Drinking the miracles of Nature

Over the course of this juice feast (now on day 57!) I've done much biological reflection in regards to the plants that are currently sustaining me. Here are some jaunts from my journal.

Greens, electrons excited by the sun.

Chlorophyll is the pigment that makes leaves and blue-green algae (such as spirulina and chlorella) green. It is these powerful foods that make such a long juice feast possible. It wouldn't be wise to juice feast without green juice.
As a biologist yogi I recognize that all life is One, and so I delight in discovering the evolutionary trajectories of the different manifestations of life. I hope this gives you a deeper appreciation of the healing juices and superfoods available to us all.
The blue-green algaes belong to a class of organisms known as cyanobacteria, or photosynthesizing bacteria. In looking at evolutionary history we can see that these are the first organisms to develop the ability to photosynthesize (harness the sun's energy using chlorophyll in order to power metabolism). *Their position at the base of the food web, as primary producers, indicates these are among the highest prana (cosmic energy) foods. Pure, condensed sun energy! Each successive trophic level loses significant energy as heat. Higher animals are thus the most inefficient food source when looking at the flow of prana through the food web. Fortunately as omnivores our bodies are equipped to digest pretty much whatever we choose. Hmm, could this be the law of Karma in action? The Karmic, cause and effect, reason I gave up animal foods is that I feel like I've found a more efficient source of fuel that energizes me on a deeper level.

Later in evolutionary history, Nature was dreaming up a more complex multicellular organism that could also photosynthesize. Instead of reinventing photosynthesis, she simply made this new race join forces with the cyanobacteria. This new partnership came to be known as the plant kingdom. It is considered a partnership because the cyanobacteria were literally engulfed into the cells of the plants, exchanging a safe home for the conversion of sunlight into usable energy. Today, studying the plant cell reveals that the chloroplasts (photosynthesizing components) were in fact free living cyanobacteria!

But wait, this situation is not unique to plants! In fact, further inspection of our own animal cells reveals that our mitochondria (cell components that convert carbohydrates into usable energy) were once free living bacteria. This is why mitochondria have a completely separate and unique set of DNA from our own nuclear DNA. It is this evolutionary partnership that forms the basis of the animal kingdom.

Now let's get even more cosmic. Our own planet, earth, is a fragment of a dying star that exploded long ago. This is why the core of our planet is molten rock. As the energy of this old star continues to decay there are organisms that have evolved to feed off of the thermal and chemical energy produced at the bottom of the ocean. Once again we find a unique partnership in which microbes that feed off the sulfur of deep sea thermal vents live inside the cells of animals, such as tube worms, that benefit in much the same way their surface dwelling cousins benefit from symbiotic partners. These deep sea organisms are living a life completely independent of the sun that we require for survival.

Whoa, life is a bit cooler than you thought, huh?

Such observations never fail to send me into deep contemplation into who and what we really are.