Buying Wheatgrass in the Puget Sound area

I’m totally excited to have found a supplier for wheatgrass in my neighborhood! The supplier is Indianola Organics located in Indianola, WA. Just south of Kingston. They have a website, indianolaorganics.com, so you can see all the items they offer (not much) but it does include the equipment that goes with making the juice. When I talked to Teresa (I guess you could call her the wheatgrass lady), she mentioned that the best way to get the product was to order it on farmstr.

Wow, farmstr.com! What another great resource! Here is a site that brings together small farmers and consumers like myself. The concept here is that the small farmer delivers to known locations once, twice or more, times a week and the customers come pick up the merchandise. For wheatgrass, she just drops it off with your name on it and, within a few hours, you pick it up. It’s really pretty simple.

Note that the bottom of the farmstr page has a link to the pickup locations. Check to see if your city in on the list. Issaquah is not far from here.

It’s a small world! It turns out that the Redmond pickup location, KIS Farm is owned by a wonderful lady that attends my Wednesday morning yoga class. I got the best tomatoes and Pellegrini Bean starts there! If you haven’t had Pellegrini beans yet, you’re missing the best green (well yellow) beans that grow in the Puget Sound area! Nothing else compares.

Back to the Wheatgrass. A friend ordered up a few flats of which we juiced some together. This stuff was much better than the grass I’d been growing. It’s sweet and rich in flavor; genuinely smooth on the pallet. The price is totally reasonable too!

Ok, to sum things up.

Buy Wheatgrass from IndianolaOrganics via Farmstr and if you pickup at the KIS Farm, take a look around and maybe pick up some dirt! They sell the best topsoil this side of the Cascades.

One last thing. If you haven’t read Why Suffer by Ann Wigmore, it’s a great simple read. In just a few short hours you can learn a significant part of the back story of wheatgrass!

Green day!

Forgiveness

Forgiveness means giving up all hope of a better past.

What a beautiful explanation for forgiveness. What happened, has happened. It’s in the past now. There is no changing what transpired. No matter how many times you relive the experience, it doesn’t change. Forgiveness is a realization of this fact and that you can give up on trying to change how it transpired.

It’s like waking up or becoming conscious at the end of a dream. The dream has happened, it might be that a bear chased you up a tree or you fell out of a plane and the feelings raise your heartbeat and shock you awake – and then you can’t let go of what happened! You place yourself back in the path of the bear and pretend there was a taser by your side and you use it to stop the bear. Or, you practice a kick against the bear over and over again until you find the most sensitive spot and then relive the dream applying the perfect kick to the bear in order to keep it from chasing you up the tree.

You can’t change what happened, but you can change how you feel about it right now.

It’s ok to forgive.

It’s ok to be forgiven.

A friend sent me a link to the Greater Good website where I found a couple really nice videos about forgiveness. The one that I’d like to duplicate here is the one titled The Ancient Heart of Forgiveness. It’s 56:56 minutes long and absolutely worth the time.

There are a couple shorter videos on the site that are simply clips of this longer one.

His words are beautiful. His storytelling is masterful. It was just simply perfect for me today.

Good Day.

Dandelion Root Powder

A number of months ago, I came across an article about an old man that used dandelion root powder to treat his cancerous prostate back to health. A copy of that article can be found one Rense.com here. The article seemed reasonable and I read it a number of times to see if I could find discrediting discrepancies. Well, I couldn’t.

Generally, I have an eye for filtering out articles that are just fluff or misleading propaganda, but this article has a recipe for making the powder that rings true with what I’ve studied and what I’ve already proven to myself to be the truth.

I would encourage you to go read the article. If the article is no longer on Rense.com (as linked to above) just Google up “dandelion root powder prostate cure” and it will most likely be one of the top hits.

Back to the recipe; I’ve cut the important parts from the article and quoted them here:

To make the powder from the dandelion root you must follow my directions to the letter. Any changes and it won’t work. Dig a handful of dandelion roots any time of the year, it doesn’t matter. Cut the leaves off just below the crown. DO NOT WASH. Then they must be dried around 100 degrees. I do it in an incubator with no water. You can also dry them under a heat light bulb if you raise or lower it so it’s 100 degrees. You can also use the sun or put them in the attic if it’s not too hot. It takes about 5 or 6 days in the incubator. I have not done this all the way under the heat light. When you break a root and it snaps it is ready to powder. Take an old iron frying pan and a clean hammer. Take one root at a time and place in the frying pan and start tapping. Don’t hit hard or it will fly all over the place. I put my hand around the root to keep most of it in the pan. If it sticks to the hammer and pan, and doesn’t crumble in your fingers, it isn’t dry enough. Keep it up until you have enough to start. It takes about 20 minutes to ? hour to prepare enough for a week. When you get used to it you can go much faster.

