rawlife’s BodyBlog

  I don’t actually know how many people read these blogs anymore.  There’s so good for me personally, I guess I don’t care that much…but it would be nice to have a reader or two.  I’m making some kombucha right now and am going to grub a bit afterwards, so hopefully I’ll be able to keep this short.  Not a lot happening on my end anyway.

   Training is up and down.  I predicted a while back that a person’s program, whether it’s workout, diet or whatever should always be a rolling one.  One that evolves as the person evolves.  I think I was right there.  The moment I take care of one weak link in regards to the back, another one pops up.  I’m never doing the same thing as I did last time around.  As I’ve said before, I’ve had so many injuries over the years, and been so ignorant of them all, I’ve got a lot of back work to catch up on.  Right now my ham is the culprit.  The piriformis is almost always bad but that’s more because of the slight paralyzation I think-I try and work it and not a lot happens…something else takes over.  Anyway, I tore the ham a couple years back, it was a serious tear-I’ll see if I can get a pic up, the only one I have is a couple of weeks after the injury though.  I definitely did not see a doctor.  It took me until now to look up it’s attachment sites.  I don’t know why it never hit me to do that, but it didn’t.  Anyway, being connected at the pelvis, if it’s tight, it’s going to pull my pelvis in a direction I don’t want it going and since I am at basically zero tolerance when it comes to the back.  Stretching it and strengthening it makes a big difference, but it’s going to need a good bit more work.

    The same thing is happening with my diet.  I’ve been combining the high carb with the low carb/high fat.  It’s working well, but really only if I let it roll.  Doing the same thing day in and day out is what my sense of comfort is most tempted to do, but my head, candida, and my general understanding won’t allow it.  I don’t have good results-I’m often craving something that is not part of the program right then.  Got let it roll.

   What is cool though is that an idea I had quite some time back has really been showing itself to be true.  I had this notion that aging really isn’t aging, rather decomposing, or breaking down.  The reason it’s so strongly correlated with aging is because as we get older we have accumulated enough toxic waste and poor decisions to have visible results on the outside of our body, whereas they start on the inside.  I had some gray hairs a while back which I made careful note of and really disturbed me given my so called great lifestyle.  It got me a bit down.  Anyway, that was when I was living the all animal product diet.  The moment I started introducing fruits and vegetables again, they all went away and haven’t come back since-I know they haven’t because they were on my forearm, on my tattoo, and I made note of exactly where they were, the bastards.  Now that’s taken care of, thank God. 

That’s it for now, managed to keep it short, gonna grub a bit-raw beef, brazil nuts, raw cheese, parsely, chives, and olive oil.  Mix it up, grub it, good.

   So the deal is that I am in this kind of middle period of my life, much like when one decides to grow their hair out long and realizes that the stage after short but before long is pretty unattractive.  I don’t really feel unattractive…more that the life I am living right now is unattractive-I’m just kind of waiting for the next step.

      I’m working daily but not loving it like I should be; I’m dying to get my projects off the ground.  I’m not working on them as much as I should be though, which is borderline idiotic given the above statement.  I could be working on the book right now, but I decided that I should blog instead because it’s been so long and I missed such a long period not too long ago.  So I don’t consider blogging right now borderline idiotic.  I could definitely use my time a bit better though, or a hell of a lot better.  I’m just juggling so many kind of esoteric goals right now that it’s hard for me to get it all to go together, and thus the ‘middleosity’ of this while time period.   I’m trying to be more lax in regards to my lifestyle so as to re-develop my personality and get a social life again while trying at the same time to be more strict in regards to getting things done that I need to get done.  Combining strict with lax is only going to work if I understand exactly what it is I should be strict with and what it is I should be lax with.  Just writing this is helping right now though.  It seems the mind really wants stuff filed nicely otherwise it can leave you with some pretty confused actions.  Thinking ’stict while lax’ gets more or less nowhere.  It has to be more like ’strict with work and chores, lax with diet and other people’s choice of lifestyle.’ 

