I Love You Baby!

Posted on March 24, 2013 by Leonid Sharashkin by Leonid Sharashkin.

Dr Leo Sharashkin and Deep Snow Nope, this is not a terribly belated St. Valentine’s blog post! It is just that for a long time now I wanted to share with you the natural health support system by Porfiry Ivanov. It is fabulous. He condensed his lifetime of experience to a remarkable and profound one-page catechism known as Baby (Russian: Detka). The reason I am such a big fan of Ivanov’s Detka is not only because it is mentioned in Anastasia. What I love about Detka is how easy and practicable it is – no matter what life might throw at you!

You wake up in the morning, put on your favorite yoga pants and land on your meditation cushion. And then, all of a sudden: “Papa! Wipe my butt!” – “Allo! Dr. Sharashkin? We are having a conference in Paris and would love you to join us!” – “Daddy, make me some strawberry ice cream!” – “Honey, could you call that vendor and ask if they’ve shipped Yarosvet’s Lego set?” – “Papa! What about my butt?” And, before you know it, the day is over without a chance to do some stretching!

Does it mean you’ll do your stretching after retirement? No! What it means is we need a system that’s simple, takes little time (like 10 minutes per day), that is totally free (no supplements to reorder) and is bombproof to whatever demands your life places on you. And Porfiry Ivanov’s Baby delivers just that! No matter where I am and what I do, I know that I can do the little it requires and be full of energy.

What follows is my translation of Baby. I surely have lots of thoughts on the parallels with Anastasia’s messages, plus background information about Porfiry Ivanov and how he arrived at his vision. But I’ll leave it all for another day. For now, I’d like you to enjoy Baby in all its shining glory, with nothing added. When I first came upon it, it was like an explosion! For this translation, I tracked down a copy of the handwritten manuscript – later reprints lack some of the key points. So, here we go:

***

I will soon be 85 years old. Of these, I devoted 50 years to searching out a path to healthy living. To this end, I daily try out different qualities of nature, especially on its harsh side. I sincerely desire to share my experience with our young and all the Soviet people. This is my gift to them.

If possible, I ask of you to print my advice in a newspaper or a magazine.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart. Porfiry Korneevich Ivanov

Baby,

You are full of desire to be useful to the Soviet people, builders of communism. For this, please try to be healthy. To strengthen your health, I sincerely ask of you to accept my advice, in addition to what was written in Issue 8 of Ogonyok:

1. Twice daily bathe in cold, natural water, so you feel good. Bathe in anything you can: a lake, a river, a bathtub, a shower – or pour water onto yourself from a bucket. These are your conditions. Conclude hot bathing with cold water.

2. Before or after your bath, or, if possible, together with it, walk out in nature, stand barefoot on the ground (or snow in the winter), at least for a minute or two. Take several breaths through your mouth and mentally wish good health to yourself and to all the people.

3. Take no alcohol and do not smoke.

4. Each week, try to go without any food or water from 6-8 pm Friday to noon Sunday. These are your achievements and your rest. If it is hard for you, hold out at least 24 hours.

5. Sunday at noon walk out in nature, barefoot, take several breaths and contemplate as written above. This is a celebration of your work. After that you can eat what you like.

6. Love the nature that surrounds you. Do not spit around and do not expectorate anything. Get used to that – this is your health.

7. Wish good health to each and every person you meet, especially those advancing in years. If you want to be in good health, wish others the same.

8. Help people as you can, especially the poor, ill, hurt, and those in need. Do so with joy. Respond to their need with your heart and soul. You will acquire a new friend and will advance common good.

9. Rid yourself of greed, indolence, self-conceit, avarice, fear, hypocrisy, and pride. Have trust in people and love them. Do not say unjust things about them and do not take close to your heart unkind opinions about them.

10. Free your mind from thoughts about disease, ills, and death. This is your victory.

11. Do not separate your words from your deeds. You read it – good. But, most importantly – do it!

12. Share your experience of this work with others, but do not boast and do not elevate yourself. Be modest.

If something is unclear or incomplete for you, write to me.

I am always ready to pass on my experience and help you succeed.

Wishing you happiness and good health.

Porfiry Korneevich Ivanov

My address:

Voroshilovgradskaya oblast, Sverdlovsky district,

Dolzhanskoe p.o., Verkhny Kondryuchy hamlet, Sadovaya, 58.

***

That’s it! Got some water? Off we go!

A New Year Present

Posted on December 31, 2012 by Leonid Sharashkin by Leonid Sharashkin.

Pinyon Fairy Cuts Firewood As you know, Anastasia does not hold manufactured toys in high esteem. In fact, right in the first book she states that toys only confuse a child’s mind and lead him astray; that they serve to disconnect his godlike being from the divinity of the living creation around him. Many prominent educators share the same view, calling a child’s experience “a prison of games”. And that’s much worse than a prison for the body – it’s a prison for the mind that few would ever be able to escape over their lifetime.

If you have any doubt about that, pay a visit to the toy section of any nearby store. To me, walking between the shelves of screaming robot monsters, violently shaking machines, and rubber aliens with edible translucent guts is evidence enough that the end of the world has indeed come – at least for the children who will be playing such toys!

“What’s the big deal?” you might object. “You are exaggerating, Dr. Leo! Not everyone is giving their kids that sort of toys! There are actually many toys and games that are high-quality, fun, instructive and educational.” True. I won’t deny any of that, and it’s good that this is so – but… I still feel that we often miss one important distinction here: raising our children as creators, or raising them as consumers. In all respects, including toys.

One very fine gentleman – now well in his eighties – told me about his growing up on a farm in western Kentucky in the 1930s: “We were pretty much responsible for entertaining ourselves. Girls would make dolls out of empty corncob, and us boys – everything from hobby horses to self-propelled toy cars. Yeah, you know, we’d put them together from small pieces of scrap wood, and there was a piece of wound-up elastic band inside – they worked great.” Now, eighty years later, nothing has changed – all children are still perfectly capable of “entertaining themselves” and building for themselves all the toys they need. But how many children today know that they can do it?!

This distinction between creator and consumer is central at Mikhail Schetinin’s school (see Book 3, The Space of Love). As Schetinin succinctly put it in his interview included on The School DVD: “At this school, children are creating the school themselves. They are creators here.” If children can build their own campus and write their own textbooks, then certainly they are capable to creating their own toys. So why do we keep buying them toys produced by someone else – the toys that, devoid of the creative component, will often only capture their attention for a few days?

I think this is because our culture gradually forgot that the essence of toys is beyond matter and has little to do with the actual object! In the old time, when people did not have much ‘stuff’, homemade toys were simple – so simple, in fact, that the child’s imagination was free to fill in all the details – the freedom that children rarely have today. Toys specially produced by master craftsmen were relatively scarce and offered children an example of perfection – 19th-century ‘ordinary’ dolls are now museum pieces – and rightfully so. They were an image of something unattainable, something to strive to, an ideal, a motive. So, to a very large degree, toys were immaterial – a dream. As Nikolay Kurdyumov says in Growing Fruit With A Smile, anticipation of a bountiful harvest is sweeter than the harvest itself! Actually, by many times over.

In The Book of Kin Vladimir Megre describes how after years of contemplation he came to the conclusion that what educates children the most is their parents’ lifestyle. This is very much so, but I think that Anastasia went much, much farther when she said, in Book 1, that a child’s primary guide is his parents’ thought. She keeps elaborating on that throughout the entire Ringing Cedars Series.

