem to contain either cashews or coconut or both.

in kerala, during the ayurveda course, when we'd spend half a day commuting to the clinic we'd go to a couple times a week, we'd come across cashew trees on the road. here, our driver said, handing us what looked like odd shaped apples. the cashew grew on the bottom of the fruit, the driver explained. the fruit itself was sweet, i think..

cashews are under investigation for me...



Wednesday, September 3, 2014

medicine is community iii


this past weekend i met this lady on a hill on a home in the berkshires. she worked 6 days a week and on the 7th, she met with her fellowship.

the fellowship is my home, she said, making zuchinni waffles for the crew, watching me through her feather pink specs, eat salad for breakfast.

it's been my spiritual home, she said. for 25 years. 

what's a fellowship? i asked, looking up from my journal, my third of the summer, cluttered with words that bled all over from my leaking head, slicing itself to get rid of language and memory.

a fellowship is a church away from a church, it's us gathering every sunday at someone's home for dinner and hanging out for a couple hours or all night. sometimes all night. the lady looked between me and up, toward the ceiling that was so high, another two stories could've been slapped on.

so, what  do you guys do?

we really just hang out, but our focus is on God, on how to embrace the Holy Spirit in each of us.

all praise is due, i said, looking at her deep blue eyes, and back out, at the yard that didn't end, that became forest on all sides, covered with coyote, black bears, foxes, and deer.

yes, she agreed. all praise is due.

how long has it been around? 

we started it 25 years back. it was a shoot off of a church situation that we weren't really comfortable in. the reverend was too into hell and it just didn't feel right. people went to church, and sat on the pews, and said hi and were friendly enough, but that was it really. there was no real sense of community in worship, like it was washing your hands after using the bathroom, you know? something people did, just because...

i get it, i said. i did. most masjids felt thisway. a steady disconnection has been close to constant over the years, except with a few folks, except with the few kindred spirits who it is love to break fast with, bow down and share hopes with.

a fellowship, i thought. yeah. that might be a good start, as we work on building this intentional community. getting together in rememberance of the Essence, through food, convo, Quiet work...all praise is due