THE THREE KEYS TO LIVING A SPIRITUAL LIFE

The first key to living a spiritual life is physical purity.
" He who kills, kills himself, and whoso eats the flesh of slain beasts, eats of the
body of death."

The second key to living a spiritual life is mental purity.
"It is easier to purify the corporeal body than the spiritual. For diet and baths can
accomplish the former, but pure thoughts are required for the soul."

The third key to living a spiritual life is right thinking.
Be free! Learn to know liberty! Think for thyself! Study thy Creator in all things,
and in thyself in particular!

GREEN FOR LIFE
by
Victoria Boutenko

"In Green for Life, Victoria gives us a unique, yet simple and
delicious strategy for boosting our nutritional levels. Green smoothies
are nothing short of revolutionary! I would recommend this book
to just about anyone. It meets the needs of those who are
seeking to move from a standard American diet into a healthier
lifestyle, as well as those who have 'been raw' for years!"
Phyllis Linn, raw food enthusiast.

This amazing new nutrition book may be purchased by email from the author at:
Victoria@rawfamily.com
or by mail from:
Raw food Publishing,
P.O. Box 172,
Ashland, OR 97520
541-488-8865

Synopsis of, Green for Life:

My husband, our two youngest children, and I have
been eating an only raw foods diet since January of
1994, more than eleven years. We went on this radical diet
out of complete despair when our medical doctors didn't
leave us any chances to recover from our horrible illnesses.

By turning off the pilot in our stove and discontinuing all cooking,
we were able to heal all of our incurable, life-threatening diseases.

After several years of being raw foodists, however, each one
of us began to feel like we had reached a plateau where our
healing process stopped and even somewhat began to go backwards.

A burning question began to grow stronger in my heart with each day.
"Is there anything missing in our diet?" The answer would come right
away: "Nope. Nothing could be better than a raw food diet."

Yet, however tiny, the unwanted signs of less than perfect
health kept surfacing in minor but noticeable symptoms
such as a wart on a hand or a gray hair that brought doubts
and questions about the completeness of the raw food diet
in its present form.

In my eager quest,I started collecting data about every
single food that existed for humans. After many wrong
guesses, I finally found the correct answer. I found one
particular food group that matched ALL human nutritional
needs: GREENS.

The truth is, in my family, we were not eating enough greens.
Moreover, we did not like them. We knew that greens were
important, but we never heard anywhere exactly how much
greens we needed in our diet.

We had only a vague recommendation to eat as much as possible.
In order to find out how much greens we needed to eat, I
decided to study the eating habits of chimpanzees since they
are one of the closest creatures to human beings.

"Modern people and chimpanzees share an estimated
99.4% of our DNA sequence, making us more closely
related to each other than either is to any other animal
species."

Despite all the scientific research, human health is
continuously declining. Many nutritionists connect
human health problems with nutritional deficiencies.

Understanding chimpanzees' eating habits may help us
better understand human dietary needs.

The two major food groups for chimpanzees are fruits and greens.
Please do not confuse greens with root vegetables like carrots,
beets, or potatoes. Also do not confuse greens with non-sweet
fruits like cucumbers, tomatoes, zucchini, and bell peppers.

According to Jane Goodall, a world famous researcher of chimpanzees,
the percentage of time that chimpanzees spend eating greens in
relation to the rest of their diet varies from 25-50% depending
on the season.

Two to seven percent of their diet is pith and bark.
(Piths are the stems and more fibrous parts of plants.)
When the trees are blooming, in March and April, chimpanzees
consume blossoms, up to 10% of their [diet] ratio.

Chimpanzees do not eat very many nuts, but their diet could
be up to 5% seeds. Also, particularly in November, they
consume small amounts of insects and even small animals,
however, Goodall says this part of their diet is irregular
and insignificant, as they could go months and months without
consuming any animals, and seem to have no ill effects.

Let us compare the standard American diet with that of
chimpanzees. They look totally different. These
two diets hardly have anything in common! We humans eat
mostly things that chimpanzees don't eat at all, like cooked
starchy foods, oils, butter, yogurt, cheese, hamburgers, etc.

While most of our vegetables are roots, wild chimpanzees
almost never eat root vegetables unless there is a drought
and fruits and greens are unavailable. It is the intake of
greens that has declined most dramatically in the human diet.
Our consumption of greens has generally shrunk to the two
wilted iceberg lettuce leaves on our sandwich.

Let us compare the standard American diet with an average
diet of a typical raw foodist. I think that a raw food diet
demonstrates a vast improvement over the regular diet.

Firstly, all ingredients in a raw diet are uncooked, and full
of enzymes and vitamins; thus the raw food diet is like a
revolution in comparison with the standard American diet.
That explains why so many people reported that they instantly
felt better on a raw diet.