I do feel that this is the crux of the matter. Of course children notice and respond to our thoughts as manifested through what we say and what we do. But in my own parenting experience I’ve seen them having the ‘magic’ ability to pick up thoughts directly, even in their sleep. For example, when our children were very young, my wife’s and my thinking about them was enough to wake them from sleep, as though they could audibly hear us calling them! (This was so consistent that it left even me, with my practical and rational attitude, free from any doubt in this regard. Interestingly enough, this ability ‘to hear thoughts’ gradually waned once they began to talk.)

So, when we do or say something, children go beyond words and actions – they can see our feelings and intent. And what is the intent behind us buying all these toys? Unfortunately, oftentimes it is guilt. (“I brought my child into a violent and polluted world, and he barely sees us his parents because we work long hours to earn the money we need – but at least I can buy him this toy to straighten things out.”)

Even worse, toys (or games, or cartoons on TV) are commonly bought to occupy the child so we can occupy ourselves with something else! What’s the message the child gets in this case? The message is clearly that the child is not wanted!

“The young people are so utterly alone today,” says Mikhail Schetinin. “Nobody needs them!” And one collaborator at his School told me that even a school like that is only needed because families fail to provide children with the love they need to thrive!

So every time I feel an urge to buy my children something – a ride-in toy car, a DVD with cartoons, or a trip to Costa Rica – I ask myself first: “Do they really need that?” And the honest answer is always a big NO. They need my interest and attention – and as long as I am willing to provide that, no gadget substitutes are necessary. As my daughter once told me, seeing me hunched over my computer, ‘working’: “Papa, enough thinking! Better play with me!”

And play we do! Any material objects we may need can be fashioned for free from whatever materials are handy. My son Yarosvet’s favorite toy has been a set of ‘building blocks’ I made from some redcedar branches. Essentially, these were small branches of different diameters cut into 1-inch fragments – ‘logs’. The versatility of this set surpassed all imaginable bounds: from building a ‘forest’ – logs stacked one on top the other to form ‘trees’, which can then be razed down with a ‘chainsaw’ – to projectiles that flew in all directions…

Recently, I have not been finding Yarosvet’s ‘blocks set’.

“Honey, you have not seen Yarosvet’s ‘blocks’? You know, the little logs,” I asked my wife.

“Oh, I threw them away. It’s time he got some real toys. So I ordered him a big Lego set for the New Year. It should be coming in the mail any day now.”

Why Russia Was Never Conquered

Posted on December 12, 2012 by Leonid Sharashkin by Leonid Sharashkin.

Ice-warm Pepsi on the Red Square Do you know the difference between Russian Coca-Cola and the American one? The drink is pretty much the same, but in the US it is “ice-cold Coca-Cola”, and in Russia it’s “ice-warm Coca-Cola”. Yes, that’s right! When it’s minus forty degrees outside, your chilled soda feels almost like an espresso.

Elsewhere in the world they sell soda in refrigerator vending machines to keep it from getting warm, and in Russia – like in this picture I took on the Red Square – they sell it in well-insulated carts to keep it from turning into a chunk of ice! And if you think there’s little demand for it, take a walk around downtown Moscow on a February morning!

More than once I’ve heard readers of the English-language edition of the Ringing Cedars Series express amazement – sometimes even skepticism – about Anastasia’s ability to regulate her body temperature under the conditions of Russian winter. But I am yet to hear any of the same comments from my fellow Russians! And this is not because they believe that Anastasia teleports herself to Hawaii for the winter. Rather, we all have, from the very earliest age, been exposed to the images of people extremely resilient to cold.

It’s not that uncommon to see – midst the ‘dead’ of the winter – people swim in an ice-hole in a local river, lake, or on TV. They crush the ice with crowbars and jump straight in! And, you know, dramatic as it may look, I never heard tell of anybody freezing or getting sick from that. Granted, this may be because those who did freeze to death did not live to tell their side of the story.

We call such hardy souls ‘walruses’. So if you translate the title of the Beatles’ song I Am The Walrus to a Russian, he will bet you money it must be about John Lennon swimming in an ice-hole. Actually, right in The Ringing Cedars of Russia Vladimir Megre tells of his own all-but-accomplished ‘walrus’ adventure in the waters of the Moskva river one February afternoon. You may remember that he saw it as a certain suicide. And he was probably right – not because of the cold, no, but rather because of the 15 million Muscovites (not to mention numerous industries) flushing their wastes into the river. Actually, the Moskva never freezes any more because of that. When I worked at the downtown office of World Wildlife Fund (WWF) a few years back, I would cross the river twice a day, walking from and back to the railway station. And there it was – majestically flowing year-round (its Alaska-like latitude notwithstanding) – its waters sometimes spotting a bright orange color from the chemical factory upstream…

But even in Moscow you can find plentiful opportunities for swimming under the ice safely. If you’ve read The Art of Soaring books, you know that one of their authors swims in a local lake every morning year-round, summer or winter, and that among many other benefits, it awakens his abilities for communicating with wild birds and animals. Could it be one of the reasons why Anastasia enjoys such a rapport with wildlife?

I would say from my personal experience that swimming in an ice-hole is something every person should try at least once in their lifetime. The bodily and spiritual effect is impossible to put into words. Even as pure entertainment, it has no rivals. And just to think that it requires no 3-D home theaters and people already enjoyed it a thousand years before the advent of smartphones!

Of course there are little tricks that make winter swimming – and supreme cold-resilience in general – much more attainable for all. I do not think that it is a chance coincidence that in Russian, the words polyn’ (wormwood) and polyn’a (ice-hole) are practically the same word. To the extent that John Woodsworth and I – when translating the Ringing Cedars Books – had to take extra care not to confuse the two! And every granny from a remote Russian village will tell you wormwood helps with cold-endurance. Interestingly enough, in Chinese medicine wormwood is believed to promote the ‘fire’ element, and even modern medicine concedes that purging intestinal parasites (one of the major uses of wormwood) boosts body’s resilience and ability to withstand cold. Same for oak leaves and bark.

OK, if swimming midst ice still strikes you as something completely outlandish, there is no denying the fact that, as the Russian proverb goes, “an ax warms better than a fur-coat”. I would chop firewood in a T-shirt in the middle of winter – not because I picked up any extraordinary abilities from Anastasia, but because it is simply impossible to not overheat if you wear anything more substantial. Similarly, my daughter Lada could run barefoot in the snow – that is, until her parents :) implanted in her the idea that she was supposed to get cold this way, and needed warm footwear. Can it be that we modern people have a preconception about ‘cold’ only because we do not move as much as in the days of old, and have pampered our bodies with well-heated (and, in the summer, nicely air-conditioned) homes?

But even so, I think that we can all attain a much higher degree of cold-hardiness compared to the one we have today. In Anastasia, Vladimir Megre talks about Porfiry Ivanov, a Russian healer who walked outdoors in short trunks only no matter how cold it was, and who – through his simple method of getting closer to nature – taught countless people how to do the same.

But it would seem that many Russians do not need any special exercise even when there’s no warming effect of vodka involved. Looking at a cheerful group of youngsters drinking Coca-Cola on the Red Square one February morning, I suddenly realized just why nobody ever conquered Russia, and why nobody ever will. And why would you, anyway? To enjoy some ice-warm soda at minus forty degrees? But that you can have at the nearest supermarket! Just buy a pack of Pepsi and ask them if you can have a use of their walk-in industrial freezer.