   In other news, I’ve decided that I must be one blind son of a bitch to have missed such depth in life in general.  I went to a lecture at the the history museum here in Stockholm the other weekend and got so many great ideas for adventures.  Just the fact that I did something cool in my own city was the first step-the fact that I used what I had right in my own hometown instead of going way far away.  But anyway, I saw a bunch of cool pictures of underground caves and from arctic divers and I thought to myself ‘Jeez, I’ve been so focused on seeing everything topside, I’ve totally missed the underside, the air and all the things that happen in between.’  Totally rediculous, I almost feel like a damn moron for ever having been so ignorant of the truth which was right in front of me this whole time-that being that mere physical life is so full of depth that one lifetime isn’t anywhere in the realm of being long enough to experience it all.  If I want more experiences and adventures, which I do, I can’t just focus on traditional sight seeing and cool adventures topside in exotic lands, I have to also think about everything that life has to offer.  I’ve had so many ideas since then; but worse, I’ve had ideas before then that I ignored because they didn’t fit my exotic land, traditional sight seeing peramiters. 

    So, an idea I had quite some time ago that I’d like to go through with is being a storm chaser.  I’d love to take pictures of a tornado or something along the same lines; I’d love to be in that and chase and run away from that. 

    I’d also love to dive.  Most of the world is underwater for God’s sake!  What am I missing?!  I’ve never loved water and I’ve even had a bit of a panic attack here and there when it comes to being totally submerged, but I don’t think I care any longer.  This has got to happen and I’ve just got to suck it up. 

    Last, caves.  I’ve got to see these incredible caves and the rock formations underground, even if they are damn uncomfortable and claustrophobia inducing to get to.  Some of them are truly breathtaking.  The theme of this story is that I have to really enjoy the depth of what life has to offer, all the nuances, the life!-not just the most superficial-which in my case has been cool things to see on land. 

   In other news, I don’t seem to be meeting any girls that I really connect with.  On the one hand, it’s a shame because it doesn’t feel good to never really connect with the people you share physical playtime with.  On the other, it allows me the freedom that I feel I need right now to really experience life to the fullest, travel, get my projects off the ground, meet more than one girl…to squeeze it a bit more. 

   That’s what I said to myself prior to painting my hall about 24 hours ago.  Turned out it wasn’t such a good idea.  On the other hand, I got some water based environmentally friendly paint, so everything I messed up was easy to fix-just a matter of rubbing it off with a wet rag.  Nice!  I love how everything is moving towards eco friendly.  We’ve got a looooong ways to go, but this ball is rolling.

   There’s basically no news in regards to working out.  I’ve been doing the same as I’ve been doin the last couple of months, back and shoulder rehab.  I guess the only news is the progressively increasing understanding I am getting of exercise theory and biomechanics.  I said this in the last blog but I think it’s worth repeating: the science is right, our diagnoses are right.  It’s our treatment that’s wrong.  It seems like these misunderstandings have invaded every branch of science and medicine right now.  Honestly, it looks like it’s on it’s way out, but for right now plenty of people are being treated in ways that are borderline idiotic.  Everything is based on the symptom, this tiny tiny piece of the whole, the summation of all the causes.  So anyway, I’ve had a lot to write about in my book.

   Speaking of the book, I was doing some editing today and I’ve found that, despite the fact that the information is all there, the book still doesn’t speak to me like it should.  My blogs haven’t even been speaking to me like they once did.  Now they are just lectures, jam packed with information that I doubt anyone really get’s anything out of because they are not resonating, like they once were, on the same level as the reader. 

   That’s been a common theme in my life-having the information I need right in front of me and yet still not catching on.  Plenty of times, I’ve come face to face with an answer to all of my problems only to ignore it completely…or at least, fail to grasp it.  I’ve come to the conclusion that basically all information will fall on deaf ears unless the person hearing it is in the right place, spiritually, to receive it.  That sounds kind of hokey, but what I’m talking about is energy.  That sounds even hokier. 

