Falling asleep for a while... and ponderings on sexual energy

Just recently I've resumed normal eating (cooked vegan), eating a lot more than I have for a long time. Typical family life, the cold weather, and a bug that I've caught, make me unable or unwilling to reach out any further, at this time. Perhaps I also feel that with Christmas coming, to opt out would be a mean thing to do, with the children and my wife who has happily adjusted to my veganism, and often fruit tendencies...

I don't feel bad about it, and I also feel that some beings out there see this as a welcome thing to do, for a variety of reasons.

And yet... I feel somehow that my connection to many things has dimmed, because of the food. Also, I've been having random sexual thoughts, which I look at with detachment, even humour. These thoughts, interestingly, are associated with the consumption of food. I read somewhere once, in a Buddhist text, that appetite for food and sexual appetite are closely related. Certainly, these instincts seem to come from basically the same areas of the body. 

In a study related by Richard Wrangham, in his book Catching Fire (How Cooking Made Us Human), I was interested to see that a study conducted on raw vegans and fruitarians, showed decreased sexual appetite and where some women even stopped having periods. This was regarded as a bad thing in the study (as of course, the success of the human race depends on reproduction) and therefor showed the detrimental nature of these diets. Obviously, in general culture, decreased libido is seen as a 'bad' thing, and where somehow happiness is meant to be attained by people having sex. And yet, in spiritual culture, happiness is attained from rising above sex or food impulses - and where sexual unions, or eating, are based on principles of love and decision.

Anyway, I've found this before, that food, especially certain foods, stimulate areas of the body that generate sexual feelings.

Eating has its drawbacks. A yogi text I read once recommended staying away from spicey foods, as these were 'rajasic', fire inducing (and would therefor increase sexual appetite).

I'll get back food refinement after the Christmas period.

Negative Emotions and Food

Something is definitely going on inside of me. Sometimes I feel like my body is a totally different entity to who or what I’m used to. I also feel that it’s turning into something different, and I can feel different energies at work. I can feel an accumulation of energy in me, that is so solid that it even feels physical,  it’s like an energy of light with real opacity, or substance. So i feel strong at the moment.  For me, this is a deeply welcome transformation - I even feel that everything that I have gone through in my life, is to bring me to this point.

An aspect of things, is that I find myself continually challenged as to my thought patterns on basically everything. I might write one thing or another, but it’s only a perspective, an opinion. In many ways, I really don’t know what to think anymore. I don’t even think (!), that thinking in an analytical fashion has any great use in the scheme of things. I don’t know.

While working on what I put into my body, I’ve been experiencing real irritation recently. On the one hand I feel that I’m working  through stuff, and getting rid of stuff, while on the other, I feel that inner essences are being re-balanced, to get to a better blend of passivity/assertiveness. This irritation is a curious thing - I feel so irritable, when there’s no real reason for it. Conventionally I might think to myself, it’s because my blood sugar levels are down, but I know that this isn’t the whole answer. As irritability passes, I feel peaceful and somehow secure. Then feelings of irritation and sort of soreness come back. It makes me think of when I cut down drastically from being veggie to vegan, an incessant pain that I had across my chest area - this was emotional pain, for various reasons, but which went some time ago now, and no longer experience.

I’m learning that it isn’t so much what I eat, it’s quantity that matters - the less the better. For example, this morning I had some orange juice, for lunch a sandwhich with lettuce and a veggie sausage in it (ha ha, like a good old fashioned sausage butty). This evening? I don’t feel like I want to have anything really, but will be eating with my other half some cooked food, due to a difficult day (last night was just fruits again). Just being outside under the moon and the stars, in the cold air, was enough. But  today has been difficult for various reasons.

Which brings me onto the title of this blogpost: negative emotions and food. They are so connected I think (just my subjective opinion). There’s nothing much to conclude about this, except that negative emotions clearly trigger a need for something - usually food. And negative emotions can lead to so many different types of food problems, addiction or aversion. This is also why I have been so keen to keep a healthy approach to food, and its place. The refinement of a bodyspiritual nature, which I find myself writing about, and this need to refine food intake, I want to conduct in a positive and even cheerful way, perhaps as a way of rooting out negativities and avoiding potential (psychological) problems. This means being happy about eating, if it lasts, and allowing the subtle processes to slowly become more established.

What was going to happen?

When I had an astonishing urge to refine things in my life, including my diet, I turned vegan from vegetarian. I lost a lot of weight, from just under 13 stone (about 82 kg)  to now 10 stone (about 63 kg) (I'm 6ft2 in height = 1.87m). At first, my weight dropped to 11 stone, and I was happy with that. I just cut out all of the rubbish really and of course dairy and so on. I've felt great - more flexible, stronger, greater endurance, and of course I look skinnier. I felt like 11 stone was my personal weight, but without really depriving myself, my weight continued to drop, levelling off at 10 stone. At first I wasn't happy about that, but I've easily adapted to this new weight which is normal for me now.

But something has been pushing me onward, and I've been eating less and less recently (well, that is, until 4 days ago), where for 3 days I ate very little, just a little bit of food at one point in the day, and on one day nothing, just juices. I could feel the deeper things of existence with greater clarity. This was a kind of juice-fasting. I could feel a kind of alliance between myself and a deeper reality. And yet...

