If you were to chart exactly how you spend your time and energy each day, how much of it would be unnecessary? In today’s world you can all too easily squander every last ounce of your life force accumulating unnecessary stuff and doing unnecessary things. It’s time to simplify your life—and that goes for your diet, too!

Spinning in Circles

So many people needlessly spin all day long because they think life must be busy to be counted. Sometimes they are keeping busy with needless activities (which they validate with a million little reasons) to distract them from their inner life—feelings of inadequacy, difficult situations at home or at work, relationships that are not working, etc. There is no quicker way to become old and tired, inside and out, than to spend your days spinning—always doing, doing, doing.

Our world has taught us a great deal about how much we can do in a day, and almost all of our infrastructures, business models, and technological breakthroughs are geared toward accelerating output. We are conditioned to do, never to be. Even much of the self-help literature that instructs you to take a moment to breathe deeply is marketed as a way of showing you how to become more productive in the modern world, not to liberate you from the exhausting rat race.

Consider the actual importance of everything you do in a day. Where you put your energy is where you are sending your life force. Which of those activities are truly helping you to conduct life force where it’s most important? And which of them do you carry out mindlessly according to convention and consumer-driven ideas of measuring up?

Remove the Clutter

The less toxic you are, the fewer needs you have. The fewer needs you have, the freer you are to pursue what’s most important to you. Take a moment to revise your consumption. Even if you do not make any big changes today, take a moment to consider what is essential, what is less essential, and what no longer serves any real purpose in your life.

Begin by applying the principle of simplicity to everything that inhabits your physical space, from the items in your closet, to your office, to your home. Identify ten items that needlessly clutter up your environment and imagine all the beautiful space that would open up by removing them. Then apply the same principle to your social life, to your work schedule, and to your family life. Identify ten activities or behaviors that you don’t really want to engage in anymore that you still find yourself doing. Imagine how much more positive energy you could conduct where it really counts if, for example, you stopped saying yes to every party invitation or shopping for the latest fashion trends. Imagine the sense of release!

Eat for Simplicity

In the modern world, we live amidst so much conflicting noise, confusion, and obfuscation. We are constantly bombarded with commercials, ads, messages, and images all vying to sell us something. Is it any wonder that our heads are spinning? At every level and sector of society, from our Byzantine infrastructures and political systems to the long lists of indecipherable ingredients on most packaged foods sold on supermarket shelves, we find ourselves mired in complexity and confusion. And chief among our areas of confusion are health and diet. Yet it doesn’t have to be this way!

Your body will make itself ill trying to break down all the unnatural substances that pass for mainstream fare today. What your body truly craves for its cells is what you crave for your daily life: energy, freshness, clarity, simplicity. So you can say good-bye to all the complicated, time-consuming recipes and expensive “health food” products (the endless vitamins, supplements, superfoods, powders, soy products, dehydrated foods, etc.) that could not in a million years offer the kind of health that comes with a simple diet of mostly fresh fruits, vegetables, and, for those who crave it, the occasional flesh-based dish. Be wary of diet trends and fads that follow the market rather than the simple laws of nature. Even terms such as “vegan” and “all-raw” and “healthy choice” more often than not come with a whole lot of dogma and strange foods that are far from simple. We need to reintroduce our bodies to the gift of simple, fresh, deeply satisfying food—so that our dietary choices become intuitive and joyful, not misguided and tortured.

The gift of simplicity is a principle I come back to again and again, and it has helped me immeasurably in all aspects of my life. I know it can help you, too. The next time you’re feeling overwhelmed with too much of everything, force yourself to slow down and draw your attention back to what matters most in your life. Take the time to find your center, and let all the inessentials will fall away. Once you know what you truly and deeply need—down to your very cells – you will realize how much else you don’t need or even want, and no amount of outside noise will be able to tell you otherwise!

This concludes our sixth lesson. In next week’s edition of The Rose Program Insider, we will talk about the cleansing powers of unobstructed love and compassion.

Hot Baths & Acorn Squash

For a chilly evening at home, I have a blissful routine. I walk through the door, cut an acorn squash in half (scooping out the seeds) and put in into the oven at 400°F. Then I turn on the taps in my bathtub.

