Blasphemy is more complicated than the simple act of cursing God. It is an attempt to remove our cultural eyeglasses, or at least grind the lenses to make our focus broader, clearer. There are deep strictures against removing these eyeglasses, for without them, our culture would fall apart. Question Christianity, damned heathen. Question Capitalism, Pinko Liberal. Question Democracy, ungrateful wretch. Question science, just plain stupid.
—Derrick Jensen, A Language Older Than Words

If you are reading this newsletter, it is probably because you are suffering, and you are tired of all the gold-stamped, socially accepted, shrink-wrapped, commercial “solutions” that have failed you again and again. So many of the popular diet plans, medications, therapies, surgeries, dogmas, and new-age techniques are marketed in insidious ways, convincing you that you’re the one who’s out of balance—chemically, hormonally, calorically, or otherwise. If that’s the case, I will tell you what I wish someone had told me thirty-five years ago: You are suffering because you have surrendered your power to the social juggernaut.

The Health Sciences

Whether sanctioned by the government, medical science, or industry, most of the information and products offered in the name of the “health sciences” is dangerously misguided. Our culture aggressively promotes the ingestion of substances that do not belong in the body. Profit-driven social forces, dressed up as well-intentioned authorities, are slowly but surely destroying us all. Humankind is being ravaged by cancer, infertility, autism, diabetes, obesity, substance abuse, mental illness, and countless other manifestations of toxic life choices! We are destroying our blood chemistry and triggering terrible mutations with every unsustainable, life-degenerating choice we make.

Our herd beliefs are not only making us sick and fat and sad, but they are robbing us of the joys of autonomy and innovation. We will not find solutions at fancy fundraisers, in laboratories, or in any big-name institutions until we have profoundly changed our social blueprint. That means opting out of the herd, rejecting the status quo, and choosing life, glorious life, with our every breath, thought, purchase, and action. We cannot afford to wait for others to save us—to invent a miracle pill for the heart, liver, skin, or whatever else is ailing us—as we inhabit increasingly compromised, acidic bodies.

It’s a mad, brainwashed group that follows and feeds this juggernaut that would run us over, body and soul. As long as you subscribe to this cultural paradigm, you will drive yourself crazy trying to create the kind of life and body you want. You must begin right now to sow the seeds of what you want to grow. The first step is to identify those things in your current paradigm that do not support life, that are fundamentally life-deteriorating. Like a gardener, train your eye to identify the network of weeds that are crowding your life and choking off your life force.

The Cattle Call Library

Think of the cultural paradigm as a library of all the conventional wisdom that has accumulated over years of modern living. For example, if you want to lose weight or feel healthier, you go to the Cattle Call Library and pull out all the popular programs and prescriptions available on health and weight loss. You try out the popular medications, procedures, recreations, spa treatments, therapies, vitamin supplements, and even some really alternative ideas like eating only raw, vegetarian foods. If you’re lucky, you might actually lose some weight and feel better than before, but deep down, you know it’s only temporary and you’re still in a rut. You still don’t love or even like your body all that much.

You are getting tired of putting so much effort into being a little less heavy, a little more youthful-looking, a little more fashionable. Eventually, you can’t keep it up any longer. Your symptoms and weight return with a vengeance. Dissatisfaction and depression come with them. You like yourself less and less. Meanwhile, many other parts of your life feel out of whack, so you peruse other aisles of the Cattle Call Library, looking for other solutions, tapping the fountainhead of conventional wisdom in each category. Eventually, after trying and getting your hopes up and ultimately failing at program after program, you become utterly dispirited. You concede that this is just life and you try to cozy up to the idea. End of story.

What you don’t realize is that the Cattle Call Library is not some inanimate entity fixed in stone for all eternity. It relies on the membership of the herd, and is actually a living, breathing organism like any other—though bigger and greedier than most. It needs energy to survive, and so it feeds on all the life force it can pull into itself. It has pulled you in, along with most of the people you know.

The Illusion of Choice

Now, if you can, try to see that your mind is locked in this Cattle Call Library, which feeds on your consciousness and subconscious, stocking its institutional shelves with more of the same information that serves no one but itself. It tells you what to think, whom to follow, and what to value. What’s truly disturbing is that you might think you are doing things your way—that you have chosen a lifestyle that reflects your creativity, your preferences, your style, when really you’ve been manipulated to operate under the illusion of autonomy. The herd mentality is fed all kinds of programs for “edgy,” “indie,” “rebellious,” “cool,” “artistic,” “avant-garde,” etc. That’s the whole idea: you’re not supposed to know you’re just falling into line like the good livestock you are. You’re supposed to think you’re working for yourself.