When I checked my weight, I had dropped to nearly 9 and a half stone (about 61.5kg) and was beginning to look outlandishly slim (but not lacking in energy, I have to say). Still, that was enough for me to worry, and since then I've been eating a lot more. Ironically, while I was worrying about this weight issue, and deciding to get back onto food (cooked and non-cooked), I could feel the strongest impulse yet from deeper sources, toward refinement, which was saying 'don't worry, we have you in hand'. Yet, I haven't been willing (yet) to follow this impulse fully (at this time).

The thing is that being back on the eating, is that I don't feel great on it. In a way it's a series of eating inputs, to mask over the somewhat down feeling from the previous inputs -  a cycle at work. Experiencing things this clearly though is very instructive, to see how food works.

What was going to happen with my weight loss? would it have stabilised? I'll have to reduce again at some point, for the spiritual reasons that seem to drive me on.

I'm beginning to see the value also of a quick  process, such as the well-walked path of the 21 day process, to make a clean break, though I have little attraction toward it.

Generally, I also have this feeling that there are changes going on inside of me, that are really quite unhindered whether I eat or not, and that it's just a question to time and timing.

The thinning out of food

I thought it was time to update my blog, to chart my progress. I've discovered that maintaining an account can be a useful and an interesting thing. Even if... the intellect is ultimately a rather futile tool when grasping the deeper wonders of our existence. I - or we - think one thing, believing a certain thing to be true or at least a plausible explanation for something, but in fact, it appears to me that intellectualisations of any kind, are only made-up structures that attempt to explain what is already there, or what has already happened. It appeals to the ego, really; some process that exists in time, and needs a map of some kind. But who knows why anything works, why anything exists at all; why humans appeared on earth, how it happened, and indeed, why humans evolved certain eating habits. It happened, and it happens....

Personally, apart from the above abstract, there's more personal stuff I'll detail, with regards to my change of diet. In some ways I've become even more orientated toward fruits, avoiding cooked food. And yet, foods which have been cooked in the past e.g. an oat biscuit, don't weigh as much on me as say, a freshly cooked bean stew. So I still go to some extent for pre-cooked oat based things; and yet, it's fresh fruits that really do it for me.

And yet... Often I feel like the things I'm eating, are equivalent to eating stones or metal. I use this analogy to describe how solid foods often feel to me - really extreme. Extreme inputing o substances... And yet, the hit I get from them, is amazing! When I observe myself eating, I can see that eating really is an imposition on the self, in some ways. Not a bad thing, but a sort of exaggeration of things, a thing learned from the ancestors. At this point in time, I see no real way out of it.

However, recently, I drank juices for breakfast and lunch, which suited me well, though I ate more later in the evening. I think what I need to do, is set aside a time for proper fasting. Not for the sake of 'not eating', but because, I experience the fact that when I'm empty of food, I feel things much more clearly. I'll do a day's fast soon, and see how I feel.

A Curtain Of Light

Today I've been mostly fruit based again - and how much better I  feel!

In my last post I mentioned an alleviating of fear, and I want to expand on that a little. At the moment, I feel like fear in all its forms and guises is being dislodged from within me; it feels like a very practical and even deliberate process. And with this refining of food, I've been re-experiencing things as I used to do as a child, before I became absorbed by all the confusing signals of this world. This happens to so many of us - we experience the wonderment of creation as a child, but somehow are unable to draw down this reality, until a little later in life, and create an expression of it in our environment - we became beset by fears and other constrictions. When I say wonderment, I don't mean so much as an imaginative approach to life, as a direct experience of the forces and glue that bind this world together - the quality of the experience is very different. Which brings me to my title for today's journal.

I've been feeling this implaccable wall or curtain of light, that comes down onto me. The experience is quite different to communications or sensations from the 'other' side, rather, it's a force that somehow goes deeper than that. In some ways it feels like Love, that is there regardless of who I am; and so, I'm both caught by this drastic sense of impersonality, and yet also by this sense of Divine reality. And I realise, that Love really is automatic, blesses evenly, regardless of whether someone is a murderer or a saint. Perhaps this 'fear of God' that crops up in religions, is an experience of this type. The only way that I can take, or stand firmly in the light of this force, is to work on myself and work up my inner balance. Like everyone else, the Being behind creation Loves me, but how much of it can I truly, really accept? Mysticism often refers to the levels of existence, and that higher forces and beings are too much to bear for souls who are lower down the steps/wheels of creation; perhaps this is something along those lines.

Another thing I experience, is that turning away from food isn't done because food is bad  per se (er-humm.... obviously!!), but because being filled with the Spirit, for want of a better (and less religious!) description, is far more satisfying than the sensations of food. Perhaps an analogy could be: once someone has eaten great food from a great cook, they realise how unsatisfying the food they used to eat before was, from the not-so-great cook! Same thing, but in a deeper way...

