rawlife’s BodyBlog

   Another series of events seems to be taking place, moving me in a certain direction.  I have become more and more conscious of these series’ of events lately…and for the time being that makes them challenging-the fact that I sense them/see then unfolding coupled with my, I would say, very human reaction to want to forcefully direct them rather than let them unfold with subtle, almost unconcious direction.  Anyway, one of the things I seem to be moving toward is dry fasting. I’ve been doing intermittent fasting for one or two years now and it seems it’s time to move onto the next step.  Most of my fasts have been 12-24 hours, but I did do a 3 day and a 6 day, and maybe a 2 day somewhere in there.  They have all been hydrated fasts, either with water or vegetable juices. 

    For the last couple months, though, I’ve been noticing that liquid, usually water, doesn’t always have the great effect on my body that everyone else seems to be talking about.  For the most part, I feel like this is because I am gulping it down by the cup rather than just slowly and carefully drinking what I need and moving on.  I haven’t pretty much ever drank as much water as the average bber out there and, despite that, I still feel like I am drinking more than I need to because it just doesn’t sit quite right.  A sip or a gulp or three sits very well, but more than a cup usually doesn’t.  After this feeling kind of solidified in me, after lots of experiences, I started running into articles about how drinking tons of water actually doesn’t have this great cleansing effect on the body and even that the body cleans itself best when it is completely at rest-not consuming anything: in other words, dry fasting.  The first little article I read that got me thinking was this one, it’s just a little blip: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89323934

   Anyway, this isn’t all that new to me.  Actually this was one of the first things I learned when I got into raw eating-that you should try to get your water from water rich foods rather than drowning yourself in it and flushing out a lot of healthy things that you want to stay in your body by drinking it.  The fact of the matter is though, that I wasn’t ready for that really.  I went full force into it and that probably had a certain good effect in that it got me started and pushed me along, but it was never something I was able to quite get into really.  Now, after close to four years, it is something that I am really ready or getting really ready to get into.  Now I’ve had the experiences that have led me into the place I need to be to do this: to reduce my drinking water intake, to increase my food water intake, and to do intermittent dry fasting-although, I think the end result will be more like fasting dry until I come to a point of diminishing returns, taking a sip or two, and then continuing to fast dry-and this could all take place within the time frame of just a day.  I really like that idea of doing what works to get the job done with the thought in mind that the point is to evolve into a more efficient, joyful, loving, happy person.  See, without that last little part there, just doing what needs to be done to get the job done can, think, have less than desirable effects.

   In other news, I’m becoming a bigger and bigger fan of the middle ground; and much of that stems from me being weary of things that I have to chase after, things that I have to constantly strive to become so as to attain happiness-for example, a non-materialist.  I guess a materialist, in my eyes, is someone who worships or lives for the physical, who holds that above all else.  I don’t want to be that person.  Someone who strives to become as least materialistic as humanly possible-who lives for this ideal-seems, in my opinion, to be equally as confused as the first person.  I don’t want to be that person either.  That person seems to display a kind of fear, derived from a strong sense of discomfort, which could evolve into-I really don’t like using this word-a hate for the physical.  The way of love and creation doesn’t seem have a whole lot of room for eternal hate and fear-which is, essentially, how I would describe the attitude towards the physical of a person who is on a constant quest to deny it, to minimize it into nothingness and stamp it out. 

    The person I want to be loves the physical, but loves the spiritual more.  A person who worships things that do no rot, but respects and admires things that do-because they are a part of creation, they are the result of thought, they are not just a piece of the whole but an extremely important piece!  The problem is, most people have worshipping the physical down to such an art that the people that I call the masters have to continually remind us and stress to us the importance of the spiritual, the everlasting.

    So, I’d like to conclude this blog with a bit from a sermon made by the 16 year old ‘Buddha boy,’ Ram Bahadur Bomjon: “But though it is easy to lead this ignorant existence, human beings don’t understand that one day we must leave this uncertain world and go with the Lord of Death. Our long attachments with friends and family will dissolve into nothingness. We have to leave behind the wealth and property we have accumulated. What’s the use of my happiness, when those who have loved me from the beginning, my mother, father, brothers, relatives are all unhappy?”

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 31st, 2008 at 4:11 am and is filed under Training. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.