It takes Will to choose to stay in your centre while those around you appear to be immersed in their beliefs.
It takes Will to receive Truth from your intuition when your ego is screaming at you with its arsenal of thoughts and emotions.
It takes Will to experience your life with all its challenges and keep an open heart and mind.
Teachers open the door, but you must enter by yourself.
I am Me. In all the world, there is no one else exactly like me. Everything that comes out of me is authentically mine, because I alone chose it — I own everything about me: my body, my feelings, my mouth, my voice, all my actions, whether they be to others or myself. I own my fantasies, my dreams, my hopes, my fears. I own my triumphs and successes, all my failures and mistakes. Because I own all of me, I can become intimately acquainted with me. By so doing, I can love me and be friendly with all my parts. I know there are aspects about myself that puzzle me, and other aspects that I do not know — but as long as I am friendly and loving to myself, I can courageously and hopefully look for solutions to the puzzles and ways to find out more about me. However I look and sound, whatever I say and do, and whatever I think and feel at a given moment in time is authentically me. If later some parts of how I looked, sounded, thought, and felt turn out to be unfitting, I can discard that which is unfitting, keep the rest, and invent something new for that which I discarded. I can see, hear, feel, think, say, and do. I have the tools to survive, to be close to others, to be productive, and to make sense and order out of the world of people and things outside of me. I own me, and therefore, I can engineer me. I am me, and I am Okay.
Since last November I have been learning and experiencing the impact of what I eat and drink on my ability to be present and focused. A major part of what I have been experimenting with and more importantly enjoying immensely is my commitment to eating organic fruit and vegetables wherever possible.
To set some context for you, when I started this eating approach, I was someone who LOVED his food. I was of the belief that if I wanted something, I would have it with little awareness to what it was, the quality of it or where and how it was grown. I had good enough health for a 39 year old apart from a higher (conventional) cholesterol reading than the ‘normal’ range and an irritated bowel occasionally. I hadn’t eaten red meat or pork since I was 11 years old but did eat a lot of chicken and some fish and I had a more than enthusiastic taste for desert!! I wasn’t just a sweet tooth, but a savoury tooth also and due to long held habits, I would eat at uneven intervals through the day and often would overeat in a sitting due to missing meals. (more…)