Raw fooders eat a lot of fruit, especially if we keep in mind
that bell-peppers, cucumbers, zucchini, and tomatoes are also
fruits. However, even though raw-foodists typically consume
noticeably more greens than people on an average mainstream diet,
greens almost never constitute 45 percent of their food. [As in the
typical chimpanzee diet.]

So what do raw foodists eat in place of their
missing greens? The answer is: most people on a raw food
diet consume large amounts of fruits, nuts and seeds. Often
they use nuts as a substitute for carbohydrates, particularly
when trying to mimic cooked dishes with raw ingredients,
even though nuts are 70-80% fat.

Also, raw foodists increase their consumption of oils and
avocados because the most common way of eating salads, their
main staple, is to have it mixed with dressing, sauce or guacamole.
Another big quota in a typical raw diet belongs to root vegetables
mostly due to juicing. Also, roots taste sweeter than greens and
thus comprise a large portion of raw salads.

Considering all of these factors, when we compare the
typical raw food diet with the chimpanzee diet, we can clearly
see that there are two main ways to further improve our
individual eating patterns: to increase our consumption of
greens, and to reduce our intake of nuts, seeds, and oils.

Another striking characteristic aspect of the chimpanzee
eating pattern is that they never eat in the late afternoon or
evening.

The more I read about the nutritional content of greens,
the more I became convinced that greens were the most
important food for humans. If I could only find a way to
enjoy them enough to consume the optimal quantity needed
to become perfectly healthy!

I tried countless times to force myself to eat large amounts
of greens in the form of salad or by themselves, only to
discover that I was not physically able to do that. After about
two cups of shredded greens I would either have heartburn
or nausea.

Greens possess more valuable nutrients than any other food group,
but all these nutrients are stored inside the cells of plants.
To release all the valuable nutrients from within the the cells,
the cell walls need to be ruptured.

This is why I decided to try to"chew" my greens in the Vitamix
Blender. First I blended a bunch of kale with water. I was
thinking, "I will just close my eyes and nose and drink it."

But as soon as I opened the lid, I closed it again
quickly because I felt queasy from the strong, wheat grass
smell. That dark green, almost black mixture was totally
unconsumable. After some brainstorming, I added several
bananas and blended it again. And that was when the magic
began!

I slowly, and with some trepidation, removed the lid
and sniffed the air, and to my greatest surprise this bright
green concoction smelled very pleasant. I cautiously tasted a
sip and was exhilarated! It was better than tasty! Not too
sweet, not too bitter, it was the most unusual taste I had ever
tried, and I could describe it in one word: freshness.

When I first started drinking green smoothies, I didn't mention
it to anybody and did not expect anything significant to happen.
Since I did not have any big health problems, I was not pursuing
any dramatic changes. I just didn't want to age so noticeably.

However, after about a month of erratic green smoothie drinking,
two moles and a wart I had since early childhood peeled off my
body. I felt more energized than ever before, and started sharing
my experience with my family and friends.

The next thing I noticed was that those cravings I had occasionally
for heavy foods like nuts or crackers, especially in the evenings, had
totally disappeared.

I noticed that many of the wrinkles on my face went away and
I began to hear compliments from other people about my fresh look.
My nails became stronger, my vision sharpened and I had a wonderful
taste in my mouth, even upon waking in the morning (pleasure I hadn't
had since youth).

My dream had come true at last! I was consuming plenty
of greens every day. I began to feel lighter and my energy
increased. My tastes started to change. I discovered that my
body was so starved for greens that for several weeks, I lived
almost entirely on green smoothies.

Plain fruits and vegetables became much more desirable for me
and my cravings for fatty foods declined dramatically. When I
began to drink green smoothies, I noticed right away that those
kinds of cravings disappeared.

I purchased an additional Vitamix blender for my office.
Whenever friends or customers came in, they saw a big
green cup next to my computer and I treated them to a sample
of my new discovery. To my great satisfaction, everybody
loved it, despite their different dietary habits.

Inspired by the warm reception, I wrote an article "Ode to
Green Smoothie" and emailed it to all those in my Internet
address book. Almost instantly I began to receive strong,
positive feedback and many detailed testimonials from my
friends, students, and customers.

While I felt compelled to do more research, it looked like the
multiple benefits of green smoothie became obvious to everybody
who tried them, and the number of people who were drinking green
smoothie turned into a "green wave," growing rapidly every day.

[This above excerpt is just a sample of the revolutionary information in,
Green for Life.]