I Have a Magic Potion for You!

Posted on September 12, 2012 by Leonid Sharashkin by Leonid Sharashkin.

Children leading way to light “I have a magic potion for you,” said my son Yarosvet, offering his family some water from a sports bottle. “Whoever drinks it, will become… a human being!”

After we all laughed to our heart’s content, I thought how right Anastasia was, saying – in the very first book – that “it takes a child very little time to bestow grace and happiness upon his parents.” Indeed, such has been my experience as a father: every day filled with moments of sheer delight – like the outpouring of my three-year-old son’s witticisms.

It looks as though a deeply rewarding and hilariously fun “parenting” experience is at the hand’s reach for every family, yet the ubiquitous “Stop Child Abuse” slogans betray a reality of widespread suffering. Where’s the disconnect here?

I feel that the key to it may lie in the less-than-universally-understood fact that “raising children means also raising yourself” (see Co-creation and The Book of Kin). It surely sounds like a wonderful concept – after all, we are all for “personal growth” – but what exactly does it mean in practice? Let me offer you my take on the matter.

Unlike raising animals, raising children usually implies some “moral upbringing” – imparting our culture’s understanding of what’s right and what’s wrong or, so to speak, installing on the child’s “hard drive” the same “operating system” we all run as adults. This includes the language (the “word processor”), all kinds of “truths” (the “spreadsheet”) and even the semi-automatic “kill it” reaction to whatever we do not like (the “anti-virus program”).

So what’s the result? I think Anastasia expressed it beautifully in The Space of Love: “Might there not be a certain pattern in the fact that all parents want to see their children happy, and yet they grow up and turn out just like everyone else – not very happy?”

And if we want to break this deplorable pattern, I think the vital first step is to acknowledge the limitations of our “operating system”. However useful, it is not perfect and not even necessarily true!

The implications are enormous. If a child does something “wrong,” more often than not the “wrongness” stems from our imagined self-identity and our perception of how things should be, and not from the child or her actions as such. For example, you keep waking up during the night because the baby’s crying. I’ve read in a popular book for mothers that “at some point you may feel like tossing your baby in a garbage bin.” This was followed by an equally enlightened advice to turn on a vacuum cleaner so you don’t hear the baby howling. But where do all this anger and irritation arise from?

Surprisingly perhaps, they do not arise from the crying of the baby! There are many other loud noises that leave us indifferent. But here, you feel that you “do all you can” for the child, and therefore “deserve” to have some rest. You have the “right” for a few hours’ sleep without interruption, or you need some sleep because you’ll be having an important meeting at work in the morning. Finally, most unpleasantly: the crying of the baby makes you feel inadequate – you are failing to be “a good parent” and to keep the child happy – and this rings the alarm very deep inside of our being.

Unfortunately, our society conditions us to “kill the problem” without really understanding and eliminating its causes. I’ve seen this “end of pipe” approach all the time when I was working in the environmental conservation field: we do all we can to abate pollution by technological means, but the ultimate cause of pollution – the consumptive mindset – isn’t really even considered. Likewise, the “problem of crying babies” is fixed by pacifiers, rocking cradles, or even – regrettably – by giving them some beer or wine, if not pharmaceuticals!

But the crying of the baby is not a blinking “check engine” indicator on your car’s dashboard. It’s a very strong signal that something is fundamentally wrong – not with the baby, but with us, with our way of life. Deep inside we all know that we would like a very different life, but are usually unwilling to admit it.

Yet the moment you admit it, you start “growing together” with your child. You literally start moving together where you’d never get on your own. When Yarosvet was a baby, I would put him in a sling and walk for hours along the stream in the woods, under the starry sky. He never cried this way, and he was right: instead of a crib in a stuffy bedroom I too would prefer to blissfully sleep in my father’s arms as we walk through the forest with its frosty air, squeaking snow, murmur of the stream and screeching of owls.

And before long I’d offer my father a chance – just a chance – to become a human being.

I still have Yarosvet’s sports bottle standing on the counter in the kitchen. Do you think I should give it a try?

Bon Appetit, Anastasia!

Posted on August 19, 2012 by Leonid Sharashkin by Leonid Sharashkin.

Apples from Dr Leo's garden before thinning I was always fascinated by Vladimir Megre’s description of squirrels bringing Anastasia her snacks.

“Yeah, right!” laughed a village longtimer after I related to him the story. “If you don’t shoot these little bustards, they will leave you with no harvest!”

“It surely can’t be that bad!” I protested.

“It is that bad! They can denude your fruit trees in one night. And don’t even get me started on strawberry beds!”

At this point I realized that the man was vastly exaggerating. We had just brought in a handsome strawberry harvest, and even though some berries had been snatched up by birds, squirrels hadn’t been an issue.

I said nothing more, but then it suddenly dawned at me: the purity of thought! Remember Anastasia saying how our interactions with “wild” creatures are fully dependent on our “purity of thought”? And the same creatures that one person sees as a nuisance, can help another? She even goes as far as to say, in Co-creation, that wild animals seek the light of love emanating from Man.

It made so much sense! Indeed, I once experienced first-hand just how powerful this attraction could be.

I was at my parents’ dacha. Warm sunshine, bright blue sky, melting snow, the dripping of icicles, and that fresh smell of thawing earth – all was merging into a veritable Spring song. I was just standing there, in such an excellent mood, taking it in. A few finches scurried in a small tree next to me, and, following an inner urge, I raised my arm. Two of them perched on my hand! Then my wife came up, stretched out her hand, and two more birds flew her way. We were standing there for some time like that – overwhelmed by what was probably the most profound feeling of connectedness to a “wild” creature I ever had.

Then my father opened the window of the cottage and called out to us: “Just look at yourselves! They think you’ll give them some seeds, but you’re just fooling these poor little birds, standing there with your empty hands!”

“Oh no!” I cringed, as the magic of the moment shattered like glass. The birds took flight and never came back. It was all over…

“I gather you won’t be getting any fruit anyway,” my village friend continued, chasing my reverie away. “Your place is too close to the creek, and, you know, our cold spring fogs and late frosts kill the blooms. That’s why all villages around here are on hilltops.”

And in that he was partially right. Most of my neighbors were having trouble with their fruit trees. But armed with my new insight, I felt I could now overcome all obstacles in my way. When selecting my trees, I chose the late blooming varieties. I mulched them heavily, as per Nikolay Kurdyumov’s brilliant advice from his Growing Fruit With A Smile (coming November 2012 at ringingcedars.com). And I talked to the trees. Yes I did! Just as Anastasia stated in Book 4, it can work miracles, and on another occasion I’ll present my take on how and why it works.

Come next spring, our apple trees were covered with a profusion of blooms, and set excellent fruit, while neighbors’ trees were bare. We were so happy! I mean, not that the neighbors were not getting any apples, but that ours were loaded with fruit. And this was only partially due to pure thoughts and other “supernatural” forces. We certainly treated our trees very differently from most people. Seeing my fruit set, a neighbor asked me to take a look at his apple trees which he’d mangled with his pruning sheers: “I did some pruning, but still no fruit – guess I don’t understand the concept that well.” I did not touch my trees at all – Kurdyumov explains how you can train a tree without pruning, and how much difference it can make. It does!