   Whatever, a certain amount of love, happiness, joy…etc has to precede truth when it comes to getting people to understand or even just getting them to resonate and connect with one another.  It’s funny that we don’t realize that, it’s literally everywhere in our customs.  We start conversations, lectures, letters, speeches…literally everything with a compliment.  It’s unfortunate that these compliments have become so stock that they no longer have the effect that they should.  Smart people come up with something better-a joke maybe, or just a goofy way of greeting someone, or a goofy way of talking.  The more uncomfortable the person(s) we are communicating with, the more energy building stuff has to be baked into the conversation speech, paper, whatever.  It’s kind of crazy how much has to be baked in these days.  That’s a part of what this whole PC craze is all about.  It’s an acknowledgement that understanding does not exist in a lack of love, or anger.  We’re keeping everything we say off everyone’s toes in an attempt to get to what we really want to say. 

   This bothers me a whole lot.  The fact that so many people are so uncomfortable.   Everyone is full of snide remarks and utterly rediculous blow ups.  Or on the other end of the spectrum, they’re running home in tears at the slightest little issue-that’s what bothers me the most.  People are more depressed than ever and they are exhibiting more extreme behaviors and reactions than ever.  That’s how this discomfort makes itself known: in people’s reactions to everyday situations.  The greater inroad we have to calm, the calmer we are when daily life doesn’t go as planned.  The closer people are to constant discomfort, the more blow ups, the more snide comments, the more reactions in general.  How many times has someone just stepped in front of you-literally placed his or her foot in a place that made you step in another place-and caused a slight or great anger in you?  It’s happened to me plenty of times and I see it all the time on the buss and trains and streets everyday. 

   So I came to a conclusion about comfort the other day.  There’s not enough stimulus.  Nothing’s going on.  Nothing bad can happen.  Nothing happens.  Because of fear, which has translated into a kind of obcessive sterilization of life in general, we’ve created an environment where only fear can thrive.  The exact opposite of what we want.  People’s lives are so safe right now, there’s an answer to literally everything, and when the slightest little thing happens that there isn’t an immediate escape from, all hell breaks loose.  Anyone with half a brain could have predicted this and seen it coming a mile away. 

   I’m so happy though, that all of these answers we have are caving in on us.  They’re not the right answers.  Almost none of them are based on nurturing us into greater physical and mental strength and greater understanding; and almost all of them are based on more sterilization; killing the last thing that touched us before we got sick, sad, or whatever.

    Luckily, things are happening again.  As I said, the sterility is causing it’s own stimulus.  The stimulus, instead of physical ailments, are people’s extreme reactions, their depression, their violence, their everything.  This will finally give people better understanding again.  It’s just more information where there was no information before.  More things happening=more long lasting comfort via understanding. 

    I don’t really have a segway here, but I wanted to talk about one more thing today.  You see it’s sunday, and saturday seems to be my think day, so I come to a lot of conclusions, let’em brew for a while, and then blog’em on sunday.  I was thinking about my own motivation to act.  I’m not at the stage in my life where I can rely on acting out of curiousity all the time.  More often than not, I act because of discomfort.  

     So I was thinking about the things that really get my butt moving.  I came up with a few but money topped the list.  Again, making a ton of money appeals to me but it actually doesn’t really motivate me all that much just yet.  What really motivates me is the fear of not having a lot of money.  I started noticing these last couple of years that the times I made the most money were all preceded by a time of great fear of having no money-which I equate to me being homeless, even though the reality of my life would basically never allow that to happen.  I’ve come to understand though, that my extreme discomfort about being poor can’t stem from financial instability.  The fact is, I’ve never once actually been in a situation that anyone would really consider dire.  My feelings surrounding money must stem from something else.  I’ve come to the conclusion that it stems from me not understanding how to make it, when I clearly I need it to survive.  And the reason I don’t understand how to make it is because I’ve always had it.  Life isn’t going to give me more of it when I have it all the time.  What I need to do is get rid of it!  So that’s what I’ve done. 

    I want my daily life to evolve a bit, I need to earn money in a different way and I need to start living differently-more travelling, more adventures, more experiences in general.  This fact coupled with my ever increasing understanding of something/one always by my side, wanting me to succeed, led me to start getting rid of money…in an attempt to understand how to make more money.  I figured the best way for me to get my butt moving is to start spending most of my money, to get myself to that nice position teeter tottering below comfort and above extreme discomfort. 

