October 2007 archive

So many people understand now that the food they put into their bodies becomes an integral part of them that “you are what you eat” has become a slogan. It is experientially logical that putting something into your system makes that something become a part of you and science has also proven this to be the case in detailed (and often alarming) ways. Therefore, many people also now agree, at least in theory if not in practice, that we should only put natural and healthy foods into our systems.

However, “you are what you eat” has a much broader meaning for our health than just whether or not we should eat an apple instead of a candy bar. What is less well known and much less accepted is that all of our experiences, thoughts, feelings, reactions, the energy or condition at the places we frequent, TV shows, what we read, all of our interactions, everything we say, think, do, inhale, watch, hear, smell and taste also become a part of us and leave a trail within us.

Cross posted at Pockets of the Future and Dkos

Update I left out this video

For years now, I’ve been watching people who post on blogs try to maim and kill each other with words. I’ve done the same thing, more often that I care to admit.

Many times, I’ve been flat out astonished at the depth of the viciousness: the no holds barred attempts to truly cause each other serious harm, in every way harm CAN be caused via the written word.  And I’ve been more than appalled to feel it within myself, on more than one occasion.

It happens so lighting fast sometimes: depending on my own stress levels, I can log on, read one comment from a total stranger, and feel an explosion of anger so huge it demands immediate release, and finds
it in ten angry fingers pounding on a keyboard, and in that satisfying moment of hitting “Enter” to launch that word bomb at what I HOPE is the most vulnerable part of my target.

Other times, I am much more controlled about it, and instead of exploding, I bide my time, and choose what is usually a more effective weapon: biting sarcasm designed to make my target look, and hopefully feel, like a fool, knowing full well that public humiliation is a deadly weapon. This has the added advantage of course, of having others who read it applaud my brilliance. Two birds, one stone.

Sometimes, this ends up being a totally satisfying experience for me: I come away feeling pretty powerful, even righteous. I did not silently comply with a wrong: I spoke up and I spoke out. Good for me. Yet, under that, was discomfort I like to ignore.

But sometimes, I end up with a strong urge to go take a shower. On the inside, I mean. And a curious sense of sadness: an emptiness of some sort.

It was time once again, for me to go weed my own garden. To see what was growing there that I did not plant, and do not wish to feed.

Inspired by buhdydharma’s The Big Picture Vol. 2

Originally posted at TalkLeft, Dec 10, 2006:
The End Of The Beginning?

In the nineteen sixties and seventies the western world was in the throes of a cultural and psychological revolution of awareness that at times threatened to bring down the governments and destroy the societies of some of the most powerful countries on earth, and terrified many who were unable to step outside of the structure and limitations of the worldviews they had constructed for themselves in the course of their lives.