Next, while the bath fills, I make my avocado salad with plenty of fresh garlic and lemon. Put it into the fridge, and the garlic flavor intensifies while I slip away for a soak.

By the time I’m ready to get out, the squash is ready to top with stevia, nutmeg, and sea salt for a decadent, comfort-filled night in. And this is a sweet kiddie favorite the whole family will love.

Marinated Beets with Thyme

You can enjoy this neutral dish either cooked or raw.

4 medium beets, roasted* and cubed, or raw** and shredded
½ medium red onion, finely diced
1 clove garlic, minced
1 tsp thyme, picked off sprigs
½ grapefruit, juice and zest
Sea salt and pepper to taste

Toss all ingredients together.

*Preheat oven to 400°F. Wrap whole, unpeeled beets with tinfoil and bake in oven for 45 minutes to 1 hour, or until soft when pierced with a knife. To remove the skins easily, throw the warm beets in a paper bag and rub the bag till the skins slide off.

**Want this recipe raw? Substitute roasted beets for raw beets, shredded or julienned for easier absorption of marinade.

Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach. Any small, calm thing that one soul can do to help another soul, to assist some portion of this poor suffering world, will help immensely. It is not given to us to know which acts or by whom will cause the critical mass to tip toward an enduring good. What is needed for dramatic change is an accumulation of acts—adding, adding to, adding more, continuing. We know that it does not take “everyone on Earth” to bring justice and peace, but only a small, determined group who will not give up during the first, second, or hundredth gale. 

—Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Ishmael said, “We know what happens if you take the Taker premise, that the world belongs to man.”
“Yes, that’s a disaster.”
“And what happens if you take the Leaver premise, that man belongs to the world?”
“Then creation goes on forever.”
“How does that sound?”
“It has my vote.”

—Daniel Quinn, Ishmael

When Daniel Quinn refers to the Takers and the Leavers he is talking about those who swallow harmful cultural values and norms, and those who abstain from them in support of a greater good. As members of the Natalia Rose Institute Community, we leave behind many common measures of health, beauty, and success—such as the Standard American Diet, popular beauty industry products and procedures, and the male and female archetypes of dominance and passivity—which we recognize as not only futile but also demeaning to our humanity. As Leavers, we strive to do no harm to the natural world, even to reverse the damage already done, in order to support the interconnected web of life.

As children in the Western world, we are typically taught, indeed culturally conditioned, to see all of nature’s resources as our rightful property. This is tragic, because compassion for other living creatures comes intuitively to most young people; the Taker mentality, on the other hand, must be drilled into them. By the time we are adults, if we are to regain any sense of harmony and acceptance about ourselves and the world we live in, we must unlearn the cultural dogma.

Take my seven-year-old son, Tommy, for example. One day this past summer, he and I were sitting together in the grass among a patch of clovers. Tommy asked me about four-leaf clovers, which opened up a conversation about the legend of the shamrock and the leprechauns that guard the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Finally, he cocked his shining eyes up at me and said resolutely, “Mom, if I were to follow a leprechaun to the end of the rainbow and find the pot of gold, I would never take it. It belongs to the Earth.”

If only more adults could share this intuitive understanding of the Earth’s resources! Our civilization continually plunders the Earth for its gold and countless other materials, drastically depleting the mineral composition of the planet, to say nothing of the surface devastation. It seems Tommy instinctively understands this in a way that the average Madison Avenue shopper either doesn’t or chooses to ignore.

One day at the beach, my kids and I made our way to an inlet where there were lots of large, beautifully colored crabs. Many children were there wielding nets. It took me a moment to believe what I was seeing. With their parents cheering them on, the children all had the same objective: to fill their metal-rimmed nets with crabs. They would haphazardly scoop up several crabs, obviously distressing the little creatures, whose flailing legs and pinchers were getting all tangled in the nets, their shells bashing against each other. Then the kids would try to dump the nets all at once, sending heaps of crabs crashing onto the sand, though it often took several violent swings to loosen them. When I suggested to the parents that this might not be a suitable form of recreation to be teaching our kids, suffice it to say, I was met with open hostility. This reaction both surprised and didn’t surprise me.

