the following is an article that may appear in a future issue of
the SF-LiFE (San Francisco Living Foods Enthusiasts) monthly
newsletter.

Regards,
Tom Billings
[log in to unmask]

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FOOD AS A PATH TO LOVE INSTEAD OF A SUBSTITUTE FOR LOVE!!
by Tina Estes

[Note: this is the write-up of a talk given at the January, 1997
SF-LiFE potluck.]

My name is Tina Estes and I'm quite surprised and happy to be here to talk
about my experience with Living Foods.  I'm going to talk about Love and
Live Foods.  The heart of the matter for me is that I have nearly always
used food as a substitute for love and now I eat Live Foods to create and
maintain the experience of love in my body, in the very vibration of my soul.

I believe that there is a great transition happening on our planet today
from a fear-based culture to a love-based culture.  And in my life, that is
an accurate description of what I am going through, the transition from a
fear-based existence to a love based existence and Live Foods have made all
the difference.

So I'll give you a little history about me, my struggles with food, my
discovery of raw foods and the remarkable place I believe raw foods can play
in our personal and planetary transformation.

In 1994 I was living in San Miguel Allende, Mexico with a good friend of
mine, April the blond goddess who was on your panel last month.

[I] Was running my own successful massage practice, exercising horses and having
a lot of fun in this beautiful colonial village/artists colony.  It was truly
a heavenly existence.  Except that I kept getting more and more tired.  I
just couldn't understand what was happening to me.  Finally I was fatigued
to the point where I had to give up my massage practice and stop riding
horses, two of the most important things in my life, activities that seemed
to feed my heart and soul.  I was in agony emotionally and physically, I was
sleeping for nine hours a night, taking two hour naps every day and just
couldn't seem to go anywhere, travel or parties, everything made me so very
tired.

I went up to a New York clinic and was diagnosed with high levels of Epstein
Barr antibodies and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.  Upon my return to San Miguel,
I asked a friend who had been to Hippocrates, should I go?  Now this was the
last straw for me, I had only just about two years of peace with myself and
food....The thought of committing myself to eating mostly raw food, no
sugar, no cookies, no.....well I truly had felt panicky every time I thought
about it up until that very day.  In fact I had never entertained the
possiblility even remotely.

I have struggled with a food addiction since college.  I grew up in a
wealthy family where we never touched each other physically--or emotionally
for that matter.  A rather cold and distant family, looked great on the
outside but I was so empty on the inside.  Rules around food were very
rigid, like I could never have more than three cookies.  Of course we had to
finish our dinner if we wanted a bite of dessert, seemingly totally sensible
rules but enforced with a cold strictness that left me always wanting food
to fill the emptiness.  In San Miguel, I had finally won the struggle with
food. By that time, I had more love in my life but still the balance was
uneasy, I always needed to have control over how many cookies I could eat!!!

In our culture, especially  women, we eat food as a substitute for love.  We
are a culture that eats food as a substitute for love, much like we consume
goods and entertainment.  And we all know what we choose to eat when we are
feeling unloved!  And it's not celery and carrots!! Food, though, is the
consumption of choice for so many people.  When we get anxious, we eat.  And
we eat a lot, and we are anxious a lot.  Our food is our greatest drug and is
the drug of whose impact we are most unaware...other than its impact on our
physical health. We've begun to see that dieting to lose weight doesn't
really work, and that for many of us, emotional issues drive our eating habits.

FOOD AS A PATH TO LOVE INSTEAD OF A SUBSTITUTE FOR LOVE!! (continued)
by Tina Estes

But I believe there is now more to the story.

Just think about Thanksgiving and Christmas.  I realize that over the past
many years of visits home, I was eating to quell my anxiety and fear more
than for any other reason.  I eat when I feel afraid.  And the food helps
dull the fear for awhile.  But something else is now happening thanks to
Live Foods.  I am in a remarkable transition away from eating when I feel
afraid, towards eating to maintain and increase the experience of love in my
body, the vibration of love.

So how did the transition happen?  What stage am I in?  What do I mean by
the vibration of love??

I really don't know what came over me that day two years ago...but suddenly
I knew that Live Foods was the path to take.  My friend Jeanette was talking
about enzymes, it was enzymes that made everything happen and cooked food
had no enzymes.  I had been a biology major in college...studied enzymes,
but you know how there are a zillion different fads and explanations for why
things work, but finally this one struck home and I was committing myself to
going raw!!!  April was astounded because she knew about the depth of my
addiction to other foods and she'd wanted to try this for a long time.

So we packed ourselves off to Hippocrates...beautiful Hippocrates, and
started our Living Foods journey.  I filled my plate to overflowing on the
first day, afraid I would be hungry.   I got the worst headache of my life
for four hours after my first two ounces of wheatgrass juice.  I slept
through almost every class I was detoxing so deeply, couldn't stay awake,
didn't think I would really have to know all that in-depth stuff anyway.  I
had no idea this would become a life's path for me.

April told you the story of being in the health food store after the first
week, the instructor telling us what food we could eat and what we couldn't.
That story was actually about me.  Standing in front of the freezer, Haagen
Daz, no, never again, no more Haagen Daz Bars.  Everyone laughing except me.
I felt so angry. "How can you bring us here, now just five days into this
program?  Isn't anyone else feeling anything?"  "You are so totally
irresponsible!!"  I snarled, and then realized no one had a gun to my head
and I could just leave which I did.  But how would I ever get through life
without stopping for a Haagen Daz Bar when I needed one???  How would I get
through life when the biggest drug for me when I feel anxious or bored or
afraid was some kindred spirit to a Haagen Daz Bar?