As long as you get your information from the Cattle Call Library, you will stumble through life with blinders on. When you decide you want real health, beauty, and wholeness, you will have to dare to be different, to see with a whole new set of eyes. Real, transformative change requires paradigm jumping—which, for most people, is scarier than cliff-diving! But once you’ve overcome your fears and experienced the thrill of seeing the world with your own eyes, you’ll wonder why you waited so long to give it a try.

Yes, a better world awaits, but you will have to dig deep to reclaim your power and realign yourself with nature’s laws. Remember, every moment of your life is an opportunity to exercise autonomy, to make life-generating choices, to care for your body not like some cheap commodity, but like the amazing organism that it is. Imagine waking up each morning feeling rejuvenated, in a body that looks better au natural than all dolled up. Imagine feeling like a million bucks in nothing more than old jeans and a T-shirt—good-bye, expensive designer clothes! Imagine glowing with freshness and generosity born of true inner beauty and confidence. This is all within your reach, in this lifetime—not in some fantasy world that is dangled on a stick before your nose so that you’ll always reach but never arrive.

Our culture is cursed by vanity, greed, and narcissism. It has certainly made a mockery of our ability to care for our own bodies. We live in a world of illusions—trendy clothes, chemically whitened teeth, organ-slicing liposuction, yo-yo dieting, endless dietary supplements, gastric bypass surgery, plastic surgery, and medications for every diagnosis—all of which come at a terrible price. These are illusions that can kill.

If you wish to live and thrive, it’s time to stop giving your power away. Dare to diverge from the herd. Begin with your mindset and your knowledge base. Don’t let yourself be bullied into leading a life you don’t want to live!

This concludes our fourth lesson. In next week’s edition of The Rose Program Insider, we will build on this discussion with the fundamentals of cleansing.

The Freezer

When you have an afternoon or evening to spend some time in the kitchen, fill up the freezer with some quick and easy meal options to make life easier on more hectic days.

I freeze my favorite zucchini pesto (zucchini, lemon juice, stevia, celery, basil, and red pepper blended with just enough water to keep the blades moving) and Doris’s Zucchini Hummus Dressing in a large ice cube tray. Place the tray in a Ziploc baggie, and you’ll have perfect serving sizes to pop out and defrost for salads, spaghetti squash, or steamed veggies. This is an opportunity to stockpile your own homemade marinara or puttanesca sauce as well. I also like to use Doris’s frozen dessert recipes in one day, freezing a Chocolate Avocado Pudding and Sweet Potato Ice Cream to have later for dessert options.

And last but not least, I fill reused 32-oz containers with my favorite soups and stews. Reheating food is never optimal, but this lifestyle should always be fun and livable. Puree cauliflower, make an Asian-fusion carrot-ginger soup, or freeze some basic veggie stock. This way, after a long day, or when your children bring friends over, or you just can’t bear to spend time in the galley, you can simply grab ’n’ go!

Roasted Eggplant Salad with Spinach

1 large eggplant, cut into ¾-inch slices
½ cup chopped parsley, fresh oregano, or basil
2 garlic cloves, minced
Drizzle of olive oil
Sea salt and black pepper to taste
1 bunch fresh spinach, chopped
Lemon-stevia dressing
Raw goat cheese, grated (optional)

Preheat oven to 400°F. Combine eggplant, herbs, garlic, olive oil, salt and pepper so the eggplant slices are evenly coated, and place in a baking dish. Bake for 15 minutes, turning once. Enjoy on a bed of spinach tossed with lemon-stevia dressing. Garnish with grated raw goat cheese, if desired.

Roasted Zucchini Salad

2–3 medium zucchini, cubed
2 cloves garlic, minced
½ cup chopped parsley
1 tbsp organic butter
Sea salt and black pepper to taste
1 bunch fresh spinach, chopped
Lemon-stevia dressing
Raw pine nuts (optional)
Fresh mint and basil leaves (optional)

Preheat oven to 400°F. Combine zucchini, garlic, parsley, butter, salt and pepper so the zucchini is evenly coated. Bake for 15 minutes, turning once. Enjoy on a bed of spinach with lemon-stevia dressing. Garnish with raw pine nuts, fresh mint, and/or basil, if desired.

Are you drawn to the idea of cleansing but not entirely sure why? Or do you wonder why cleansing is even necessary if you already shower and use deodorant every day? Cleansinghas become a fashionable term that is bandied about but is still poorly understood. Today, we will explore the core principles of cleansing, and why it is so important in the context of modern living.