And no spraying either. Yes, some of the apples got spots. And yes, a couple times we spotted a squirrel in the top of the tree, stealing an apple. But we were actually delighted to see that there’s enough fruit for everyone and every “thing”.

As some apples started to fall prematurely, we were enjoying apple pies, and sharing with neighbors and guests. But of course we were very much looking forward to the main harvest, making cider, and storing some for the winter.

And finally the day has come! We woke up early in the morning, dressed the kids, took baskets and headed to the garden.

The trees greeted us as usual, but they were completely bare. Not a single apple, not even on the ground. The squirrels had wiped out the entire crop in one night.

I was standing there, gazing around in disbelief, my one hand clutching that of my son, and the other – the empty basket. The grass was covered in dew which sparkled luxuriously in the rays of the rising sun. Birds were cheering us with their song, and the creek gurgled at some distance. My throat was constricted, and I felt like crying.

Do you think I might be getting a shotgun for the next season?

In the meantime I can only comfort myself with the thought that Anastasia now has a good winter supply of excellent apples.

Bon appetit, Anastasia!

A Weed Anastasia Would Approve Of

Posted on July 4, 2012 by Leonid Sharashkin by Leonid Sharashkin.

Lamb's quarters One of the reasons Anastasia holds garden “weeds” in high esteem is many of them are edible. We learn about it straight in the very beginning of the Ringing Cedars Series, even before Anastasia has a chance to share with us her views on gardening and nutrition. In the beautiful description of their trek into the depth of the wild forest, Vladimir notes how she would “tear off some little blade of grass and… eat it” (Anastasia, Chapter 3: “Beast or Man”).

But just like Vladimir, we cannot help the feeling that wild-growing plants must be somehow “inferior” to the greens and vegetables which adorn our gardens and our fields. Indeed, if it was not the case, how could humanity possibly justify all the effort of raising them? And it would seem that our experience vindicates this point of view: go taste a dandelion leaf – it’s bitter!

Since we moved to the country, however, more than once the abundance of wild-growing greens, fruit, berries, nuts, and mushrooms would make me view my honest gardening efforts as a peculiar ritual. Even if you garden “organically,” and sow it “the Anastasia way,” you still need to protect seedlings from frost, then drought, then raccoons, birds, squirrels, groundhogs, and deer (at which point your garden plot starts to look more like a high-security correction facility). Eventually, though, bugs get most of it. And after you proudly put the fruit of your labors on your child’s plate, he makes a fuss about eating it… because “he’s full – he ate lamb’s quarters!” That’s enough to make anybody wonder, so I took on Anastasia’s advice (see The Space of Love) and started to learn from my children.

One thing I noticed straight away is that they can spend half a day in blackberry brambles along the road and come home all happy with mouths purple from the berry juice. Or we can sit for hours cracking and eating wild black walnuts. They would enthusiastically gather and hull walnuts, but they don’t particularly like “working in the garden.”

Another thing that became quite obvious is that “taste” – what we consider “yummy” or “yucky” – is as much a product of social conditioning as it is a property of food itself. That roaches or dandelion roots are supposedly not as good as crackers or carrots children learn from us. Seeing my son stuffing his mouth full of lady bugs made me shed many of my preconceived notions about what we should eat – and how. And while I have not entirely switched to a lady bug diet as yet, we do consume over a pound of “wild crops” every day. Actually, it’s not that difficult: as a Russian proverb goes, “your tongue’s a smart guy – it can surely tell what’s dung and what’s pie.”

Many wild foods are, in fact, very tasty. But there’s more to it. Even a small quantity of wild-harvested greens, nuts, or fruit would often leave you feeling “full, but not heavy” – quite different from many “regular” foods. This property of wild-growing nuts in particular has even been confirmed by scientific studies.

Add to it the fact that you don’t have to buy – or even grow – the food that nature has produced all by itself, and Anastasia’s way of “eating like breathing” becomes not just alluring, but practicable.

So why is it that we do not use the wild-growing foods that are readily available where we live? Why is it that even the specialized texts I consulted propound the notion that “weeds” were historically only consumed by “poor” people and only in the times of famine? Does Anastasia have a good reason to believe that cultivated foods slow down our pace of thinking and wild foods help accelerate it?

While digging for answers, I’ve unearthed so many fascinating facts – all of which seem to confirm almost every aspect of what Anastasia said about human nutrition. For instance, it turns out that wild-growing greens were very widely consumed until quite recently. I am not talking about the ancient “hunter-gatherer” societies, which we consider “primitive” today. An ordinary peasant from the 19th-century Russia would put to shame many a raw food enthusiast of today! Even the word borscht, which we now use to refer to a beet soup, originally meant nothing other but “raw greens.” Leo Tolstoy was saying: “A peasant goes hungry not when there’s no wheat, but when there’s no lamb’s quarters.”

Not only that, but introduction of many cultivated staples of today was so unpopular that it had to be effected by force. For more than two hundred years Russian monarchs including Peter the Great had been trying in vain to introduce potatoes, until in the mid-19th century troops had to be used to compel peasants to plant potatoes. It led to a wave of “potato revolts” which could only be suppressed with army’s help!

History books, of course, write it all off on the backwardness of the uneducated populace: “Just imagine, they thought that potatoes heralded the coming of the end of the world! Ha-ha-ha!” But wait a minute: isn’t it strange that nobody had had to introduce nettles or aiseweed by force (“aise” means “comfort”), and that even when starving, Russian peasants would rather eat bark of basswood trees than potatoes? Hm! Why would that be the case? You really can’t be as “backwards” as that if your life’s at stake. But can it be that my ancestors had a gut feeling (put intended) that potatoes were not the right food for them?

Well, you might say, we’ve been eating potatoes and other cultivated crops for centuries now and nothing bad had happened. It is true that we are able to live on a modern diet, but could it be that something has been lost in our conversion from wild-growing plants to cultivated crops? I never cease to be amazed at how strong and enduring people seemed to be in the old times. The legendary heroes of folk tales aside, Leo Tolstoy describes how ordinary peasant workers could be unloading railroad cars for 36 hours straight, without any sleep and only two 1-hour breaks for taking food. How many of us, with our “balanced diets” and “health foods” would be capable of the same?

Does it mean that we have to wean ourselves from the habit of buying food and switch from salad greens to chickweed once and for all? Not at all! As Anastasia was wisely saying, any change should be gradual – it took many generations to condition us to like the food we eat today, so the rediscovery of the only truly natural food should likewise be slow. And by no means should it be forced like they did with potatoes – or your family will arise on a “wild chives revolt!”

“Give me lamb’s quarters for a dollar!”

Corn bread with lamb's quarters I’d like to share with you one of my favorite “wild” recipes. It is delicious and nobody will know it’s “wild” until you reveal to them just why it tastes so good (at which point it’s already too late)! It includes lamb’s quarters – a ubiquitous “weed” you can find almost everywhere in temperate climate. It is rich in protein and is nutritionally in many respects superior to spinach, but is very hardy and disease-free, tolerates drought and pests, and is grown in many parts of the world as a garden green. It is a member of the amaranth family, so it is a close relative of garden orach and quinoa. Actually, lamb’s quarters seed is an edible grain, too. You can eat the tender leaves and shoots. Even if the plant is big and the main stem has become coarse, it is covered with young side shoots that remain tender even in the heat of the summer. This Lamb’s Quarters Corn Bread does involve cooking, but lamb’s quarters have a full-bodied flavor and can be enjoyed raw – I’ve been offering its leaves to everyone including my FedEx carrier and a neighbor who’s a retired State trooper – and they both continue to say hello – it’s that good! Anyway, enough talking! Let’s find our mouths a better use!