Victoria Boutenko teaches classes on raw food at South Oregon University
and, as a result of her teachings, many raw food communities have been formed throughout the world. Victoria and her family have lived on a 100% raw food diet since 1994 and all four have cured their incurable diseases. The transformation of Victoria's family to raw food is described in her book, Raw Family. Victoria is also the author of 12 Steps to Raw Foods. Her two children have written a book containing delicious raw food recipes called Eating without Heating.

Ode to Green Smoothie
by
Victoria Boutenko

www.rawfamily.com

As the Russian proverb says: New... is something old, that has been long
forgotten. Last summer I re-discovered green smoothies. What do I mean by green smoothie? Here is one of my favorite recipes: 4 ripe pears, 1 bunch of parsley and 4 cups of water. Blended well.

This smoothie looks very green, but it tastes like fruit. I like green smoothies
so much that I bought an extra blender and placed it in my office, so that 1
could make green smoothies throughout the day. More than half of all the food I've had in last several months have been green smoothies.

I have so much more energy and clarity that I have removed green juices from my diet. (Juicing has been something that I've been doing regularly for years.) Green smoothies have numerous benefits for human health.

1. Green smoothies are very nutritious. I believe that the ratio in them is optimal for human consumption: at about 60%... ripe organic fruit mixed with about 40%... organic green vegetables.

2. Green smoothies are easy to digest. When blended well, all the valuable nutrients in these fruits and veggies become homogenized, or divided into
such small particles that it becomes easy for the body to assimilate these
nutrients, the green smoothies literally start to get absorbed in your mouth.

3. Green smoothies, as apposed to juices, are a complete food because they still have fiber.

4. Green smoothies belong to the most palatable dishes for all humans of all
ages. With a ratio of fruits to veggies as 60:40, the fruit taste dominates the
flavor, yet at the same time the green vegetables balance out the sweetness
of the fruit, adding nice zest to it. Green smoothies are simply the best tasting
dishes for the majority of adults and children.

I always make extra smoothie and offer it to my friends and customers. Some
of them eat a standard American diet. They all finished their big cup of green smoothies with complements. They were quite surprised that something so
green could taste so nice and sweet.

5. By consuming two or three cups of green smoothies daily you will consume
enough of greens for the day to nourish your body, and they will be well
assimilated. Many people do not consume enough of greens, even those
who stay on a raw food diet. The molecule of chlorophyll has only one atom
that makes it different from a molecule of human blood. According to
teachings of Dr. Ann Wigmore, to consume chlorophyll is like receiving a
healthy blood transfusion.

6. Green smoothies are easy to make, and quick to clean up after. Many people told me that they do not consume green juices on a regular basis because it is time consuming to prepare green juices and clean the equipment after juicing, or to drive to the juice bar.

7. Green smoothies are perfect food for children of all ages, including babies
of six or more months old when introducing new food to them after mother's
milk. Of course you have to be careful and slowly increase the amount off
smoothies to avoid food allergies.

8. When you consume your greens in the form of green smoothies, you can
greatly reduce the consumption of oils and salt in your diet.

9. Regular consumption of Green smoothies forms a good habit of eating
greens. Several people told me that after a couple of weeks of drinking green
smoothies, they started to crave and enjoy eating more greens. Eating
enough of green vegetable is often a problem with many people, especially in
children.

10. Green smoothies can easily be freshly made at any juice bar, restaurant or
health food store for the great convenience of health-oriented customers.

I encourage the readers of this article to start playing with green smoothies,
and to discover the many joys and benefits of this wonderful delicious and
nutritious addition to the menu.

Here are more ideas for your green creations.

Some of my favorite greens to add to green smoothies: parsley, spinach,,
celery, kale and romaine. My favorite fruits for green smoothies are: pears,
peaches, nectarines, bananas, mangoes and apples. Strawberries and
raspberries taste superb in green smoothies, when combined with ripe bananas.

Delicious combinations.

Mango-parsley
2 large mangos
1 bunch parsley
Water

Peach-spinach
6 peaches
2 handfuls of spinach Water

Mango-weeds
2 mangos
1 handful of lambs quarters,
stinging nettles, purslane, etc.
Water

Strawberry-banana- romaine
1-cup strawberries
2 bananas
1/2 bunch romaine
Water

Apple-kale-lemon
4 apples
juice of 1/2 lemon
4-5 leaves of kale
Water

Kiwi-banana-celery
4 very ripe kiwis
1 ripe banana
3 stalks of celery
Water

Pear-kale-mint
4 ripe pears
4-5 leaves of kale
1/2 bunch of mint
Water

Finger banana-spinach
10 finger-bananas
2 handfuls of spinach
Water

Bosc pear-raspbesrry-kale
3 bosc pears
1 handful of raspberries
4-5 leaves of kale
Water