I have an old vessel that druggists used to pound pills, this goes much faster. DO NOT USE AN ELECTRIC GRINDER, it won’t work if you do. You lose too much of the good part in dust. You must do it as I have said or don’t do it at all. I’ve tried shortcuts, but it seems someone was looking over my shoulder, and I know when I made a mistake. I’m just an old farmer and not a scientist, so I wouldn’t know the correct amount to take on my own. Now take a little over one half teaspoon once a day at any time and mix it with water, orange juice, etc.. Do not use in soft drinks, liquor, or anything hot. When mixed, use it all. Don’t let it stand around. Keep the power in a dry place. After taking it three or four days, you will feel good, but nothing else. That is because your blood is building up. When you blood is happy, you’re happy. In most cases, this will build your immune system in from three days to three weeks to the point it takes back control of cancer cells and thus the cancer stops spreading. In most cases it is going to help. There is no body feeling as it works. You just feel a little better each week. After three weeks most of the pain will be gone in your back and you know it’s working if you had pain there like I did. If you have bone cancer in the spine, it will take three months to work. This is not an overnight cure. It took a while to get in this condition and it will take a while for your body to heal. The sooner you start, the quicker you will be over cancer. Young people heal faster than old people, but it will help at any age. I know because I’m 80 and have been taking it for over three years.

Going back to not washing the roots and leaving a little soil on them, it is for your own good. A good bit of immunity comes from the soil, it starts as soon as you are born. Your fingers touch something, and you put them in your mouth. A little dirt at first, and more as you grow older and start crawling. Then everything you touch goes in the mouth. When children go outside to play and when they come in, they are the dirtiest around the mouth and hand. The hands go in their mouths no matter how dirty they are. Many diseases and bacteria live in the ground, but they don’t seem to cause any trouble but it does build up the immune system. Some animals can’t live if they can’t eat a certain amount of soil. If you read this article over, you will see it! all goes back to common sense. I wish all of you people with cancer and other problems the best.

Things that stand out as key are:

  • Do not heat
  • Do not wash
  • Do not mix with bad foods

Because I like to do projects like this, I set out to create some powder that I could experience on my own. The only difference was that instead of using the tools that he mentions, I would use my own but still honor the principle that the medicinal properties are heat sensitive and water soluble – thus no heating and no washing.

Last week I visited a friend’s place where I’d seen beautiful dandelions earlier this spring. She doesn’t use chemicals on her plants and honors the spirit of the land. I figured this would be a perfect place to dig. The tool that I used was a pick-axe. When you dig a dandelion root, the pointy part of the pick will allow you to soften the ground so you can easily pull the weed and get a large section of the root. Using this technique, I dug a 1 gallon pale full of dandelions (tops and roots). The only cleaning that I did was to tap the root on the handle of the pick in order to get most the dirt off.

When I got home, I clipped the leaves off just down to the crown of the plant. I didn’t take clear of the tops like I should have, but if I’d spent more effort to keep them clean I could have made juice from them. I’ll take better care next time. After clipping, I also tapped them again to see if I could get more dirt off them before putting them in the dehydrator.

I set the dehydrator at 105 degrees knowing that enzymes break down when you heat vegetables above about 118 degrees. The original recipe calls for 100.

Five days later, I set to work cleaning the wood hard roots.

cleaningRoot  

As expected, each root shriveled down to next to nothing and after brushing the bulk of the remaining dirt, I had a plate full of roots.

allroots

Here is where my process differed slightly from the old farmer’s technique. I used a Vitamix to ground up the roots to something that could then be ground further with a mortar and pestle.

grinding

If you grind anything too long in a Vitamix, you’ll heat it up. Thus, you have to be careful to remove the flour from the chunks. The flour will heat up quickly if not removed. Notice in the picture (above) that I’ve got a sifting screen. I placed some of the roots in the blender and ground for a few seconds. I then waited for the dust to settle in the blender and I sifted the chunks from the flour. You can see that on the paper towel.