It was in the third week that major changes began to happen.  Things began
to glow around me, the trees, flowers and grasses had a bright aura around
them, I could feel everything, the breezes and the smells intensified.  My
own feelings came sharper and clearer.  I was in the swimming pool one
afternoon meditating on a particular question and the very heavens seemed to
open and speak answers to me.  My mind came alive with sparkling clarity.
My body began to feel light and airy, and a happiness set in.  I'd look in
the mirror and my own eyes would startle me with a brightness I didn't
recognize.

And there began a remarkable journey for me, a sort of visionary quest that
deepens every day.  Not long after I returned to San Miguel, I had an
amazing vision of a project, an internet project.  Now I really knew next to
nothing about the Internet.  But following this vision, I am now here in San
Rafael about to launch this extraordinary project working with one of the
guys who actually created the Internet as we know it.  And with Nasa and the
Russian Academy of Sciences and Space Station Freedom...

I have had increasing experiences of visionary flashes until now there has
begun to be for me this sense of stability in this higher vibration.   At

FOOD AS A PATH TO LOVE INSTEAD OF A SUBSTITUTE FOR LOVE!! (continued)
by Tina Estes

first it was as if my experience split and I was at times in the world of
higher vibratory frequency, experiencing a high level of love and excitement
and light energy and then I'd slide back into fear.  I felt like I was
straddling two worlds.

I have begun to think that it is plant-intelligence, plant consciousness,
life and love consciousness that is bringing humanity into the higher
vibration that is indistinguishable from the vibration of love.  Life, love,
live foods...increases sensitivity, intuition, synchronicity, love.  The
challenge is to stabilize this new vibrational frequency on our planet.
Every time we choose raw/live it is a choice for love over fear.  It is a
choice to raise our personal vibration higher.  It is a choice to be more
open to our intuition, to our guidance by the pure divine intelligence that
is the light, that is the vibrational energy of love connecting all of us in
this universe.

I was talking to the 18 yr old son of my good friends over Thanksgiving
dinner yesterday.  He was asking about drugs.  He wanted to know what I was
telling my son when he came to ask me did I think he had a drug problem?
What did I think about his smoking so much marijuana.  I think that my
generation went through a time in the sixties when transcendent
consciousness was accessible through drugs.  But now in the nineties, this
transcendent consciousness is closer, we human beings have somehow opened
further, the vibrational states of higher consciousness and direct access to
divine wisdom and information is available to us through raw foods, and
cleansing our bodies. For me, raw foods is the high that doesn't end.  Is
the filling with the vibration of love and light that I sought when I took
ecstasy or lsd, that I can attain the same frequency of love through eating
raw foods...  Marianne Williamson says that if you weren't high in the
sixties, you were missing it all and now if you're not sober in the nineties
you're going to miss it all!!!

For me, Live foods  is a choice for planetary transformation from fear-based
to love based system, it's all in the vibration.

As if there is a vibrational light frequency that is love, light and
information.  Now as I was wondering about this I realized that green plants
in particular are the ones that fix light energy from the sun.  They are the
ones that actually take light energy and transform it into food for the
human body.  That fix light energy through the chlorophyll....That
wheatgrass has the highest concentration of chlorophyll and that chlorophyll
is the closest substance to human blood that exists in nature....somehow the
plants are our connection to light energy, to the source.

Perhaps Jesus and the Essenes weren't just eating Live Foods for health,
they were eating Live Foods for information!!!  For spiritual guidance!!!

There is the sense now on the planet that we are being flooded with light
energy.  My sense is that this light energy actually carries information,
actually carries the vibrational frequency of love, and that especially the
greens then, the wheatgrasses, the sprouts, the things that we eat that are
most busily fixing that light energy, these are the foods that cause our
vibrational levels to rise and allow us to actually radiate this energy that
is love, that carries the spiritual principles with it of abundance, of
peace, of community-building, of sharing, of connection, of divine love, of
human access to pure spiritual knowing. That further than that there is a
pattern to our organization, an increasing synchronicity, an increasing
access to intuition, to plant knowledge, to plant wisdom...plants actually
transmit this life energy, information, love....

How is that?  Because I believe that Live Foods, especially our green
vegetables are actually one of the sources of love energy on this planet.

FOOD AS A PATH TO LOVE INSTEAD OF A SUBSTITUTE FOR LOVE!! (continued)
by Tina Estes

Love is a vibration.  Green plants function through the process called
photosynthesis.  What that actually means ( I was a biology major in college
and I studied this)  what photosynthesis means is that these green plants
actually take sunlight and manufacture food out of sunlight.  This light
energy of the sun has a particular vibration and all of us who eat a lot of
this food, our bodies actually vibrate at a higher frequency...and for me,
this frequency could be described as the frequency of love.

And further than that I believe that this light energy also carries
information.  That there is a vibratory frequency of information in light
energy.  That these green foods through the process of photosynthesis,
making food for our bodies out of sunlight, give us access to information in
the form of intuition, guidance.

I have actually three jobs now, one a fitness instructor, one a counselor
with a private practice and a third project that is a grand visionary
internet project.  When I am working with the Internet project, it is easy
for me to fast, to eat nothing but raw food.  When I am working at the
Fitness Center, I crave other foods.  When I am working with the visionary
project, I am filled with an energy of love and light and wisdom that is
sometimes overwhelming.

TINA ESTES