Leafy Greens / Seasalt /

SPIRITUAL CONSIDERATIONS.

In the page, The Human Being, it is shown the human being is constituted of physical body, etheric body, astral body and 'ego'. With respect to the subject of vitamin, mineral, trace elements and other supplements being taken by any one for any reason, in addition to the problems which will arise in the physical body, the question is what occurs with respect to matters of the soul. That is, what are the problematic consequences which may arise in the psyche of a person who ingests these on a regular basis.

First, it must be realized the arrangement of the astral, etheric and physical bodies is such that the physical body is permeated, so to speak, with the activities of the etheric body, to which is attached the astral body (at least, while we are awake). Thus, the effects of any injurious attacks on the physical body may be felt in the astral body, or may act in such a way as to prevent the possibility of us helping to address imbalances in the physical body by means of the astral body.

It should be kept in mind the astral body is the 'locus', so to speak, of the feelings, emotions, attitudes, morals, memory, thoughts etc. Thus, as is known today, it is definitely not out of the question the state of our emotions, attitudes etc, can have positive or harmful effects upon the physical body.

In Rudolf Steiner's lecture series entitled "The Being of Man and His Future Evolution" he states(pp. 49-50), in reference to someone who has been dosing themselves with mineral supplements, then these minerals " become very thinly diffused throughout the physical body, and takes on the form of a mineral phantom of the body... The significance of this is that if you were to leave a man as he is and withhold from him the medicine he really needs, then because of certain bad forces in his astral body, the astral body would work on the etheric body and the latter on the physical body, and gradually destroy it. You have to put a double in the physical body. This works to prevent the physical body obeying the influences of the astral body....This double made up out of the incorporated (mineral) substance is like a prop made out of the minerals. In this way the human's physical body is made independent as it were of his etheric and astral body. This is the effect of mineral medicaments. But you will immediately see the bad side of it, for it has a very serious drawback.
Since you withdraw the physical body artificially from its connection with the other bodies you have weakened the influence of the astral and etheric body on the physical body and have made the physical body independent. And the oftener you take such medicines the more the influence of the etheric and astral body disappears, making the physical body a hardened, independent being, subject to its own laws. Imagine what people are doing who take mineral medicaments of this kind all their lives. A man who has in the course of time taken a lot of these mineral medicaments has within him a phantom of all these minerals, a round dozen(or more) of them. It is as though the physical body were surrounded by a solid walls. And what kind of influence can the astral and etheric body still have on it?
Such a person is actually dragging his body around with him and has very little power over it. If a man who has been dosing himself in this way for a long time applies for treatment to someone who wants to treat him psychologically and work especially on his finer bodies, he will discover that he has become more or less unreceptive to psychological influences."

From a macrobiotic perspective, it is viewed that when a person ingests any food or substance it is not merely a matter of only ingesting the physical substance, for we also take in the quality of the spiritual forces that have gone into the making of the food in question. Thus, if we take in everyday substances that have come out of a factory machine process, we also take in the finer forces that have to do with the use of mechanical processes. The consequences I feel is the gradual imbuing of our astral body with the deadening, death forces which are necessarily employed in the making of artificial substances -anything taken in a pill, powder, can, bottle etc which is the end result of a process employing mechanical and chemical processes. This has the effect of making people's astral bodies, their souls, more and more mechanized. In other words, people are becoming more machine-like robots in terms of their attitudes, way of thinking, in their feeling life, etc. It is thus hardly surprising that people find it quite acceptable to engage in such grotesque procedures as artificial insemination, in vitro fertilization, sperm banks, baboon bone marrow transplants, to cite but a few of the many examples that I could cite that abound in modern culture today.

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In Praise of Leafy Greens and Stems.

I am going to make a case for the leafy green vegetables as being the most important and central foods in the macrobiotic way of eating.

There are many ways of viewing the constitution of the human body and one of them is to see it as a plant form. If we do so from a certain perspective we can see the head is the 'root' of the body because we are essentially "rooted in heaven" in that the spiritual world is our origin. Then the thoracic cavity containing the heart/lung functions and the central activity of the circulation of the blood is the 'leaf and stem' of the body and the digestive/metabolic functions in the abdominal cavity are the 'fruit' of the body.

Viewed in this manner then we have the two poles of the body, the head/root and the abdomen/fruit mediated through the mid-region of thorax/ leaf and stem of the body. In so doing we can see that the heart/lung/blood circulation is the function of the body balancing the opposite poles of head functions and abdominal functions.

The picture of the human organism thus drawn we can easily understand that those plants that have strong 'rootedness' characteristics will be favorable for strengthening the functions of the head, that is thinking and perceiving. So, carrots, burdock, beets, rutabagas, daikon and whole grains (grains contain strong root forces for they are the seed of the plant) are important to eat on a regular basis.

Those plants which are essentially stems and leaves are those plants that nourish and strengthen the thoracic activities which are those which balance the upper and lower regions of the body and strengthen the functions of artistic creativity, imagination, relationships and social activity.

As we know from our macrobiotic studies the essence of macrobiotic eating and living is to make balance both internally within our bodies and externally with the world and the cosmos. Thus if we wish to facilitate both being able to enjoy a dynamic homeostasis within the physiology of the internal environment of our body and relating socially (which not only means relating to other people, it also means relating to the soil, plants, birds, animals, stars etc.), then leafy green vegetables are essential to eat on a daily basis, at least once and preferably twice daily.

As far as the abdominal region goes, we need to eat those foods having strong fruit forces. These are obviously fruits. However, macrobiotic perception of fruits today is modern fruits have suffered such a more yin distortion (compared to grains and vegetables) to their native qualities through modern methods of agriculture that they have become far removed from having their proper qualities, and they are thus not generally recommended as daily fare, especially if we are in poor health and are using a macrobiotic approach to heal ourselves. So, where do we get strong fruit forces in our macrobiotic dietary intake to strengthen our abdominal organs of digestion and metabolism? Fortunately, whole grains not only contain strong root forces through being seeds, they also contain strong fruit forces because they are also the fruit of the plant.

We can see if we eat whole grains we are nourishing and strengthening both the head/central nervous system and the abdomen/digestive-metabolic functions, and if we neglect to eat leafy greens everyday, then our body's ability to make balance internally is deficient. This means if we do not make it a point to eat leafy greens everyday our body's ability to heal itself is enfeebled. This means kale, collard greens, dandelion greens, mustard greens, turnip greens, beet greens etc., etc., are central foods in any meal which is a macrobiotic meal.

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