    I figured since I’m still attracted to some physical things, some niceties, I’m just going to buy them with very little prejudice.  I’m not worried about becoming addicted to them because addiction is a lack of understanding and thus, not forever; and me being aware of their addicting reality makes them even less addicting.  With more acting, and more assessing of those acts, comes greater understanding.  And since happiness through physical items is likely not the true path, I don’t fear these acts at all.  I embrace them as a way for me to become less addicted to the physical and enjoy it at the same time!

    Hope this got through to a few people, send me a message sometime, if you’d like.

  Feels like everything is moving really fast right now.  Between the book, a huge load of clients, Kombucha, and developing a social life, I’ve got a grip of stuff going on.  I don’t want it to slow down by any means, but I would like to be able to handle it a bit better than I am right now.  I just had a new guy at the gym whom I don’t think I impressed all that much, due to the fact that I’m feeling so rushed. The information he needed was given to him but not in the manner in which it should have been-a bit to scattered, like my brain. 

    Part of what is making me feel like I am going at a thousand miles an hour here is that I have sugar coursing through my veins like I’ve never had before.  And no candida flare ups.  I’ve been vegan for the last two weeks, high fruit, some tender leafy greens.  I’m pretty surprised at how easy this is going.  I’m mono-eating as well-one ingredient per meal.  That’s key.  I’ve been gravitating towards that for a couple of years now and it feels good to embrace it.  It’s what is allowing everything to ‘go in.’  If it doesn’t, you were better off not eating it. 

   I’m not hungry, my weight isn’t crashing, and candida isn’t flaring up.  I remember when I first read that interview with Dr. Graham about the importance of not combining anything more than very low fat with carbs that I felt a real strong ‘click’ or experienced a kind of Eureka! feeling.  I tend to follow those wherever they lead.  It’s lead here thus far and we’ll see how far it takes me.  I don’t have any problem being raw vegan if that’s the best path, but I’m going to stay objective and do what works.  One thing I can’t seem to work my way out of though is how, if I were to put animal products back in my diet, I would do that.  It’s become so very clear to me that sugar is not most people’s problem, it’s fat that’s not allowing sugar into the system, so everyone is desperately craving it.  This is why everyone is a sugar addict-our food choices are so wide and so variable that our palates have become acccustomed to terrible combinations(including all the macronutrients), in regards to health.  I could try lean meats, which is actually how most meats are if they are grass fed, but I actually wonder now if that’s part of man’s natural diet given the nature of the beast here.  We’ll see where this leads, it’s kind of exciting for me. 

   This idea with taste is kind of funny.  Everyone seems to be under the impression that these things they are eating taste so good and these 20 ingredient meals are like mouth orgasims, but the more I think about it, the more convinced I become that what they think is taste, is actually feeling.  I think many people have progressively conditioned themselves, via reaching for food everytime they get uncomfortable, to such a great extent that the comfort they recieve from food is basically instananeus-meaning after having comfort eaten so many times, they start feeling good the second the food gets in their mouth.  I know I’m that way. 

    Funny thing is though, now that I’ve taken my diet to yet another step, I find myself wittling that conditioned response out.  I feel the very subtle discomfort come on, I then feel the strong urge for food, and then I pause.  And do anything else that makes me feel good-which is usually just think and work out.  By thinking, I divert my conditioned responses to something else-I condition another response.  Instead of going towards food I go towards the thinking itself.  The act of figuring out, the understanding gives me the comfort.  I came to the very simple conclusion the other day that if you rely on a thing for comfort, you are only ever going to get as high as the nature of that thing will allow.  Sugar highs, which is just feeling normal for most people, might feel good, but they aren’t high at all if you compare them to what you can achieve with another person, for example.  Are sugar highs, higher than deep seeded love and connection with another soul?  Or with deep understanding of the nature of life, for example-another great high that I look forward to breaking wide open.  If you rely on something outside of you for comfort, it had better be bigger than you and more capable than you.  It had better be God, because that’s the only thing left.  Food, animals, even other people…they cannot get you as high as you without them. 