Corn Bread with Lamb’s Quarters

Ingredients:

3 cups cornmeal

2 tsp baking soda

1/3 cup vegetable oil

2 tsp honey

2 cups water

2 TBSP apple vinegar

1/2 tsp sea salt

two big bunches of fresh lamb’s quarters leaves and stems (about 8 oz)

2 carrots

1 onion

Cooking instructions:

1. Mix water, vinegar, oil, honey.

2. Add cornmeal, baking soda, salt – mix well. Let it sit for 20-30 minutes so it won’t taste “grainy.”

3. Grate carrots, cut onion – cook them on a medium-heat pan until onion turns golden brown, then add it to the mix.

4. Cut lamb’s quarters finely, add them to the mix and mix well.

5. Pour into a greased baking dish and bake at 350 degrees F (180 degrees Celsius) for 30-35 minutes.

Serve with a lentil soup or any other lentil- or bean-based dish. Enjoy!

Build Your Own Materializer

Posted on May 23, 2012 by Leonid Sharashkin by Leonid Sharashkin.

Inspirational Matter

Of all the practical exercises we’ve enjoyed at the Ringing Cedars workshops, few aroused as much enthusiasm as building your very own Materializer – a simple device to manifest any wish.

Inspired by Anastasia’s beautiful visions presented in The Energy of Life, I thought: “She keeps saying that thought is the most powerful energy of all, showing that each of us is creator of our own destiny. But – while the rest of us are not quite there yet – we need some kind of tool to help us experience our limitless potential first-hand.” After all, we all know that many things we cannot see do exist, and yet we somehow feel that “seeing is believing!”

And then when I was reading The Power of Luck, it suddenly stuck me: if all this talk about our all-powerful consciousness is actually true, then manifesting any wish should be as easy as a push of a button – literally! The Materializer design was born in my mind and I fervently set about building it out of an old cardboard box.

Just Add Wishes!

Half an hour later it was ready, sporting a big green Button, an Energizer and all! The moment has come to test it. Amazingly enough, I did not have any shadow of doubt: I simply knew it will work.

“Now, what is it that I really need but do not have?” I asked myself. The answer was clear: I needed an Internet connection! My modem had burned down in a thunderstorm a month before, but my Internet provider had been out of stock ever since – and because it was their proprietary model, I could not buy it anywhere else! (Besides, my place is so remote there was no other Internet company I could switch to!) They had been telling me to wait a week, then another week, then another two weeks. And all this month I had been driving thirty miles to town to just check my e-mail – enough to drive anybody crazy!

That very day I had called the Internet provider again and the representative told me that not only was my modem model still out of stock, but that they were no longer confident they would ever have it back in stock as they were upgrading their systems and were moving away from this model altogether! He said he could put me on the waiting list for the new system install. “How long would that be?” I asked in desperation. “Two weeks, maybe, but we cannot guarantee that,” was the answer.

But now that I had a Materializer, I had no intention to wait even a day. I took a piece of paper and wrote on it: I want a reliable Internet connection NOW! This wish looked completely hopeless, and I knew that! So much for the all-powerful human thought and the Materializer! However, I was determined to go all the way through, even if it meant an inevitable failure. I folded the piece of paper with the wish, inserted it into the Materializer, energized it with the Energizer, and pushed the big green button. Done! It was nearing midnight, so I went to bed.

“It Works!”

The first thing I saw the following morning was the postman delivering a package for me. I looked at the return address and my heart leapt as if I had just jumped out of an airplane. It was from the Internet company, and I knew what was inside. It felt completely surreal. I went inside and unwrapped the package. There was a modem.

After I recovered somewhat and already had it happily pumping megabytes of incoming emails, I called the company to cancel the installation order for a new system. “May I ask why you are canceling?” asked the representative. “Well, because I got the replacement modem you sent me!” was my answer. “Did you? Strange! I’m not seeing it on your account. We’ve been out of stock for two months now, and it’s been discontinued!”

Everything else I had learned in my life paled before this feeling of discovery: Eureka! IT WORKS!

A 1000% Success Rate

I then used my Materializer to manifest all kinds of wishes with a 100% success rate – which had a profound impact on my worldview. What am I saying? It is not 100% success rate, but a 1000% success rate – or rather an infinity – because the awareness it brings with it goes well beyond a particular dream fulfillment. Just as promised in The Art of Soaring: see the “magic” work once, and you will never be the same person!

And then I saw my daughter build one! At this point I realized I was ready to share my discovery of the Materializer with others. So I took it with me to the Ringing Cedars workshops around the world. And today – after countless people confirmed to me that it works – I share its design with you. For free. No secrets held back. No need to buy anything – you can easily put it together in a few minutes with some scrap materials you have at hand. Some suggested I patent it, manufacture it, and sell it. I have no need for that. I would rather see the world a happier place, and as for anything else – we can take care of it with our Materializers, right?

The more I think about it, the more I come to the conclusion that the Materializer’s operation apparently involves the same principles that underlie the functioning of the entire Universe, as revealed in Co-creation. This is probably why it never fails.

Are you ready? Great! Here we go!

Materialize your Materializer: A Complete Do-It-Yourself Guide

Materials needed: a used cardboard box (I used an old Priority Mail box), some scraps of cardboard, some Scotch tape or paper glue, a marker, a couple sheets of thick paper, a small piece of colored paper (your favorite color) or a color pencil. Of course you can go fancy and use other materials, add more decorations, etc. but this does not seem essential for Materializer’s effectiveness. What matters is that you like it. The same goes for the size: some make it real big (like a TV box), others – just as successfully – make it small enough to fit into your pocket. Again, the important part is that you like it, that it feels like the right size to you. Mine is approx. 10″ (25 cm) wide, 9″ (22 cm) deep, and 6″ (15 cm) tall. My Energizer is 8″ (20 cm) long and just above 4″ (10 cm) wide at its widest point.

Time needed: 30 minutes. After that, it can last a lifetime and be passed on from one generation to the next. Potency will only increase with time.

Power requirements: Does not require batteries or grid electricity. Powered exclusively by your muscles (the Energizer) and your thought (all the rest). Note that Energizer does NOT refer to batteries brand – it means “the one who energizes.” It is the same as “Potentizer” and both terms can be used interchangeably.

Design: Materializer’s front panel contains operating instructions, written right on the box with a marker. The instructions read (with appropriate signs to aid comprehension): “1) Insert your wish. 2) Insert Energizer. 3) Press button. 4) Allow some time, check success reports.” The button (a circle of colored paper about 1″ or 3 cm in diameter) is attached in an appropriate spot with glue or tape.

Right side has a pouch for the Energizer. The pouch is made of two strips of thick paper (I used an old Priority Mail envelope) attached to the body with tape or glue.

Materializer’s back panel has a door (rectangle cut in the box on 3 sides) for Administrative Access inside the box. For convenience, the door has a handle (strip of cardboard attached to the door with tape or glue on both ends. For added security, the Admin panel is equipped with Login and Password fields (drawn with a marker) and an Enter button (drawn with a marker as well).

