papaya seeds

for the second time this month and 4th time this year, i've had papaya seeds.

began having papaya seeds during my december cleanse, which involved a low-level 30 day panchakarma, with daily abhyanaga, starting with raw foods and transitioning into smoothies, juices, and just lipids.

to a minimal degree, by way of herbs, i did a kidney and liver cleanse.

the last portion of my december 2013 fast was focused on a parasite cleanse. as part of this, i used papaya seeds, as recommended by some nd's i came across through online articles and videos.

for breakfast this morning, i had papaya seeds with raw honey. the honey breaks up the biting bitterness and potency of the seeds.

although mom-dukes set aside the seeds for me in the fridge, and they were cold, papaya seeds have a heating energy, just as garlic does. they might've been cold in temperature, but don't be fooled, they are like dropping a refrigerated bowl of suns into your body. red hot!

been to the bathroom four times since this morning. all kinds of stuff was coming out. what might be noteworthy is a raw-vegan diet, such as the one i'm on, is also considered a "cleansing" or "eliminating" diet. the nomenclature is befitting, as fiber runs through your intestines like a mop, cleans you out.

with having been on a mostly raw-vegan diet in late june-july and fully raw diet in late july, through august, and still going, i was left with my back against the stall, asking - what's this coming out my bowels?

all kinds of craziness swam like stillborn in the bowl.

for the first hour, after having the seeds, i just felt taken over, suddenly colonized by an alien invasion nebuchadnezzer-ing through my intestines, jejunum, ascending, descending colon, and blast.

hold up...i think i hear the seeds attacking...got a run...

medicine is community ii

community.

for 12 years i've been walking from person to person, state to state, asking almost everyone i came across what community means to them, whether they have community or not, what they think of intentional community.

i did this, cause i found adulthood a great challenge. from living in a household where i always had people around me - my brothers and folks - and all their friends coming in and out and breaking bread and praying, debating, playing together - to living with a room-mate, making plans to do everything.

making plans involves calling people up, texting and emailing them. it involves coordination, time. making plans means maybe at some point this week or next or this month or this year. being an adult outside an indigenous household, where home is an open door for community, and community are people who know you through atleast 10 other people in their life and yours, to friends who wouldn't even know who to call if anything happened to you, is a trip. it's the norm.

so i was feeling suddenly confronted by a community-less world and it didn't make sense, but most others around me didn't bat an eyelash about it, the way they did about bp oil spills and bombs and tuition hikes and welfare cuts...

maybe they are all part of a secret community that i'm not privvy to, i thought. so i had to ask...

different people, different responses.

community? ya, i have community, one friend i used to bang with in brooklyn, said to me, on a train ride to the city. 

i tell lisa everything, and even though she moved and we see each other once a year or so, she's community. and, i guess the people i go to parties with and have brunch with and there's my college friends... 

my h.s. friend monica agreed. yeah, i still consider all my high school friends community, i mean we hardly see each other, but we keep in each other's lives through facebook. albert left the marines, moved to cali, you know sabrina had another kid, she's in queens, and you.... monica says. monica, a friend of mine from high school that i run into every 8 years. 

if we had community, we wouldn't be cutting each others throat, trouble told me once, as he clapped hands with 90% of the people walking in and out of wilson projects in spanish harlem. i found it ironic that my other friends who barely said a word to their neighbor, far from exchanging touch, greetings, and questions about - how's your moms? your brother alright? - considered themselves to be part of communities, but trouble who was in a village of interaction didn't. it's cause of the economy, he said. it's killing us. 

what i love about the city, my boy from tennessee once told me, is that everyone is anonymous. you could drop in and out of people's lives and its no  biggie.

my boy matt from Rhode Island found this to be the most scathing part of his ny experience. it's amazing how here you are surrounded by people, and still can feel so lonely. this is what i was trying to get away from in the suburbs. 

intentional community can only work with people of the same ethnicity, my boy shenoda said, when we hung in his backyard in oaktown. otherwise, no, it's not going to work.

some in the informal survey felt they had community cause they exchanged greetings with their neighbors, even got into a convo every so often.

in the absence of people who have stories of you from childhood on, who have broken bread with you and your family, who share space and time and work and bills and spirit and debate and land and meaning with you, there is the community of individuals who get together as individuals and leave as individuals.

this absence provides a massive opportunity...

medicine is community

community is medicine. the guru muhammad - peace n blessings be upon him and his ummah - prescribed community, institutionalized it by way of rituals.

prayer is powerful alone, is more powerful in community. there is a profound power to bowing down, placing head to ground together, in jammat.

fasting is powerful. cleansing your system, getting insight, growing weak in ego, strong in spirit. fasting is more powerful in community. hence the prescription of ramadhan.

zakat, the necessary percentage of income set aside for alms, sustains community needs.

pilgrimage to mecca, the figurative nucleus of the atom, and circling like planets, together, in unison, dissolves status, looks, cool, in the mundane.

at the heart of the guru's prescribed pilgrimage is the experience of being community/tribe on an international level, a tribe that is so dedicated to 1ness, all languages meld into the beautiful lettering of the code of arabic prayers, of nothingness...all praise is due.

community is at the heart of the path of surrender (islam). all praise is due. hands up, bow down.

our babylon teaches us the converse - do you, be successful by getting out of your community, out of situations with others who hold you back. even self-help literature encourages the divorce from anyone who is in your way.

so how do we go beyond the babylon frequency? how do we embrace the Higher frequency?

build real community, not appointments for lunch in 2 weeks, or dinner in 3...

build sustainable community in which you sustain each other, where you recognize your success is less about you getting a name for yourself and dependent on the success of the community.

human existence is a second. this is brief, my brother said. little time to get caught in the helium of ego. just hot air. there is more to this manifestation than the smoking mirrors of success.

so, what will it take for us to do the most radical thing in the western world - build community?

raw foodism

raw, uncooked, bare.

been eating raw, vegan, drops of honey here and there.

summer in my belly, cooks the food, makes it easy to digest. but in the winter...how would it be in the winter?

for years, i'vedone stints with raw, quick as most ny relations, week-long affairs with greens and nuts and fruits.

but this time its different. this time there is no timeline...this time i'm digging raw in a deeper way, this time raw is more than a dogma, more than a point to prove, more than just a discipline.

the idea of raw is live foods. life giving foods. suns already cooked the food. suns already gave it warmth and love and all. doctors may disagree. i don't know. it makes sense. seasonally, in warm/hot weather, raw makes sense.

raw is arbitrary at times. what is live and what is raw may be at conflict at times.

almonds just raw, could be taxing on the digestive tract. a lot to break down. intestines cutting through steel. overworked. the almonds may need to be soaked over night.

yogurt can be a raw food, as it is live. it has active bacterial cultures. for a raw foodist, having this yogurt as part of a raw process is the defining point. from the udder to the cultured curd, instead of from the udder through a pasteruization process. i'm avoiding any food that comes from animal-cousins, at the moment...wanna get deeper in my connectivity to relatives.

live foods are sustaining, feel good in the body. body loves it. feels and looks resilient.

live food diet requires focus, discipline, preparatory time.