     Just to bring this full circle: often when I eat something cooked after not having had it for a long time, it takes a bite or two before it starts to taste good again.  Prior to that it tastes more like what it is, burnt ingredients.  I think if most people were pressed to just lick their food, have it in their mouth, and then spit it out, they might find that they are not satisfied with taste alone(which most claim they are)-rather the feeling the food gives them once it’s in their stomach.  Just a thought, although I’m pretty sure the answer is somewhere inbetween that thought and what most people perceive they are experiencing.

   In other news, my training is going well.  The back is better than it’s been in a long time due to me progressively figuring this shit out.  To be totally honest, nobody has given me the answers I really wanted.  I’ve seen tons of people and gotten tons of pieces of information, but never the whole picture.  It could also have to do with how open I am to receiving that information-in fact, now that I see that in writing, I’m sure that’s a big part of it, but I think part of my job in this lifetime is actually figuring it out.  Putting the pieces together(I’ve always loved puzzles-I covered my walls with them) and making it work.  That seems to be a theme in my life right now.  It’s like am the center and there’s all these different things that started way far away and are coming in closer and closer to me right now until they become like my own arms and legs- kind of like in that Da Vinci drawing of the man with his arms and legs outstretched kind of one top of one another. 

   I hope this blog doesn’t come off too cocky, but I’m figuring things out and I’m seeing where people go wrong-lots of them being fitness and health professionals.  Maybe my job in this life isn’t so much to figure it all out but to be able to deliver it to people, to be able to resonate with someone just perfect…to pick up on their energy and be able to mesh with it so I know just what to say to help them understand.  I know that’s been a big problem of mine.  I don’t know what I would call that character trait though.  I’m sure helping others is a part of it, but equally as sure as I am of that I am that this path was chosen for my own development first and foremost-which is what I think is the case for most people, unless they are really really evolved. 

   Anyway, I’m going to cut out now, trying not to ramble as much these days.  I’ve got a few things to do that I think could make me feel like I have a bit more structure in my life right now-one of which is clean up a bit.  So I’ll see ya next time.

   I’m happy to announce that I am now able to sit and blog rather than have to lay down and blog as I usually do.  I paid a pretty penny today for an erogonic office chair.  Really what I’m doing is kneeling with just ever so minimal butt support.  It’s better than laying because when I laid, I had to have my head supported and the constant cervical and upper thoracic flexion was giving me poor posture.  And that’s no good for nobody.  That’s a nice intro to the next bit of evolving I decided to do this year:

   I’ve decided that I can no longer train for bodybuilding purporses pretty much whatsoever until I take care of my back and shoulder problems completely-or at least damn close to completely.  It was time to stop kidding myself.  I know full well the importance of balance of the physique and maintaining proper length tension relationships(making sure everything is pulling on everything else just right) and continuing to train for hypertrophy, or even just increased strength, in muscle groups that are already way out of balance with others that are severely injured just doesn’t make sense.  So, having made that decision, I’m happy to announce that I have come a good long ways in just a matter of a few weeks.  I’m now able to sit on couches and even regular chairs for extended periods of time without a lot of pain and with much less radiation into my butt and calf-and I’ve even been able to maintain my neuromuscular connection to my calf pretty well despite all the sitting-something I was never able to do before(my calf would always ‘turn off’ after a lot of sitting before). 

    In rehabbing my back and whole core area, I’ve developed a real…well I wouldn’t say love, but interest in exercise and exercise theory again.  If you’ve read this blog before, you know there’s been a lot of ups and downs in regards to that.  The body is like a big puzzle and I love puzzles, I love seeing them come together, and I love figuring this out-that’s giving me a lot of strong positive connections to working out.  I’ve come to a lot of conclusions about not only myself but also about the way almost all of us train today that I’m including in the book that I mentioned a while back.  This is all very exciting for me.  I’ve found kind of a lot of chinks in the armour of applied exercise science and biomechanics-not in the science itself as that is pretty sound, but in the way professionals(and definitely amateurs) are practicing it in the gym.  I’m really looking forward to sharing it all. 

