Lessons in Balance

I've Looked at Clouds from Both Sides Now

I'm always captivated by clouds, from both sides. When I'm on the ground, I wonder what's beyond. When I peer out from the window of an airplane, I guess at what goes on below. My thoughts veer toward the philosophical whenever I'm thousands of feet above ground. Is this where wisdom resides?

 

"The clouds usher in tranquility. Below us are enemies and colleagues, the sites of our terrors and our grief, all of them now infinitesimal, mere scratches on the earth. We may know this old lesson in perspective well enough, but rarely does it seem as true as when we are pressed against the cold plane window, our craft a teacher of profound philosophy..." -Alain de Botton, The Art of Travel.

 

Related posts: Reverb 10 - Wisdom, True Wisdom Requires Bravery.

Photo: Clouds Above NY-2009, taken with my iPhone.

My Five - Is There a Trick to Reading?

A few days ago I read "How To Finish Reading All The Books You Start"  by Mark Forster and decided to follow his suggestion because he has the same reading "issue" that I have:

...I don't finish the books I do want to read. In fact I have bookshelves full of books with bookmarks sticking up half way through them. Even if I do get one of these books out of the bookshelf, I will have to start reading it again from the beginning because it's been so long since I looked at it that I've forgotten what I've already read.

Forster suggests that you choose five books and stack them in a pile. Read the top book for as long as you'd like in one session. At the end of the session, the book goes to the bottom of the pile and you repeat it each time you come back to read.

Two important rules: (1) only read what's in the stack, new books must wait, and (2) after you put a book down, it has to go to the bottom of the pile. Forster has found that varying the subject matter and book size helps to keep the interest going.

Part of the reason for my scatter-shot reading habit is that my selections are 99% nonfiction and I often read chapters in random order. For a change, I've decided to add at least one book of fiction to my stack. I have a few unfinished books on my Kindle too but I think I'll use a body-double for the pile and keep the extra pounds off the thin device.

I've been reading from My Five book stack for several days now and love the stimulation of variety. Although, I'm wondering if my future self will remember the books as separate subjects or as one epic tale.

 

Related post: Reverb 10 - Future Self

How To Finish Reading All The Books You Start.

 

Taming the Hungry Bear

Come tomorrow, I'm eating clean. Following Alejandro Junger's book CLEAN - The Revolutionary Program to Restore the Body's Natural Ability to Heal Itself, I spent the past week on the elimination phase: no coffee, no alcohol, and lunch as the largest meal. I have a thirty day supply of suggested vitamins and supportive herbs, I have a Vita-mix blender and an incredible source of clean vegetables. I'm ready.

After a week settling into the rhythm of the Clean program, I can see that the foods (or the absence of some) won't be a problem at all. Planning and shopping for my meals and having the right stuff in the house,  will be my challenge. I can easily skip a meal or two but then, I rear up on my haunches and claim hunger and starvation.  This state of annoying arousal justifies eating out, eating late, or eating more than I need.

Junger says of hunger:

Sometimes it's because we are so distracted by a busy life that we reflexively reach for food when it's not actually needed. Or because we're uncomfortable having that body sensation and just want to get rid of it. ...When you crack this nut, you acquire the ability to take control over what you eat, when you eat, and how much of it you need to consume to feel your best.

I'd like to change my relationship with food, and I think understanding and controlling my perceptions and beliefs about hunger is key to body integration. I'd really like to tame the Hungry Bear and make him my friend, just as I want to handle my guard dog, Pain.

I wonder if I turn my challenges into fairy-tale-like characters because I associate them with being able to live happily ever after.

 

 Related post: Reverb 10 - Body Integration

Image: Shirt.Woot!

Reverb 10 - Eleven Things

 Reverb 10, the Prompt:

December 11 – 11 Things

What are 11 things your life doesn’t need in 2011? How will you go about eliminating them? How will getting rid of these 11 things change your life?

(Author: Sam Davidson)

My Response:

1.  Books, untouched.
2. Clothes, not worn.
3. Papers, unfiled and unimportant.
4. Old e-mail, read & unread.
5. Empty Calories.
6. Idle Wishes.
7. Excuses.
8. Complaints.
9. Dust.
10. Boxes stored in my garage.
11. Blur. The state of not being in focus.

All of those things are distractions. They just take time and energy away from what I do want in my life.

It is not good to have an oar in everyone's boat. -Earl Camden

 

Photo: Reel Life Wisdom

Stepping into a Sacred Kitchen

The range of what we think and do is limited by what we fail to notice. And because we fail to notice that we fail to notice there is little we can do to change until we notice how failing to notice shapes our thoughts and deeds.

-R.D. Laing

I spend a fair amount of time here at my kitchen sink. I love the colors of the bottles as they reflect light changes from morning to night, and the rafus palm leaves oscillating in the breezeway. It's a calm setting, highly beneficial to preparing food. As I read in The Sacred Kitchen:

A centered person is one whose thoughts are focused, not scattered; someone who resides in a place of peace within, rather than bobbing in the choppy waters of ill health and emotional volatility. Just as a centered individual makes the best friend, student, or parent, such an individual also makes the best cook. We can shift our lives "closer to the center" just by being aware of the great benefits of centeredness. Making the diet more centered is perhaps the greatest consideration in creating a sacred kitchen.

Undeniably, the current food buzzwords are safety and obesity. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), an estimated 76 million cases of foodborne disease occur each year in the U.S.(1) and the latest obesity statistics show that it continues to rise as overall, 26.1% of adults are considered to be obese. In 2008, Mississippi recorded the highest percentage at 32.8%.(2)

According to the headlines, fast food is to blame for our nation's climbing obesity scores and government agencies are at fault for not monitoring our food sources more carefully. What we may be failing to notice are our own basic attitudes about food. Somewhere along the way certain foods turned evil, filled with calories, fat and toxins. So we opted for low-fat, non-fat, natural and fortified. We also voted for "fast and cheap food" with our buying habits and the food industry complied. We lost our respect for food and allow it to be mass produced, soaked in preservatives and zapped by microwaves before we let it enter our bodies, often unconsciously.

Deepak Chopra, M.D., says in Creating Health: Beyond Prevention, Toward Perfection:

People who do not feel sufficient respect for eating are showing no awareness of the flow of organizing power that it represents. Eating indiscriminately or eating unconsciously, eating on the run, habitually overeating or not eating at all - these are all violations of natural law, that is, of the biological processes that must work in their preordained channels in order for food to be converted into us.

I'm guilty. Even though I may be centered and at peace as I stand before my kitchen window preparing my meal, I eat unconsciously or eat as I'm doing other things. This week, I want to:

1. Re-read The Sacred Kitchen.


2. Cook some of the "10 Healthy Poor Man's Foods for When You Have Nothing to Eat". The article was written by my friend Stefan Pinto and the 10 foods happen to already be in my sacred kitchen. I'll add local fruits and veggies for perfection.


3. Turn my eating space back into a Centered Dining Experience (my laptop is now the centerpiece).
   

I would love to see self-responsibility become another buzzword when we speak about Food. While collectively, we continue with efforts to insure the safety of our foods and take steps (literally) to decrease the nation's obesity ratios, individually we can move "closer to the center" by noticing our food and our attitudes toward eating.

Care to join me? You may subscribe to Lessons In Balance or check-in every so often. Please feel free to comment, I'd love your feedback and ideas.

Sources:
(1) Department of Health & Human Services, CDC
(2) WebMD: How Fat is Your State?