Alkalinity v. Acidity
Thus far, we’ve learned about how life force energy works: it’s all about conductivity pulsing without obstruction. The next thing to understand is that the human body is alkaline. Acidic substances, which make up the bulk of today’s mainstream diet, do not conduct energy as alkaline substances do. The more sun-fed and hydrating a food is, the more rapidly it pulses and conducts energy-rich nutrients into the body. Such foods are alkaline and move more easily and effectively through the body, leaving little trace other than pure energy. This is why fresh fruits and veggies are the ideal human food (but be advised that that fruits are not for everyone per the information in my book Detox4Women, which in many cases can also apply to men)!

Alkaline substances carry a negative ionic-charge, whereas acidic substances have a positive ionic charge. When the positive charge of acidic foods meets with the negative charge of the body’s cells and tissues, they stick together in the intestine, creating blockages that contaminate the bloodstream and the body at large. Acidic substances also cause obstructions because—unlike fresh, water-containing, alkaline fruits and vegetables—they are dehydrating. This means they don’t just stick in the alkaline human tissue, but they also stay, long after the moment they are ingested because they have neither the kinetic energy (negative ionic charge from energized electrons) nor the moisture necessary to carry them through the alimentary canal and out of the intestine. They only partially exit the body. Weak intestinal peristalsis and bacterial imbalance, which are common to the modern body, do not help this situation.

Stagnation
What you don’t want to ingest is dense, acidic substances that stick to your tissues and clog your system. When your organs, tissues, and cells clogged with accumulated waste fail to conduct the life force energy well, the deterioration cycle is initiated. The first stage of this is stagnation. Stagnation triggers decay. As you might recall from the second edition of this newsletter, life is movement and change. Stagnation is the enemy of life force! So if the natural, healthy functioning of an organism is halted by obstructions, the body will not freeze in its current condition but begin to stagnate. The moment stagnation takes hold, the body will shift into a cycle of deterioration and decay. In short, the system will begin breaking down the contaminated cell tissue. From stagnation come bacteria, viruses, and putrefaction (all a predictable part of decomposition which is every bit a valid function of Natural Law). These necrotic cells decay through the bloodstream and lymph system to every part of the body. Charming, I know.

Now, consider that all living things are fundamentally microbial—composed of little organisms. These micro-organisms are either life-generating or life-deteriorating; either helpful life forms who play well with others or rogue microbial mafia who smoke thousands of those good guys before breakfast. What makes these microbial beings beneficial or harmful depends on their environment. Are they in an environment that supports their viability or not? If not, they will do what anyone under threat tends to do: put on armor and fight back. Fortunately, we now know enough about life force energy, conductivity, alkalinity and acidity, obstruction, and stagnation to prevent these microbes from becoming pests.

Internal v. External Cleanliness
Keeping the cells, tissues, blood, lymph, and intestine clean and free of obstruction is the single most important thing you can do to promote your youth, beauty, fertility, and health at large. So when we talk about cleansing, we’re talking about maintaining internal cleanliness. The sad fact is that most people today are internally filthy. This is due to the standard diet of dense, acidic, chemically processed, and low-energy—if not completely dead—substances. At the same time, most people are also terrified of germs and obsessed with personal appearance, unaware that the real issues are festering within. People dutifully stock up on drugstore products and line up for flu shots and antibiotics, unaware that sickness today is a natural expression of accumulated waste due to modern living.

Think about all the harmful chemicals that typically go into upkeep of the human body before we even leave the door in the morning—from using mainstream brands of toothpaste, deodorant, makeup, tampons, perfume, birth control pills (or Synthroid, Prozac, Lipotrol, or whatever cocktail of meds you like) to slipping into high heels, grabbing a coffee and energy bar to go, and revving up that car engine. By 8 a.m. the average germ-a-phobe has done incalculable damage to herself in the name of hygiene, health, and fashion—and done nothing to address all the filth within! Not to mention the botulism (botox) or recreational drugs being injected and ingested!

Bacteria: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly
True cleanliness harks back to older indigenous cultures, where people lived closer to the earth and maintained a steady diet of sun-fed foods, fresh water, and even a few slugs, earthworms, locusts, and honey-filled ants. These pests did not make anyone sick. They were (and in some parts of the world, still are) part of the daily diet of many ancient peoples, such as the Aborigines of Australia, the Maori of New Zealand, and the Bushmen of the Kalahari. So let’s take a look at ourselves before we dismiss such cultures as uncivilized!

