Spiritual Cleansing Diet

All cleansing diets are designed to purify the body of accumulated toxins. A spiritual cleansing diet is designed to cleanse spiritual toxins as well.

Clear the way for radiant spiritual health as well as for physical purification. Begin by eliminating toxic chemicals from foods and from the environment. A cleansed body is a cleansed mind because the brain is fed by what circulates through the physical being. When you cleanse your body, it is as if you raise the windows to your spirit, allowing in fresh opportunities to meditate and to touch what Higher Self you believe touches you. Experience deeper meditations, revitalized physical wellness, and joy at your sense of liberation.

Invigorated by your spiritual cleansing diet, break free of poor eating and drinking habits to maintain your wellness. Above all, realize the life force of all creation flowing through you and into all of your material and spiritual affairs.

Expanding Light Retreat freely provides Yogananda's nine-day cleansing diet recipe. The first rule is that for the duration of the cleanse, you must not consume any foods not prescribed by the diet. The daily diet consists of grapefruit, lemon and oranges.

Drink distilled water or orange juice with a natural laxative. Laxatives are obtainable at whole food grocers.

At each meal, eat one cooked vegetable with juice and vitality beverage (recipe immediately follows). Eat a raw vegetable salad of your choice. If you are hungry, eat finely ground nuts in distilled water or fresh orange juice.

According to the Expanding Light Retreat, the vitality beverage is a blood tonic with benefits for rheumatism, stomach ailments and bronchitis, to name three conditions.

The vitality beverage is difficult to prepare. Practice mindfulness as you chop and blend vegetables. The drink consists of celery, dandelion or carrots and greens, such as spinach or turnip. Expanding Light Retreat recommends the cooked version to the raw. Drink eight ounces of vitality beverage at each of three daily meals.

Allot several times every day for meditation. Write in a journal. Do not expect to feel as if you are soaring on eagle's wings all the time. When the body flushes impurities, you may not feel at your best. Try to remember your reason for the cleansing diet--enlivening your inner being as well as purifying your body.

After your cleanse, ease into your normal eating routine. Do not eat the amount of food you normally would eat the first day.

Slowly, increase the amount of food and drink over two or three days. During the cleansing retreat and for several weeks after, Expanding Light suggests nightly salt baths to scrub impurities rising to the surface.

As you contemplate the physical purity you seek during a spiritual cleansing diet, reflect and meditate to attain a greater sense of stillness and presence to the Eternal Now.

Surround yourself with gentle light and spiritual music. Embrace nature's bounty. Express gratitude for the luxury to reduce what you normally consume. Read spiritual texts from your chosen spiritual path and from other great spiritual traditions.

Step onto the path of devotion, a sure way to worship the Great Truth in which you believe. Do not watch television. Keep conversation to a minimum.

Be still and know that you are loved.

Being loved, you are innately loving.

To paraphrase the Expanding Light, "the guest is Spirit." Treat your guest with devotion.