Travis Eneix

What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder, because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Personal growth is a painful thing. It’s never easy, and is often brought on when one’s personal set of translations for the world fail to an extent that requires a transformation of the basic structures through which we see, and with which we relate to the world at large. It’s not easy. It’s a painful thing to do, and go through.

One of the obstacles on the path of personal discovery, growth, and change are the very people we turn to for support; our friends, family, and loved ones. Just as we are butting our spiritual heads up against our own habitual patterns, our loved ones will also hold those patterns for us. They have set expectations on who we are, and how we should behave. They rely on us conforming to those expectations to maintain their own world views. When we change, they will resist. Sometimes they will do this to be helpful and keep us on what they feel is a rational track. Sometimes they will do this out of fear and confusion, perplexed by our behavior making the world as they experience it, “not what it should be.” Regardless of the motivation, the result is the same, they resist our changing.

It is because of the above that spiritual traditions often call for a break with the aspirants home and family. From Gurus in India commanding their disciples to never again contact their families, to Buddhists being assigned to far away monasteries, to cults holding their followers in private compounds. It’s also the reason for the strong tradition of hermitages, remote places to hide away from the influence of others.

I don’t think such extreme measures are strictly necessary when grappling with your own path.  But, I do think it a useful tool to know that if you change, those who know you will at first resist.  Knowing that is happening makes dealing with the confusion it can produce much easier.

Sorry for the cumbersome title. I originally wrote, “Things To Not Do When On A Diet”, but I remembered I hate the word diet as it is misused in the modern fitness world. In any event, I was inspired by an article over at Lifehack.org, Fitness is a Journey. Bring a Map., so here we go.

Straight from my experience, here’s a few things to avoid when on a diet weight loss plan:

• Thirst: There’s a couple of old adages regarding proper hydration that I find very useful;
1. If you are thirsty it’s too late, you are already dehydrated. You can avoid this state with a few simple steps. One, drink some water as soon as you get up. Two, always have something to hand to sip at whenever you are sitting, or reclining.
2. Watch the color of your urine. If it’s clear you are doing well. If it’s not, drink some water.
• Also, your body maintains a set hydration level. When you drink water it is absorbed immediately, and if that brings you above your set hydration level it is moved swiftly to your bladder for expulsion. The problem is that if you have had long standing levels of low hydration then your body has adapted to that state and accepted the low set hydration level. Your set level only moves up very slowly. To get past that you want to bypass that system. You can do that by getting your body to treat water as food, rather than water. Mix some unsweetened fruit juice into your water. A mix of 1 part juice to 3-4 parts water will do the trick nicely. This will cause the water to be absorbed a little more slowly, and can partially bypass the set hydration level check, which will get your set hydration level to rise more quickly.
• Going Hungry: Don’t do it. Being overly hungry means you are tempting your body to go into a starvation response. That means your metabolism will lower, and your body’s mechanism for storing fat will ramp up. Those are bad. Being hungry is fine, but when the rumbles start, nibble something.
• Sitting Still: Our culture has a lot of excuses for extended periods of time spent on our backsides. Fight the tide! Get up and stretch those legs frequently. Get the blood moving. I used to keep a large, 3/4 gallon, nalgene plastic bottle on my desk for my water. Mistake. That meant I only had to get up to go to the bathroom. Now I use a pint glass, while maintaining the same level of fluid intake. That means frequent trips to the office kitchen, which is thankfully on the other side of the building.
• Feeling Stuffed: That painful bloated feeling you get when you stop ten bites to late. You know what I’m talking about. Avoid it. It expands your stomach and makes it harder to reach that point next time, allowing for an upwards spiral of consumable volumes. Note that it takes your body sometime to feel things after they enter your stomach. Eat slow. When you start to feel a little full, stop and take a break. See if you can be done. Your stomach will shrink to a more normal size, and the next time you will feel full sooner, which will help the downward spiral of weight loss.
• Doubt:  I do not ascribe to the Law of Attraction.  But, I do believe in the Power of Intention, and the Might of Self Talk.  Our brains are amazing tools, infinitely capable of steering us on the course we say we desire.  If you say internally, “I’ll never get thin”, your brain will help you to fulfill that goal.  If you say, “I’m getting thinner!”, your mind will work to perpetually keep you in that state, which is to say always getting thinner but never being thin.  Acknowledge your successes as they come.  Consciously modify your internal dialog.  Switch, “I’m getting thinner,” to, “I am thinner,” and the results may amaze you.  At the very least you will stop beating yourself up.

That’s it folks, a few tips on things to avoid when working on weight loss.  Until next time, sip some sweet water, nibble if you need to, move a bit, don’t eat too much, and celebrate your successes.

Cheers!

I am visiting New York city for the mostly annual visit to my wife’s family. We are having a grand time. I love this town! As we were headed to Chinatown from the Upper East side o the subway, I was approached by one Garth Wolkoff. Garth is an English teacher and a writer, who has a blog dedicated to what New Yorkers are reading on the subway. I think the fact that my wife, and her Mom, are both New Yorkers kind of grandfathered me into being qualified to be an item on the blog. Also, the fact that Garth used to live in my tow, San Francisco, probably helped. You can read the entry, One Taste, over at undergroundreads.blogspot.com. Enjoy!

Walking to my local pub for dinner, down my street the other evening. Looking at the total beauty of things as they are; the street, the curb, the buildings, the pan-handlers, the tourists, the sky, the light. It occurred to me that none of this, nothing at all, nothing that has happened, was happening, or ever would happen has any effect on what I truly am, whatsoever.

This is not a negative statement. The pure witness that gives rise to the feeling, the sureness, that “I am” never moves, is never affected, is never harmed, never was born and never dies. In that space of complete non-occurrence, all of the universe occurs, and that is what I am.

The diner was grand, to boot!

Refusing To Separate My Consciousness From Yours

Truly it is one of the unforeseen pleasures of the 1st-Person life to gaze unabashed into the faces of one’s friends, without feeling or thinking anything in particular, and just see them for what they always were - things for looking at and never for looking out of. This isn’t an unloving state, reducing you to a cardboard cut-out. Quite the reverse; it is a most loving refusal to separate my Consciousness from yours, and it removes the last barrier between us. Liberated from the superstition of plural spirits, we are at last really one. This is the perfect love which casts out fear - the fear inseparable from living in a haunted world. (The Science of the First Person, Douglas Harding)

Douglas Harding is one of my single most favorite free-form mystics.  His simple ideas and experiments for looking at what we really are, are always a joy to me.  The above is a wonderful description of the simple truth of what it is like to let ourselves actually be ourselves.  Looking at that world this way is pure joy and takes the opposite of effort to realize.  As Ramana Maharshi often came back to, “Be still, and be as you are.”