I have been working on this actively for several years now, but I never quite articulated it as concisely as this.
Essentially, I believe that exclusivity feeds the ego, whereas inclusiveness feeds the soul.
I have no idea how this got on here.
Actually I have an idea, the iPhone decided it belonged on my list.
Overhead lighting is far too stimulating when one is having sleep difficulties. Perhaps candles are the answer. It is worth a try.
Irritation is inevitable. Trying to eliminate irritation from one’s life, from my experience, is a fruitless folly. My late mother-in-law used to say “if you don’t court trouble, it comes in your bedroom window.”
If trouble is inevitable, then the focus is dealing with it. I believe that the goal is to deal with the perturbation gracefully and harmoniously. This does not mean one denies the sorrow and frustration that comes with plot complications. experiencing the full spectrum of emotions is what it means to be human. Dealing with these gracefully requires one be with the emotion and experience for the appropriate length of time and then move on from it. The experience of the negative emotion should not cost to spare.
Yes, I believe all that I have suffered is a gift, the gift of hard lessons. ....and of course a greater appreciation of joy (or more accurately the absence of suffering).
I transcend by taking the high road through the middle way.
I transcend by not winning and not needing to win.
I transcend by accepting what is.
I transcend by not expecting.
I transcend by paying attention.
....and thusly my soul coalesces and crystallizes.
....and thusly I approach wholeness and stay out of that hole I clawed my way out of….
It only takes a small amount of alcohol to completely stall emotional maturation/growth/healing.
It is an excellent drug if you want to stay exactly where you are.
I am an unabashed meat eater. I have had a go a vegetarianism and even veganism and they are not for me.
However that does not mean I support modern conventional factory farming or eat the products.
I don’t touch grain fed beef. Grain will kill a cow and I don’t want to eat dying animals. Grass fed beef only, it is more nutritious than grain fed. Beef producers in the US are allowed to feed cows non food items such as plastic, cardboard and even motor oil. This, of course, contaminatea the meat. Therefore
I believe it prudent to avoid the cheapest beef for this reason.
I stay away from factory farmed chickens. I don’t eat grains and I don’t like to eat animals that eat grains. I strongly prefer “pastured” chickens that live outside where they use their muscles and eat insects and worms. Supposed organic. Chickens are mostly factory farmed indoor crowded chickens that are fed organic grain.
I only eat wild fish that are sustainably harvested (I use the Seafood Watch app from Monterrey Bay Aquarium). I keep my top of the food chain fish, like tuna and swordfish, down to couple time per month to keep my mercury load to a minimum.
I eat farmed oysters, lots of them.
The divorce mediator I selected is assisting in transcending a very difficult situation. She is awesomely competent.
Parting the waters does not equal doormat syndrome. Righteous anger should be expressed. Yes you can forgive afterward (with the heart), but bottling anger is a bad idea.
I firmly believe that one cannot have profound health without excellent posture. In fact I find that you can tell a lot about someone’s health by observing their posture. Having good posture helps keep the energy flowing within the body.
We live in an age where there is a pandemic of bad posture. Chairs, toilets, cars, computers, couches, have conspired against us. Just take a look around you and you will see it.
A lot of bad posture comes from unresolved emotional issues. People get bent by life, often at early age.
Rehabilitating one’s posture takes a lot of work and rarely do you see it. One has to stretch the short tight muscles and strengthen the long weak muscles. This means you first must figure out which of your muscles are short and tight and which are long and weak. On top of that, if you are to make good progress, you must resolve the emotional issues that tweaked you in the first place. This may take reinventing yourself completely. Lots of hard work but perhaps the best thing you can do for yourself, in my opinion.
Once i realized that i wasn’t a loving person because I only gave love to those i deemed deserving, i went about changing it. I also realized that I also did not love myself enough and i needed to change that also.
Loving self and loving others is a tough discipline.
Having love and compassion for everyone, especially those that one doesn’t naturally have empathy towards is hard work, but it has great rewards. I had trouble with the powerful, judgemental and driven types. It is a lot easier to feel compassion for homeless beggars than, for example, Dick Cheney. The man is obviously tortured, but the arrogance and greed Combined with great power and questionable ethics initially strike up other emotions for me.
I adopted the goal “have love flow freely through me” as part of this effort. I believe that for whatever reason you block your love, you suffer to some degree. I also believe that when love flows freely through you, it has a profound healing effect.
Love does not always flow freely through me, if ever at all, but the flow is much greater than before, much greater. I highly recommend the practice.
Parting the waters means not responding reactively. By parting the waters the stimulus does not cause a ripple effect through one’s body/mind.
“all phenomena is illusion.
Neither attracted or repelled,
My habits will carry me through..”
Spring 2010 – I kept my life in tenuous balance. I work hard of my well-paying job. I had an social life revolving mostly around partying to some degree. I was frustrated to some degree with my marriage, But was committed to making it “work”. I had what I thought was a pretty good and certainly better-than-average diet. I got my exercise and worked out my frustrations through training in martial arts. I trained in Krav Maga, jujitsu, and Mui Thai to a lesser degree. After a workout I would come home and pound a beer or three and watch television. My way vacillated between 220 and 230 pounds. To my friends and the outside world in general it appeared that I had it together. but actually I was rapidly deteriorating.
One night in jujitsu class I was “rolling” with a younger fitter more talented yet smaller man. He was applying a shoulder lock on my right arm but I resisted it for a long while, however I was unable to dislodge him. Sensing a stalemate, I decided to tap out. However I stopped resisting before I tapped out. My opponent kept applying the force to my shoulder and without resistance it bent backwards to hyper extension as did my elbow. There was inaudible pop sound and some pain immediately. At the time I did not believe I was injured however I thought it prudent to call it quits for the evening.
The injury got worse instead of better and I soon realized that I would be unable to train for a good period of time. This injury through me into despair as I had grown dependent on the training for maintaining my balance. I became sedentary, watch more television, and increased my alcohol intake. I thought this injury was horrible and was ruining my life. Now I realgifted was and still is a enormous gift.
December 2010-the injury still had not healed. I had ballooned to 250 pounds and had developed a severe case of sleep apnea but was unaware of it. My wife slept through it. I was sleepy and kept functioning with caffeine, about three or four large mugs of coffee most every day.
In January 2011 I came to the recent realization that I had let my body go and needed to do something about it. The first thing I needed to do was cut my alcohol intake.
I also realized that although I believed I was a loving human being I was actually not. I only gave my love to those who I thought deserved it. My heart had completely slammed shut. It had been this way all my life. I thought it was normal, and it is normal to many people. Normal yes but loving no.
I also realized that these two things were connected. my lack of love for the outside world reflected in how I treated my own body. I’ve vowed to change both. And I have.
Two years ago weighed 250 pounds, I had sleep apnea, anger issues and a vague sense of dissatisfaction with my life in general. I had head forward posture, and arthritic neck, and other various ailments and injuries. I took ibuprofen to manage pain on a regular basis and drank alcohol almost every day. I had been interested in self transformation for 25 years but had only succeeded in one step forward one step back for most of the time.
Now, I weigh 195, the sleep apnea is gone, virtually no anger issues and no sense of dissatisfaction with my life. My posture has improved tremendously and I no longer drink alcohol or take any sort of analgesics. There was no magic bullet. I have used a variety of tools and techniques turn my life around. I intend to document my approaches here.