   The biggest problem I see thus far is the exercise selection as the result of a certain diagnosis.  For instance, if we find that a person has weak glute medes, we often tell that person to do a lateral walk because it’s a common glute mede exercise.  Unfortunately, despite that fact that we assessed and diagnosed the person, we’ve forgotten to assess the exercise.  A lateral walk is often good enough, but it’s also a shortened version of the glute mede’s full range of motion, which will, beyond a shadow of a doubt, lead to poor length tension relationships with the rest of the lumbo-pelvic hip complex.  So the science/the diagnosis is often correct but the exercise selection in relation to it is not, and that’s due to simple ignorance.  Professionals are saying ‘oh, glute mede issue and then just pointing to a glute mede exercise.’  A proper glute mede movement would start in a fully adducted or internally rotated position-which isn’t possible with two legs, you have to do it one leg at a time either laying on your side on a bench or attaching your ankle to a cable and brings the leg over the other to begin the movement.

    The second evolution, much like the very first from yesterday has to do with diet and me being on the outside what I am on the inside.  I’ve been raw for coming on 5 years now and I still have junk food cravings every now and again.  Not tons, but here and there.  I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s not in my best interest to attempt to beat those cravings by abstinence alone-in fact, it’s consciously choosing the slow way of diong it. 

    As I said, we learn our way out of things and if we haven’t assessed the situation yet, it needs to come up again so we can assess it and break it down-so we can get a grip on it and understand it.  Otherwise, instead of learning our way out of the behavior so it’s taken care of for good, we attempt to avoid it for good…which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me, given the great deal of time and effort that takes and the discomfort it causes.  I would much rather just have a better understanding of it and be done with it rather than have a poor understanding and fight it forever. 

   So what I’ve done now is what I’ve always told everyone else to do but never allowed myself(because of pride of who I was and the person I felt everyone thought and expected me to be) and that is act.  I am acting on the last couple of feelings, so as to grind them out, to wittle them out…to narrow my options for action.  If acting on one feeling produces an undesirable result and that result is clear and understood, the feeling is less likely to be used again as a way for the body to get itself out of discomfort. 

    It’s simply acting on old conditioning(I am a comfort eater you know) and then focusing on and picking apart and pedantically assessing the situation.  How does it make me feel right then?  How does it make me feel several minutes later?  What feelings do I have several hours later-do I just crave more and more(which I do)? How do I sleep that evening?  What do I notice in the morning and the next day on my skin?  Is it broken out?  Is it oily?  Am I craving the same thing even more than usual now?  Am I experiencing the sensation of hunger more or less intensely than usual? 

    And then I get information from the opposite stimulus.  I eat clean, I ask myself the same questions.  And everytime I do that, I get a better understanding, a better picture of the best path for me to take, and more conditioning towards that path.  This is controlled learning rather than uncontrolled.  Either way, you are going to learn your way, act your way to the best path.  One way is fast, one is slow.

    I’ve had some real good results from this.  I’ve also come to some great conclusions about life in general.  They go something like this:  What I really crave is the feeling that the food gives me.  The comfort.  I realized that it wasn’t the taste I was addicted to because if I kept on eating the item, I eventually tired of it despite the fact that the taste was constant throughout.  I also realized that it couldn’t be the food I was addicted to because the food actually isn’t good for me.  The nature of the food, candy or sweets or whatever, is well understood and these things shouldn’t actually cause an inherintely positive response.  If they do cause a positive response, it’s because of something else reacting to them-in this case, the brain releasing ‘feel good’ chemicals after having been slightly poisoned.  I also noticed that the same sense comfort I am recieving from the food is also achievable through numerous different non-food pathways.  This, too, led me to believe that it wasn’t the food at all that was giving me the comfort, rather the body that was giving me the comfort in response to the food that I ate. 

  Our senses and our whole bodies are information processors.  That’s what senses are for-they interpret information and our senses are our inlets to the physical world.  Everything in existance is information for them to process.  The things we see are not even solid, they’re atoms and electrons vibrating at a certain frequency to give us that which we see in front of our faces. Only not exactly, what we see in front of our faces is a combination of what is actually there and everything we have percieved in the past-meaning everything is filtered through our understanding of life, our beliefs our consciousness.