Left side has a pouch for Success Reports. The pouch is a rectangle of thick paper attached to the box on three sides with tape.

Materializer’s top has its name – MATERIALIZER – written with marker, and in the center – a slit for inserting your wishes. The slit can be adorned with a heart-shaped paper attached with tape or glue.

Bottom of the Materializer does not have any special features yet. This leaves room for further improvement.

Energizer is made our of a piece of cardboard, and is given a shape consistent with its purpose. An image of a cheerful Energizer is drawn thereon with a marker. By universal convention, Energizer is a masculine figure, while the Materializer is feminine (“Matter” literally means “Mother”).

Friendly Step-by-Step Operating Instructions

1) Write your wish on a piece of paper. You can use a pen or pencil of your choice; any kind of paper (even tissue paper) has proven quite successful.

2) Insert the wish into the Materializer through the top slit.

3) Take the Energizer and insert it into the slit. Agitate it, vigorously moving it in and out (up and down) until the Materializer is fully energized. After that, leave it immersed into the slit. Then push the big green button.

4) The Energizer protruding from the top of the Materializer is a sign that there is a new wish inside (similar to a flag on a mailbox – which actually uses the same basic principles). The Administrator (the person responsible for fulfilling your wishes – in my household it is myself regardless of whose wish it is) enters his Login and Password, presses the Enter button, then opens the access door, takes out the wish, reads it, and places it into the Success Reports pouch on the left side. The Administrator then removes the Energizer from the slit, congratulates him on the work well done, and places him to rest in his pouch – this is a sign that Materializer is ready for another wish.

Note: because the Materializer has over 100% success rate, all wishes can be put straight into the Success Reports pouch immediately after being taken out of the Materializer.

Troubleshooting: “I followed all the steps, but my wish is not yet fulfilled.” Possible causes: a) You have not energized your wish enough with your Energizer. Remember: your thought energy is what powers the whole thing. The Materializer is not a magic box that does it for you! b) You have not allowed sufficient time for it to manifest. c) What you think is your wish actually is not! The Materializer only materializes your dreams. An example: you think that you wish a latest model of a sports car. It is actually not your wish – it is that of the car manufacturer! (For more examples, see the incomparable Growing Vegetables with a Smile by Nikolay Kurdyumov.) d) You do not believe it will work. Again, the whole thing is powered by your thought – so how can it work if you think that it won’t!? I even think that the only reason why we humans are mortal is that we cannot believe sincerely and without reservation in our own immortality. But this is already another topic.

That’s it. Create! Enjoy! Soar! Prosper! And you do not even need to give me credit for inventing the Materializer: I have grounds to believe that the mysterious Ankh of Egyptian Pharaohs is actually an Energizer, so I could not agree more with how Kurdyumov put it in his Growing Vegetables with a Smile: “I have no doubt that many ingenious practices have been invented ten times over since ancient times. Yet we keep stumbling blindly along towards false goals. Why don’t we apply successful methods to our lives? Why are common everyday routines more acceptable than success? The reason is all in our minds.”

It has worked for me. Will it work for you? It depends on no one but you! But look at me: for quite some time now, my Materializer has been collecting dust on a shelf – I have no unmanifested desires left!

Down with Corporations, Inc.

Posted on April 27, 2012 by Leonid Sharashkin by Leonid Sharashkin.

Dr. Leonid Sharashkin In a Midwest town I once lived in, there’s a pretty little store called The Peace Haven. It is the kind of an “alternative” place that sells incense, meditation music, anti-war bumper stickers, books on spirituality, soy milk, and little statues of Buddha. It is full of charm and character, and, of course, has the Ringing Cedars Series on a special shelf. If you’ve ever been to a shop like that, you get the image.

As you enter the hallway, there’s a big banner stretched wall to wall, which reads: “Down with Corporations.” While this may be a faithful expression of a popular sentiment, it always made me wonder just why the corporations get so much heat in a society that quite willingly uses their goods and services, and which is itself both the creator and the product of “corporate culture.”

There is no arguing that corporations are so powerful that they have subdued half the world. And while so many people oppose them, they keep gaining more and more power! But if they are that efficient and resilient, cannot we learn from them to achieve our own goals? I just love the chapter in Co-creation where Anastasia beautifully explains how you can actually use the “devices of dark forces” to do a lot of good!

But what could we possibly learn from these horrible, abominable corporations that supply us with hamburgers, petroleum, weapons, trucks and a slew of technological gadgets that we so happily keep buying? As it turns out, we could learn a whole lot! Just think about it: if the “peace-makers” were every bit as successful and efficient as those who brew conflict, would there be any wars? And where would be all the “financial power” of those who control world’s monetary supply if someone came up with a motivating force stronger than money?

The way I see it, corporations have perfected one thing that many a self-help book or teacher often fail to impart: creating a clear vision of what you want to achieve, and then moving efficiently to achieve it! In fact, the word “corporation” means just that: “embodiment” – the embodiment of a vision. They are the ones who embraced and mastered the “Science of Imagery,” as Anastasia calls it (see Book 4, Co-creation).

So should we really put our blame on corporations for being successful in creating their version of the world? Or should we rather ask ourselves just why we are not nearly as successful in manifesting the more radiant world we’d like to see around us? Anastasia brilliantly put it in the second book, The Ringing Cedars of Russia (chapter “The Answer”): if humanity does not follow the enlightened people, is there something wrong with humanity? Or may it be that the enlightened ones are not convincing enough and cannot find the right way to get their point across?

Over time I’ve witnessed over and over again that the primary reason why we are not always successful is that we do not know what we want! There’s even a Russian folk tale where the hero, Ivan the Fool, has to procure for the Czar a Fire-Bird and then a jewel from the depth of the sea – but do you know what the most difficult of his trials was? Going I-don’t-know-where and bringing I-don’t-know-what! In the end Ivan coped even with this task, but in our life it is not nearly as easy: it’s darn difficult to achieve something when you don’t know what it is that you want to achieve!

You may object that it’s not nearly as difficult a question. “I want to be happy!” Or: “I want to have more money!” Or something else as simple as that. But how many genuinely happy people do you know among the rich? And what is happiness, anyway? Every time I watch my goats munching away on poison ivy, I know that something that makes one being happy, may be fatal for the other! So we need to be more specific, if we are to draw a roadmap from where we are now to where we want to be. And this is where Anastasia’s advice comes so useful.

In Who Are We? (Book 5 of the Ringing Cedars Series) there’s a great chapter “Do we have freedom of thought?” If you read it, you may remember that Anastasia offers Vladimir a simple exercise: summing up the amount of time spent on different things (like sleeping, watching TV, eating, commuting etc.) over the course of one’s lifetime. Anastasia concludes that in our life, we may spend over 20 years sleeping, 10 years working, 7 years eating, 8 years watching TV and… only 15 minutes pondering the meaning of it all!

Inspired by these straightforward and insightful – yet unsettling! – statistics, I developed a simple exercise which we enjoyed at Ringing Cedars workshops on four continents and which I would like to share with you today. I know from experience that it has helped very many people to get a clearer image of what brings them joy in life – and what robs them of joy! Once we have clarity on that, all it takes is cultivating what makes you happy, and avoiding what makes you unhappy. It may sound simplistic, but it really is as simple as that. And it works! I can vouch for that, as I’ve done it myself.