Next, I spent over an hour hand grinding the fine chunks down into a powder. Note that when hand grinding the product will heat up. Any time you apply force to break something down, it generates a little heat. To help mitigate this, I would grind for a while and let it cool. This worked well because it’s tough work! I needed to rest on a regular basis.

powder

When I dug the small bucket of dandelions, I thought that I wouldn’t get much product. Well, as it turns out, I got nearly two cups! This is way more than I was expecting. Next time, I’ll be a bit more selective with the plants and reduce the quantity. I’d rather have fresh powder than year old stuff.

To see if I’d reduced it down correctly, I put a teaspoon worth in a small amount of water, stirred it until it was absorbed and gulped it down. There were still chunks that were big enough to chew – which I would guess would be ok, but the bulk was fine enough to swallow without worry. After rinsing and chasing it with what was left on the edge of the glass, I noticed that there was a few grains of dirt in the bottom of the glass.

Dirt. Yum.

At this point, I packed a few jell caps with the powder. I measured the quantity and 2 -3 jell caps add up to ½ teaspoon.

Now the fun part will be to include this in my diet in some useful way. If it really does improve the immune system, well, I’ll look to see if I get a cold this fall.

Anyone want some dandelion powder?

Good Day!

 

More good words about dandelion root powder.

http://www.cancerdefeated.com/this-weed-everybody-hates-could-cure-cancer/2029/

Another link that talks about it, but no testimonial.

http://institutefornaturalhealing.com/2013/10/its-a-weed-right-no-its-a-cancer-fighting-superfood/

Time to come back to blogging

Wow. It’s been a long time. The only thing that I’ve done with my blog since October 20th of last year is use it for the sidebar links. Well, that’s about to change. Now that I’m not working, I’m going to make it a point to craft my ideas into blog-able articles and post them again.

Oh, and I’ve taken the last month off! This is the first summer that I can remember where I haven’t had to do anything. A few days ago I got together with my oldest daughter, that I hadn’t seen in over a month, and you should have seen the look on her face – ‘Dad, I hardly recognize you!’ Well, I’ve picked up a tan! Yep. Now that I’ve escaped the system, I’ve had time to produce some vitamin D. I don’t think my daughters have ever seen me tan before. 🙂

Next adventure: figure out how to make money without working for someone else.

Now, back to blogging!

The Concept of Aliveness

So, it’s been a while. Its feeling like it’s time to share again. My thoughts keep coming back to the concept of aliveness that was written in Steven School book Truth Illuminated, Alchemy Survival Guide. I wrote a bit about that here: Back to School with The Great Work. For a specific reference, I’ve brought the quote forward:

The true magnetic principle of this salt is often misunderstood, it is not magnetic to metals, it acts as a magnet by the fact that it attracts the universal life force unto itself, the hidden astral spirit which animates all things on earth and thus provides the universal life force to the animated body. The salt acts as a covering for this invisible life force which is the spirit of god. In the case of a tree for example, the wood represents the body, if it contains the invisible spirit or life force, then it is animated and is considered to be alive, however if the universal spirit leaves the tree, then it is no longer vivified, and it is now considered to be dead.

This statement is really pretty cut and dry. It states as fact what is inherently obvious. Let’s apply some western thinking to this and carve up the parts. Maybe we can see how they fit back together.

  • The true magnetic principle – When something is alive, the universal life force is attached. There is a connection that makes life ‘sticky’. If life force where to come and go as it pleases, growth would probably be defined differently.
  • Universal life force – There is an energy that animates material (bodies) in a purposeful way. This energy is universal (singular) and, when present, it is what we notice (or observe) the signs of life in something.
  • Hidden astral spirit – Like ultra violet light, it exists but generally goes unnoticed. Like the air, we don’t see it, but we can still experience it.
  • Life and Death – It’s one or the other, not both. You can die, but as you do it’s all just another state of living. There are many different ways to die, but death is the point of transition.
  • Body – The part that remains after death. It’s the collection of substances gathered during the living process.

From my point of view, I interpret the author’s words to mean that The Philosopher’s Stone is partly made of a substance that is alive. I would probably go as far as to say that the substance is consciousness and it is animated in some way.

My thoughts drift back to some words from Bruce H. Lipton in The Biology of Belief (page 158):

On that early morning in the Caribbean, I realized that even the “winners” in our Darwinian world are losers because we are one with a bigger Universe/God. The cell engages in behavior when its brain, the membrane, responds to environmental signals. In fact, every functional protein in our body is made as a complementary “image” of an environmental signal. If a protein did not have a complimentary signal to couple with, it would not function. This means, as I concluded in that “aha!” moment, that every protein in our bodies is a physical/electromagnetic complement to something in the environment. Because we are machines made out of protein, by definition we are made in the image of the environment, that environment being the Universe, or to many, God.