    Food is information which is assessed by our senses, taste and smell and sight specifically.  It’s niether positive or negative.  It goes in and is broken down, used, not used, it destroys, or nourishes, or both.  Certain foods, depending on their qualities ellicit more visible or ‘feelable’ effects than others-especially particularly toxic foods.  As I said, I noticed that numerous different foods can give me the same effect as well as numerous other things like doing something nice for someone or laughing long and hard for a while.  So I got the idea that it’s real possible that the food isn’t giving me the feeling at all, rather the body is giving me the feeling after I eat the food.  If I am ‘addicted to certain foods,’ it is not them that I am addicted to, it is the response they ellicit.  The comfort.  Certain foods give me a degree of comfort, sugar for example.  But the food can’t give me comfort, it can’t do anything, it’s just a piece of information that the body is processing just like everything else; it doesn’t have any comfort giving ability.  The body is what gives me the comfort after it realizes that this thing is good for me or bad or whatever.  It’s the effect the food has on the body that gives me comfort, which I am addicted to-the chemicals released in my brain within moments of taking the first bite.  Funny that these chemicals are released most intensely with the worst foods. 

   It’s a high level of comfort attained from one source that is the problem.  This understanding makes things a whole lot easier to deal with because then, to achieve that same high level of comfort, I know I can just substitute the food for something else the has the same effect, or numerous things that have the same effect. The point isn’t to be less comfortable all of the time, but to be equally as comfortable in a healthier manner.  Like I said, I noticed that I could achieve that effect with tons of things: talking to people, laughing really hard, doing something that was really difficult and uncomfortable to do, being of service to someone…etc.  These are all options for action.  And they are all better than junk food.  The problem has always been the conditioning.  When there was discomfort before there was a comfort via a path that was unsustainable.  Of course many years later when there is discomfort, there is still a strong neural highway to comfort via that same unsustainable path because the problem was never focused on, rather just irgnored and feebly abstained from. 

   You have to create a new path to comfort.  And that’s not nearly as hard as trying to go without comfort. 

 That was going to be the name of this blog when I decided to write it 3 months ago.  Unfortunately, it never happened.  As I said in the last one, a whole lot of stuff has been going on-moved, went on vacation, haven’t had internet…etc.  Anyway, I’m back now with…not a lot of updates, but, of course, a better understanding of myself than I had before and for me, that’s the biggest update. 

    I just got done talking to someone that thought I talked a lot…I guess I do.  I have a lot to say and if it wasn’t for this blog, it would just be a million different thoughts jammed up inside my brain, not really filed correctly and as a result not understood as they should be.  The problem now is that I have so many thoughts in my head that I’m going to have a hard time getting them all down on paper and I’ve been nervous about having to do so all weekend, thinking that this blog is going to let people down.-the mere fact that I made that comment is part of my forthcoming new year’s resolution.

    I came to a couple of conclusions at the turn of the year there.  First, I wasn’t and am still not enjoying life and other people nearly as much as I should be-as I did before I went raw.  I attribute much of that to the fact that the moment my eyes were opened to what I see as the truth, I found a great chasm between me and the rest of society.  Food was the pathway, but it opened the door to a new understanding of life in general and especially disease.  I realized that people were the cause of their own disease and that ‘germs’ are simply the last thing that touches them before they kick the bucket-like bullets fired from a gun.  When this understanding began to flourish in me, I felt as though my peers were doing everything ‘wrong’ and ruining the earth, making life very difficult for everyone else.  Despite the fact there may be some truth to this, my feelings were much too strong and too focused on one aspect of life for them to represent what anyone would call a good understanding of life. 

   Of course, after many years I’ve since come to a different understanding and have realized that the physical things people do are a representation of their understanding of life combined with their comfort level-people are going to do what makes them feel good and what makes them feel good is a representation of their past experiences and their understanding of them.  I also realized that the physical things that we do are important but still not as important as the love we share with one another.  It’s the love that nourishes each one of us, supports us, and allows each one of us to come to a better understanding of life and thus better physical choices-such as diet, lifestyle…etc.  The love is what get’s us vibrating, get’s us ready to recieve ever higher and higher understandings-without that, it’s almost totally useless to try to teach.