A few days of Cooked food

A few days on cooked food

There's so much I'm learning with regards to food. For the last three nights I had cooked food, and I can't say that I feel good on it. In the mornings I can feel kind of muddy - nothing like the lightness from just eating fruit. This process of change in me is unstoppable. I can feel all these things going on inside my body, and my being. I seem to have moved past a whole aspect of fear. More and more I'm feeling the supportive nature of existence. It's strange how experiences of things that penetrate and encompass the material world, are infinite in tone and quality, ever new. I hope that these dark ages that humanity exists in, passes for a while - and all this automatic belief in food consumption with all of the so-called empirical science to support these notions, are seen for what they are. Knowledge bases that really are only self-referring, but that never comprehend the deeper causes of things.

There are so many mysteries, that can only be understood through intuition. So much value is put on empirical methods, and yet, when there's something that doesn't fit a certain model, these things are discarded. For example, evolutionary theory can never answer where on earth (excuse the pun) the Aboriginal people of Australia came from. And that is only one hole, of many, that exist in modern thinking.

Even though I prefer fruits, I find rice ok. But even then, food feels like such blockage. I feel like my body is just saying no to these things; but for the while, from habit and situation, I'm likely to continue eating things, even though I feel that it has short term period for me. I feel more and more attracted to juices. Which I find a little surprising, as I seem to be following a general pattern so far i.e. flesh-eating, vegetarian, vegan, raw-vegan, fruitarian, liquidarian... But who knows what will happen next.

 Really, it's such an odd thing ingesting matter. Even fruits and so on, are things of the earth, which are there for their own sake, and that of creation. All things have an effect. Even though eating fruits doesn't have the same impact on self and others as flesh-eating, it's still part of the loop of creation.

I'm really learning the ultra-importance of non-judgement toward everyone, in whatever people do. This seems to be an essential factor in progress, on all levels.

Some developments and realisations, a recap

For a while now I've been feeling this urge to refine my food intake. On this path, I've become vegan from being a vegetarian (though I can't technically call myself a fruitarian nor raw vegan at this point, though I have strong tendencies that way), and I have to say, it feel fantastic leaving these animal products behind e.g. milk and eggs. It isn't only the ethical side of it, and compassion for living creatures that have a sense of self, but also to avoid putting animal energy into my body. It's funny how one becomes accustomed to eating certain things. I remember I always felt eggs to be somewhat weird to eat, but got used to it; and now I can see the weirdness for what it really is. It's putting chicken energy into my body! Do I want chicken energy in my body?? So it isn't just an ethical aspect, in some ways, it's about purifying oneself. It's the aspect associated with forging a path toward unity.

The main drive behind this refinement, is this feeling that we're evolving as a planet, and that each individual who works at their lives, and their food intake, adds to the overall effect of change. We're all changing together. One day we will exist in this planet without needing physical food, once the addictions and attachments have passed. A main angle to this urge toward refinement, is an experience of reality beyond the physical, and a dimension of love that exists only a hair's breadth away from us, every micro second of the day.

What I'm realising, is that it's possible to experience this truth, whether one eats or not. Love and compassion extends to all beings, regardless of activity. And yet, through fasting or refining one's food intake, it's definitely true to say, that it brings one closer to things that are true.

Personally, if I've eaten very little (and I have a very busy life, and work consistently hard when I'm working on someone's house, or looking after my children), I see that energy generates energy. I take very minimal breaks when I work, breaks just slow me down. In fact, I generally sit down for 2 minutes at lunch, to rest my legs, and that's it. Then I'm off again. Perhaps this is also why I prefer working alone, where I can set my own pace. The pace of work generates it's own momentum. This snowballing effect of energy, can be applied across most phenomena I think.

But what I have also found, through restricting my food intake - e.g. small breakfast, no lunch, fruits in the evening, is that my own fears and limitations loom mightily in my mind. On the one hand, I know that I'm fine, and have lots of energy, and yet on the other, a part of me is saying: 'You're a fool. You're going to die. Look at all the weight you've lost. You're a sick man!' etc. Weight loss is a significant issue. It's difficult to look and feel thin, when it isn't something one is used to. It is very amazing how many negativities arise when the stomach hasn't got something to latch onto!

Then there is the issue of hunger. It is all entirely psychological I believe. A significant thing I've observed, is that the feeling of hunger I might have when I'm eating next to nothing (which will come and go), is no different to the feeling I have when I have just eating well. So what is going on? How can I feel hungry in both scenarios? I think that it's really only got to do with the stomach expanding or contracting, giving the brain signals. Rather like the hunger one can feel a bit later after a large meal. It isn't hunger of course, it's just that the stomach has been stretched, and now it's beginning to settle back again.

I'm realising that little steps at a time are the best thing for me. Slowly, and appreciatively of what life has to offer. If I was in a different situation, I would definitely want to do a long fast. But it's worth remembering, that  large changes in many ways should come from an inner urge, not as a mental concept having seen what someone else has done. I think this is very important. I think there are people out there who have maybe become a bit mixed up, borrowing someone else's life-path, and trying to apply it to themselves. This might work for them (after all, all things do have to start as an idea), but there has to be a genuine resonance for it to be really appropriate for them.

Rooting one's experience and urges in love and respect, without letting the ego always latch onto things, is really the safest way.