Determine Your Life Priorities in Eight Easy Steps

Here are two documents you’ll need for the exercise (PDF files):

a Blank Worksheet (print 2 copies), and

an Example of how to fill it out.

Let me walk you through this exercise, using the Example.

Imagine a typical day of your life. I do understand that for most people a weekday will be different from the weekend, and a summer vacation will be different from the rest of the year, but for the sake of this exercise, imagine an “average” day that you can say about: “Yes, this is what my life is, most of the time!”

Now take this day – midnight to midnight – and in Step 1, mark what you do during this day, hour by hour. In our Example, a person sleeps from midnight to 8 am, then quickly grabs something to eat (15 min) and works from 8 am to 9 pm with two breaks to take food. Then he reads for a couple hours and goes to bed at 11 pm. In this Step 1, as in the rest of the exercise, one square represents 1 hour. Now you can fill it out for yourself on the blank worksheet.

In Step 2, “Action,” take the day that you’ve just described in the previous step, go over it hour by hour, and for each hour that you do something, shade out a corresponding square on the chart in Step 2. In our Example, the person sleeps for 9 hours, works 13 hours, spends 1 hour taking food, and 2 hours – reading. Note: if there’s an activity that makes part of your day but which is not listed in Step 2, feel free to add it at the bottom of that box.

A question: what if you routinely do two things simultaneously, e.g., you watch TV over meals? There are two possibilities here: you can either split each hour accordingly (assign 30 min of this hour to watching TV and 30 min to eating). Alternatively, you can count this hour as a full hour for each activity (in this case the total number of hours will end up being over 24, but it’s OK).

Are you done with Step 2? Great! Let’s move on.

In Step 3, go over your day again, hour by hour, but this time record who and what you come in contact with during this hour. For the sake of this exercise, we split it in five groups: nothing, humans, machines, nature, and dead matter. The “nothing” category will mostly apply for the hours of your sleep (unless you sleep with another person and are continuously aware of his or her presence – like a mother with a nursing child by her side). Again, if you come in contact with something not on the list, add it in the “Other” category (e.g., if you have intense experiences in your inner world – like vivid dreams). Important note: for the purposes of this exercise, describe what or who you come into immediate contact with. For example, if you spend an hour talking to your friend over the phone, account for it as an hour spent with a machine (the phone) – because it is, of course, very different from having a face-to-face interaction.

In Step 4, record what you think about during each hour of your day. Pay close attention to what you really think about: if you are at work, but your thoughts are elsewhere (e.g., you think about your girlfriend) – record it as “family/relationships” rather than work!

In Step 5, do the same for your feelings over the course of the day.

Step 6 – record the purpose – what you do it for, hour by hour. Please record the immediate purpose of your action. For example, if you work to earn money, record the purpose of your hours spent working as “money” – even if you intend to spend the money to support your family. Again, if an action fulfills two functions (e.g., you work to earn money, but you also just love your work) – split the time between the two (e.g., money and pleasure).

Step 7 is a bit more abstract, but still try to answer the question: what you do during each hour of your day – does it contribute to creating and supporting life on this planet, or to destroying it? Again, use the immediate outcome rather than a more distant goal. For example, active consumption of Earth’s resources is usually destructive. For example, if you are typing up a book intended to enlighten and save humanity – consider that the immediate outcome is that you are using electricity for your computer; the resources that went into manufacturing your computer; printing paper; even lighting and air-conditioning in the room you sit in – all of which are quite destructive on the planet. In this sense, even when you are asleep, you continue to consume the resources to heat and cool the room you are in, etc.

Finally, in Step 8 take one or two categories that received the highest rankings (largest number of shaded squares) in each of the Steps 2 through 7, and insert these champions into the sentence. I do hope that your result will be brighter than that of our hard-working Example friend! But if not – do not despair. This exercise is not about “how bad it all is”, but rather about how to make it better! So:

Where Do We Go From There?

When you are done, take another blank worksheet and fill it again, but this time, instead of describing your typical day as it is now, picture – step-by-step – what you would like it to look like, in the ideal! Don’t be concerned about being unrealistic – just go ahead and tell yourself what kind of life you would like to have, in as much detail as you can. What do you want to do? What and who do you want to be surrounded with? What do you want to think about? What do you want to feel? What purpose do you want to guide it all – and to what outcome?

Admittedly, your “wish day” may look quite different from what you have now. But, you know, if you’ve done the above exercise, you might have already spent more time on determining your life purpose and finding a path to happiness than most people do over their entire lifetime!

Now that you have a clearer image of the source of your joys and sorrows, ask yourself a question: how do I go about eliminating what brings me down, and bringing in more of what makes me soar? The rest depends on no one but you!

Of course this exercise is not “the” way or the only way. I know many people who arrive at similar results through ways of their own. One of them is the owner of The Peace Haven, Dave – a cheerful, sharp, and easy-going guy. I remember how he saw me staring at his “Down with Corporations” sign and said with a wink:

“There’s more to it than you think, Leo!”

And he proved to be right! I thought I knew exactly what he meant, but the real meaning of his remark did not become apparent until much later, when I discovered it totally by chance. He sent in a payment for the Ringing Cedars books sold at his store. I opened the envelope and read his company name on the check:

“Down with Corporations, Inc.”

Happy Birthday Anastasia!

Posted on March 23, 2012 by Leonid Sharashkin by Leonid Sharashkin.

Mikhail's carrots All my friends and neighbors (and those who watched The Return of Anastasia) know that when I plant my garden each spring, I do so in celebration of Anastasia’s birthday. Once in a while they would ask me: “But how do you know she was born in March 1969?” I would enigmatically answer: “From the Ringing Cedars books!”

One day Mikhail, a neighbor, appeared on my doorstep with an armful of Ringing Cedars volumes. He was all smiles and victoriously pronounced: “I’ve just re-read the whole Series cover-to-cover and nowhere does it say that Anastasia was born in March! And the year 1969 is never mentioned either!” I smiled in return – I love to see people so happy! Inviting him to step inside, I put a kettle on the stove to brew us some herbal tea.

“Are you sure?” I inquired with feigned concern.

“Absolutely sure! This is the very reason I’ve re-read the whole thing! People trust you – but just to think that all these years you’ve been hanging noodles on everybody’s ears!” (The Russian equivalent of “pulling someone’s leg.”)

“Well,” I said, “since you are so sure, I’ll bet you a bag of carrots that I can show you she was born in March 1969 – and I’ll only need one of these books!”

He extended his hand over the table, and we shook hands to seal the deal. I then grabbed his worn copy of The Ringing Cedars of Russia, opened it to Chapter 8, “The Answer”, and read out loud: “And here you’ve been living twenty-six years now in the forest, and you don’t even have a single follower.” I then turned pages to Chapter 24, “Father Feodorit”, and read Anastasia’s own words: “Twenty-six years ago, on the very day I came into this world, a young man in his late teens walked through the gates of the Trinity-Sergiev Monastery.”

“See, Mikhail, these conversations took place during Vladimir Megre’s first visit to Anastasia’s glade in the summer of 1995. If she was 26 at that time, this means that her birthday falls on the second half of 1968 or the first half of 1969. Right?”

“Right,” admitted Mikhail, his smile somewhat waning.