   Anyway, I realized that despite the fact that I had logically come to that good conclusion and have been acting thus on the outside, my feelings on the inside were not really lined up with my actions-meaning I don’t/didn’t really feel the conclusion that people are going to be as their understanding and their comfort allows them and that I should just be loving towards them.  When I see/saw people doing something that is not environmentally friendly for example, my initial reaction is/was a feeling that were I forced to put it in words I would have to describe it as something like ‘well that was lazy and worthless.’ –and that, of course, is not a loving feeling.  And I became less and less apt to be loving on the outside because my understanding was still slightly less than optimal-I didn’t have enough experiences.  I didn’t actually feel any reason to be loving, I just logically understood that I should be loving…that it was the path that made the most sense.  I’m afraid that wasn’t a life I could live for much longer; so my first new year’s resolution in a looooong time was:  To be on the outside as I am on the inside-and in this way, I will get my feelings in line with my logical understanding-assuming my logical understanding represents the truth. 

   Well it didn’t take long before that worked.  I decided to be on the outside how I was on the inside.  Cold, blunt, and abrupt most of the time and very loving and sweet at other times.  I’ve since realized something that I kind of half knew for a long time now and that is that abstaining from a behavior to stop behaving in that particular manner is often a particularly bad idea. 

   We learn our way out of behaviors via experiences and our assessments of those experiences.  Often it takes a really long time to learn our way out of one thing and into something else, but that is usually because we are not consciously focused on the one thing, rather we learn our way out of it very subtley via physical responses-ie: doing something until it makes us feel so physically bad that we can’t continue.  The reason it takes so long is because often the act isn’t ‘bad’ enough to evoke a blatant physical response-eating food that clogs your arteries for instance…most people don’t even notice it until the problem is a huge one.  The problem is that they are not consciously focused on the issue and rather learn via natural physical progression of constantly seeking out the things that feel physically good.     

      Anyway, I’m afraid it hasn’t taken me that long to get a better grip on my understanding here.  That’s probably because I was half way there to begin with though.  I allowed myself to just be the way I felt like being, kind of harsh most of the time, acting as if people were idiots most of the time.  It felt good to allow myself that, but pretty much immediately bad when I saw the results-which, the vast majority of the time, were very subtle, but since I was focused on the problem, I was able to note them.  People didn’t respond well was all and sometimes I noticed that they got a little put off or slightly sad-maybe so slightly that they didn’t even notice, but enough for me to tell that they were vibrating just a little slower…that they were dampened a bit. 

    So the plan was working pretty well, but as is usually the case, I got kind of comfortable being that way and kind of stopped paying attention to the results.  Isn’t that so often the case?  But then I made an old lady cry.  I honestly barely know what I did, but she came in my office two days later and told me that I had had been very un-pleasant to her and that she had been upset all weekend long and then she got a bit teary eyed.  Funny thing was, I didn’t say a word to her.  It was just in the way I was to her when she asked me to move my things so she could use the piece of equipment they were laying on.  Apparently I very brusquely and brashly moved them off and looked annoyed.  Anyway, this really bothered me and I felt terrible that she was sad all weekend long on account of me. 

     Now, I acknowledge that there has to be something more behind those feelings of hers; obviously she was real uncomfortable to begin with to be that sensitive, but that’s the reality of life-there are people of all comfort levels out there and we need to accept that.  We done have to cater to them if we don’t want to, but then we should be prepared to deal with it if they are upset and we are a part of the equation(although I wouldn’t say the cause).  I am apparently not prepared because I felt awful about it.  I apologized many times and found her a couple days later and apologized again because I didn’t feel as though my first apologies were sincere enough. 

   So that was…not the end of that little experiment, but a high point in it.  I don’t know if I’ll have any more like that, but now I have more input, more information and my feelings on the inside are reflecting that input and understanding that came along with it. 

   Another thing I’ve realized is that people can only suck up so much information at one time, so I’m going to finish this blog tomorrow or the next day or the day after that with some more new year’s evolutions, of which there are several.  Have a great night.