If you can recall, I’ve brought up the good Dr. Lipton in previous articles. Just search or “Lipton” in the search control (upper right) and you’ll find a number of references.

The key idea from his work is that cells respond to stimuli. They are alive as long as you can provide the stimuli and the associated function is carried out.

What I would add to this is that the Universal Life Force is a stimulus. It is most likely the key stimulus that drives the cell to function.

Let’s take this smaller. Another example that I like to use is the retina in the eye. It is sensitive enough to measure a single photon of light. When you see it from Dr. Lipton’s point of view, the stimuli is the photon of light. The function is the molecule twisting to signal the nerve so that the brain gets the signal that there is the, say, color red present.

One thing that bugs me about Dr. Lipton’s work is that he seems to believe that within the cell, there are random collisions where molecules or atoms come together in order to build the proteins that he talks about. Basically, it’s the idea that there is enough stuff in the primordial soup that exists within the cell that the balance between stimuli and function is maintained. It’s kind of a leap of faith. You can think of it as: “things just find each other”.

That just doesn’t cut it for me.

If you can imagine the distances on an atomic level within a cell, they are enormous! If we had to wait for a collision to occur, we would have to deal with probability theory on a grand scale. Likewise, the inefficiency of all the stimuli floating around within the cell would take the cells from one extreme to another. There would always be a state of ‘panic’ within the cell. Yet, the observation is that there really is no panic on the inside of the cell (unless something goes wrong).

This leads me to believe that there is conscious behavior that brings the stimuli and function together. There is something that guides two molecules to come together. There is something purposeful at work that greatly increases the efficiency of the system.

This is where we come back to the Universal Life Force energy. In order for it to work, there must be some form of consciousness behind that energy. It must know what is going on and what is needed. Just like our bodies breath, digest and circulate fluids for us, this same force must also perform similar operations on a pure cellular level or the atomic level.

It seems to be that because this functionality is so vital to us, we simply overlook it. Dr. Lipton has a great diagram on page 137 that looks like this:

SubconsciousMind

In the relative vastness of space, there is very little that we are conscious of. In fact, if our very lives depended on being conscious of life, we would surely never would have come into existence.

This brings us back to the Concept of Aliveness. From my current point of view:

  • Life is a function of the subconscious mind.
  • There is intention in the activities that demonstrate Aliveness.
  • There is wisdom in the actions.

What is also interesting is that the aspects of mind are the same between everything that is animated by this mind. The consciousness that moves the elements within a cell in our body would be logically the same consciousness that moves the elements within anything else that’s living that has a similar function. In other words, the consciousness that exists within the tree to keep it alive would also be the consciousness that lives and functions within us.

That same consciousness must have a very good understanding of its environment so that it knows when to be present and when to vacate.

Coming back to death. When we die, it’s an instantaneous activity. It’s as if this Life Force Energy (subconscious mind, living mind) knows exactly when to leave and every cell of the body transitions at the exact same moment. It is an activity of the mind. It’s like turning off an electromagnetic magnet.

A follow up question to Aliveness might be, where is life found?

By current standards, western science pretty much says that if it’s biological, it’s a living system. Well, they’ve completely discounted the concept of consciousness. Without consciousness, there is nothing to direct the function of the matter. Without consciousness, all the matter would be primordial soup!

When you consider consciousness as being the key attribute to life, you then have to wonder about the mineral kingdom. There are clear rules that minerals follow, minerals can get ordered – crystallized. Might there be some subtle consciousness involved here? Even though the minerals do not follow the biological standard of ‘activity and reproduction’, are the minerals not active when the crystals are growing?

It feels like it would be correct to say that minerals can ‘grow’ into crystals and that this process might be fostered by consciousness.

Still, makes me wonder.

To sum this up, I believe that the Concept of Aliveness is backed by consciousness and because consciousness can be just about anywhere, it would lead me to believe that there is more life present around us than what is currently believed.

Now, one has to wonder if it is possible to setup an interesting enough environment that consciousness would want to get involved. Is that possible? Is that what The Great Work is all about?

I think I’ll over saturate some water with salt and watch the crystals grow as the water evaporates.

Good day.