“OK, then! Same book, Chapter 27, ‘The anomaly’: ‘The morning Anastasia turned four,’ Grandfather continued, ‘we were standing at the edge of the glade waiting for her to wake up. We wanted to quietly watch and see how she would delight in the new spring day that was unfolding.’”

I read this passage twice for the meaning to sink in. Aha! Anastasia’s birthday was in the spring, which by Russian convention means March 1 – May 31.

“All right, all right,” said Mikhail quite severely. “It’s the spring of 1969, I grant that. But it could be any month – March, April, or May!”

“Don’t get all tense, Mish! After all, it’s just a bag of carrots!” But this failed to comfort him much, so I continued:

“Tell me, at what age do children start walking and talking?”

“I’m not sure. I think my son started walking at ten months, and then talking when he turned one. I guess it can be earlier or later. But how does it relate to Anastasia’s birthday?”

“I’ll tell you in a moment. But this is important: the earliest that human children can start walking is at about 8 months. Even if Anastasia was an exceptionally well-developed child, it could not be much earlier than that. Even in tribes, where people live as close to Nature as it gets, it is very uncommon for a child to start walking at an earlier age – it is just part of human physiology and universal child developmental milestones. You can consult special literature to confirm that. But let’s even assume that Anastasia was such a precocious lass that she started walking at 7 months.”

“OK, let’s assume that!”

“Great! Now look: Chapter 27, ‘The anomaly’, states that at the time Anastasia’s parents died, there was no snow on the ground – Anastasia was crawling about the glade, gathering sticks; there were bugs, and leaves on trees, and she was sleeping on her parents’ grave. It also says here that Anastasia was not yet able to walk or talk, but made her first steps and started talking within days of her parents’ death. That there was no snow on the ground and there were leaves on trees means that it could be any time from May to October. That Anastasia was not able to talk or walk means that she was not seven months old yet. Now, it’s pure math: if Anastasia’s birthday was any time other than March, then she could not possibly have been mature enough to start walking days after her parents’ deaths, which took place no later than October same year!”

There was a long pause. You could hear the clock ticking and a mouse scratching inside a wall. Then Mikhail started slowly rising from the table, and collecting his books: “All right. You won. I’ll go bring you your carrots!”

“Oh no, wait, you cannot leave like that! The tea is ready, and I have not even told you the whole story!”

“Why? Can there be more to it?” said Mikhail with some doubt in his voice, sitting back down on his chair.

“See, even if nothing else was known about Anastasia, I would still guess she was born in March. In our Old Slavic tradition, March (beginning of Spring) is directly linked to the image of Anastasia (which literally means ‘re-birth’ in Greek). The Old Russian name for March is Berezen’ (‘month of the White Birch’), ‘White Birch’ being the totem tree and symbol of the cosmic feminine principle – ‘The White Goddess’ – that Anastasia so beautifully represents. This is true in many other cultures: the beginning of March (March 8) is International Women’s Day (the United Nations-recognized global holiday). The spring solstice (March 22nd) is associated with Anastasia (“re-birth”) in both Russian mythology and folklore, and in the mythology of other cultures, like for example Persephone in the Greek tradition. The first “Earth Day” was celebrated on March 22, and so on. Understanding that there is nothing random about Anastasia and everything about her is infused with meaning, it is difficult to imagine that she could be born any time other than March (“the Anastasia month”) and still be given the name of Anastasia by her parents!

“Also, here’s a logical question: if Anastasia’s parents were consciously planning her birth, what month would they choose for the birth to take place? Here in Book 1, Chapter 9, ‘Who lights a new star?’ Anastasia states that the birth of her and Vladimir’s son (in February 1996) would ‘not be on time’, and says that ideally, the birth should happen ‘when Nature can help with the nurturing.’ What is this best time for the birth, when Nature can help with nurturing a human baby? In the conditions of the wilderness of Western Siberia, it is undoubtedly early March (assuming both parents are there and father actively participates in caring for the woman and the baby): the conditions are no longer as harsh as during the coldest part of the winter, but birth ‘early in the season’ gives the baby the maximum amount of time to grow and develop before the coming of the really cold weather the next fall. So the main factor for determining the ‘ideal time’ here is not the actual weather conditions at the time of birth (in this respect summer would be ‘nicer’), but the length of baby’s first ‘growing season’ – from birth to when things become really ‘bad’ in the fall. Again, as Anastasia’s parents, undoubtedly, consciously selected the best appropriate time, it is most likely that her birth took place some time in early March.

“It also says right here in the first book (and is repeated in many other places in the Series) that Anastasia and her ancestors became amazingly adapted to the harsh conditions of Western Siberian climate by ‘merging with nature.’ Now, consider this: in the part of Western Siberia which is Anastasia’s home, bears give birth to their young in late February – early March. In that part of taiga, there is no mammal closer to humans in terms of body weight, physiology, and diet (in which pine nuts and berries are paramount, just as for Anastasia). If bears, fully adapted to these conditions, give birth to their young in early March, then it is likely that Anastasia’s ancestors, who, as she asserts, have lived in this location for many generations, have adapted to giving birth around the same time, which, as I said, is ideal from the standpoint of physical survival of the young under the very harsh conditions of Western Siberia.

“There are other, less tangible, clues. Again, if we assume that there’s nothing random about Anastasia, then I would guess that she was born on the border of SUNday and MONday (balance of Sun, the masculine, and Moon, the feminine principle). Remember how she talks a lot about a ‘union of opposites’ and the need to transcend the opposites and extremes in order to attain a higher good for all mankind – this is a central part of her world outlook and message – and it can be said that she herself fully represents this union of opposites. Symbolically, there is no better moment to correspond to this as the time frame between Sunday and Monday.

“Another ‘intangible’ clue. Number 3 is central to everything Anastasia imparts. It is the cosmic trinity (Mother, Father, and Child) and all its manifestations, as explained in Co-creation. The very first edition of Anastasia in Russian said there would only be 3 books. In a later edition (Book 2) Grandfather told Vladimir that he would write 9 books (3 times 3). If you read the Ringing Cedars books attentively, you will see that the symbology of number 3 permeates the whole Series (the other key number being 1, the Oneness). So, knowing for sure that Anastasia’s birthday is sometime in early March, I would further guess that it could be on 3/3/1969 (which is actually a Monday) – it just strikes me as a very powerful date composed of only multiples of 3, and 1 (and, if summed, yields 31).

“But there’s no need to go into such esoterics. March 1969 must be good enough! After all, Anastasia’s exact birth date is just a tip of an iceberg. An even more interesting (and most unsettling) question is why Vladimir Megre chose to withhold this information from his readers! He actually did this because -”

I looked at Mikhail and he was sitting there completely smitten! What have I done!?

“Hey Mish! Don’t be so upset! Very few people notice any of it even if they read the entire Series cover-to-cover! OK, I’ll say no more today!”

We ate comb honey and drank tea made with wild herbs from my domain (mints, strawberry leaf, raspberry leaf, horsetail, even a pinch of wormwood), and Mikhail’s good mood was gradually coming back. And then just before he left I took a guitar and sang him my newest song Sex in the Taiga.

“Your are incorrigible, Leo!” laughed Mikhail as he was saying good-bye.

Now you, too, know that Anastasia was born in March 1969 – and it did not cost you a single carrot!

Happy Birthday Anastasia!