We are not born into a world that teaches us harmlessness, much less a higher consciousness that respects the interconnectedness of all life—what I call unity consciousness. But if we water the seeds of unity consciousness and harmlessness with our thoughts, intentions, and actions, we can lift ourselves up and out of the common paradigm of shortsightedness, selfishness, and instant gratification. Here are some tips to get you started:

• Take responsibility for your thoughts, choices, words, and actions.
• Check your intentions. Be honest about them and consider all the consequences.
• Protect innocent living creatures that cannot protect themselves.
• Consider the origins of your purchases, recreations, and general lifestyle patterns that do not support life in your immediate environment.
• Speak out peacefully but assertively against the herd when your spirit moves you to do so. If you start speaking up with confidence against small injustices now, you’ll soon be ready to speak up against much larger ones.

A Noble Cause

Do not mistake harmlessness with weakness. The most powerful individuals are those with powers of perception and wisdom, which, more often than not, help to preventconflict. The more you practice harmlessness with unwavering integrity, the better your life experience and the more harmonious your interactions will become. Do not expect everyone to agree with you; in fact, many people will understandably act threatened and defensive if they feel they’re being unfairly judged. But your words will sink in—maybe not now, but later, when the heat of the moment has passed and there is time to reflect on events.

Our task is not to point fingers at all the people who are trapped in harmful patterns of behavior. Our task is first to clear ourselves of our harmful behaviors. This is not some holy war or crusade against heathens—after all, self-righteousness is merely another symptom of toxicity! This is a humble journey of self-discovery and compassion toward a greater humanity. It is okay to express outrage at injustices—indeed, it is our noblesse oblige as members of the Natalia Rose Institute Community to help the helpless. But we must do so in the spirit of compassion, with positive reinforcement and an unwavering commitment to changing our lives for the better.

Do not turn a blind eye to all the harms that are being inflicted in your world. In the modern age, harmlessness requires active participation, not long-suffering, self-silencing passivity. As you embrace the Natalia Rose Institute ethos, you will discover that detoxing is first about doing no harm. Begin with yourself, by clearing your physical and spiritual bodies of all that would harm them, and then let that harmlessness ripple out to touch other lives. In this simple way, you will bring more light, love, and compassion wherever you go, and the world will thank you for it.

This concludes our seventh lesson. In next week’s edition of The Rose Program Insider, we will talk about embracing the power of honesty!

Always find a way to satisfy a craving. Food should be joyous. For my clients who yearn for their burgers and fries:

The Better Burger

Create your burger using beet, carrot, and parsley pulp from your morning juice, with beaten egg as a bonding agent (this will be a protein night). Then slow-cook it in a small amount of butter in a covered sauté pan. Top with slices of goat cheese.

Friendlier Fries

Because this will be a protein night, use zucchini instead of sweet potatoes for fries. Keep them nice and thin, and bake them with sprinkles of sea salt and stevia (lightly butter your baking pan). Then use unsweetened ketchup (add stevia if you like it sweet), “honey” mustard (Dijon and stevia), or barbecue sauce (organic tomato paste, a couple drops of liquid smoke, chili powder, and stevia) for dipping!

Raw Mushroom & Herb Pasta with Zucchini Spaghetti 

This light pasta dish can be made heartier with the addition of thinly sliced sun-dried tomato and fresh spinach leaves, but do not dress ahead of time, as it will make the mushrooms soggy. The raw sheep pecorino adds another depth of flavor, but if using, cut back or eliminate the salt.

• 2 cups cremini and/or button mushrooms, thinly sliced
• ¼ cup chopped parsley
• 1 garlic clove, minced
• 1 cup cherry or grape tomatoes, halved
• Drizzle of olive oil
• 1 lemon, juiced
• Pinch of crushed red pepper flakes (optional)
• Sea salt and pepper to taste
• 2–3 medium zucchini, spiralized
• Fresh basil leaves to garnish
• ¼ cup finely grated raw pecorino sheep cheese (optional)

Add first eight ingredients to spiralized pasta, tossing well to season evenly. Use tongs to transfer zucchini to serving platter, then add the mushrooms and tomatoes around it. Garnish with fresh basil leaves. Add raw cheese if using. Serve with extra lemon on the side.

To turn up the “wow” factor, add a drizzle of truffle oil before serving. This pasta dish is also excellent cooked.