Meanwhile, consider the alarming popularity of hand sanitizers and other conveniently packaged antibacterial products in our culture. Here’s what everyone should know: yes, they kill off bad bacteria and viruses, but that means they kill everything else too—good germs and bad—while they acidify the blood with their toxic ingredients. I’ll take strong microbial fighters in my bloodstream any day over a so-called antibacterial product, because nothing compares to the powerful blood of a clean system! I’d rather have my kids’ hands be a little dirty and their blood clean than put my faith in some toxic antibacterial agents in an attempt to counterbalance a system so weakened by “normal” living that they cannot fend off rogue microbes on their own! We would never have come this far as a species if our blood had always been as impotent as it is today. So many mainstream lifestyle choices degrade the quality of our blood—filling us up with all our acidic, addictive, favorite foods, drinks, and substances but breaking down our natural defenses.

A microbially healthy body is able to fend off a band of hoodlum-microbes in a few deft strokes. Antivirals, antibiotics, and antifungals kill everything microbial and leave you more devoid of protection than ever, with even less chance of recovering from infections than before. Your internal terrain becomes a desert. Just try fending off disease or digesting something in those conditions!

A healthy gut has plenty of good bacteria and strong peristaltic activity to deal with the small amounts of waste created by substances that enter the body and stay the night. However, it is no match for the months, years, and lifetimes of accumulated waste that resides in the average person today.

Cellular Cleansing
To be clean, we must be clean on the cellular level. Our cells must be able to function organically, regenerating their own nutrients and conducting life force energy like belly dancers in heat! That’s how to combat disruptive microbes! A truly clean body is the very embodiment of vitality, confidence, and sex appeal. It needs no heavy, synthetic ammunition, which only sets off a cycle of violence and self-sabotage, leading to all kinds of symptoms, weight gain, and disease.

The same principle of cleanliness applies across the board: to agriculture and pesticides, to animal farming and antibiotics, to the Earth and pollutants. The same chemicals used to render insects infertile render humans infertile too. The antibiotics that we give animals remain in their biomass until they are consumed, so you are effectively mainlining the antibiotics when you eat them! According to Thom Hartmann in The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight, “This has turned our livestock into a vast breeding ground for anti-biotic resistant micro-organisms.” And it’s not just on land, Hartmann tells us: “Human viruses and bacteria are filling the waters of the planet’s oceans, killing off coral reefs and spreading disease among humans.”

Clean, healthy, organic cells—that’s what we mean by cleanliness. When the body’s cells are clean and clear, it can freely conduct energy and nutrients. The only way to a healthy body is to cultivate an environment of open pathways (in the bloodstream, lungs, throat, intestines, etc.) so that energy can move freely between the cells and the tissues. Imagine your cells “kissing” each other with electricity, igniting and animating you as nature intended. This is the whole purpose of cleansing!

This concludes our fifth lesson. In next week’s edition of The Rose Program Insider, we will talk about the guiding light of simplicity!

Always find a way to satisfy a craving. Food should be joyous.

Detox-Friendly French Onion Soup

Oh, how I love French onion soup! It is so easy make, and follows a big raw goat cheese salad beautifully. First, chop up and sauté 3 large Vidalia or Spanish onions with some diced garlic in a small amount of butter and water until they become clear. Add 3 cups of water, rosemary, sea salt to taste, and a splash of red wine. Allow this to simmer for as long as you can stand it (30 minutes is perfect). Add stevia to taste (traditional French onion soup is quite sweet). Then pour your soup into a small ceramic baking pan, top with grated goat cheese, and pop it into a hot oven (preheated to 450°F) for about 7 minutes. Your soup is ready when the cheese is golden and bubbling.

Radish, Cucumber & Dill with Shredded Romaine Hearts & Goat Feta

This salad was first introduced to me at Pylos, a great Greek restaurant in NYC. The combination of julienned* cucumbers, feathery dill, and thinly sliced scallions all tossed in a mammoth bowl of finely shredded young romaine with a sprinkling of feta, lemon, and extra virgin olive oil changed the way I look at salads. The addition of radishes gives it a peppery kick!

2 romaine hearts, sliced ¼-inch thin
1 cup julienned radishes
1 seedless cucumber, julienned
2 scallion stalks, thinly sliced, including greens
2 tbsp finely chopped dill
1 or 2 lemons, juiced
½ cup crumbled goat feta (optional)
Drizzle extra virgin olive oil (optional)

*Julienned vegetables are brilliant for enjoying every ingredient at once. To julienne the radish and cucumber, use a mandolin to thinly slice into rounds. Then stack the slices up to 1 inch high and cut into tiny matchsticks. If using feta, there is no need for any oil since it will substitute for the “fat.”