Question your life. Question what you think, what you think you need, your judgments of others, your beliefs, your staunchly held ideas, your perceived duties and obligations. What are you doing that is good for yourself and others, and what are you doing that is not? What is the best use of your energy so that you may grow and evolve? Each day is a new opportunity to change something, to add or remove something, to do something that you have longed to do, or to simply stop doing something that is not good for you. Choose health over habits. Choose conservation of energy for what really matters over energy expenditures that are wasteful. Choose new life over old habits. Be adventurous within your own mind. Adopt a new thought today. “I am different today,” may be enough. Change one thing, one thought, one habit. Just change something, and then see what happens!
Contain your energy so that you may know how it feels to be energetically alive and well, and so that you may discover how best to use it. Intentionally attune your vibration to a higher level. Without interference or influence, hone your own energy vibration to its purest state so you may have it available for your own good purposes and for the greater good. If you are intentionally in good vibration, others will notice and be affected by you. Your vibration is your spiritual attunement, that which is felt and even seen by others. For your vibration precedes you, in both waking and dreaming life. If your vibration is low, pay attention to what will aid it and bring it up to a higher frequency. Keep it in good shape, with the same kind of attention that the human body needs to be healthy; this will give you a healthy vibration too. Remember, it is your spirit energy, how you are recognized and perceived, no matter what world you go into. It is your magical energetic self, your shine and brightness, your spiritual energy. Take good care of it, within and without.
Like a tightrope walker get centered and balanced in your body, clearing yourself of all that does you no good so that all that is good for you may have room to do its healing work. Let yourself be open to good energies, to that which is positive and that which is in your best interest. Even the idea of health and goodness may have a positive effect, though it is better to take action and actually do things that are good for you. You are, after all, in charge of yourself, and so only you have the power to decide and enact that which you need. Begin with centering yourself and let your body tell you what to do from there. The body never lies.
Thoughts have power. Don’t invite trouble. Don’t draw to you what you don’t need or want. Be careful what you think. Be aware of what you say to yourself because what you tell yourself will manifest. Thoughts have the power to cure or to cause illness, to heal or to damage. Beware of negative thoughts, the weight of them often too hard to bear. Watch out for roaming dark entities looking for habitation too. Don’t become a host. Keep thoughts clean and good. Keep the body clean and good too. Healthy thoughts=healthy life, inside and out!
“Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” Those seven words form the basis of Michael Pollan’s little book, Food Rules. It’s one of my favorite books about a simple fact of life, that we all must eat. However, something about this basic fact of life has gone seriously awry in our Western culture. Our Western diet is killing us.
I’ve been on the search for the perfect diet since I was about fifteen. Seeking individuation, refusing to eat what my mother put on the table became a means of rebellion. No compensation was ever made for my dietary decisions. The fact that I would not eat the lamb that came from my grandfather’s herd of sheep because I knew some of those sheep intimately was ignored. I’ve been a vegetarian, a vegan, a macrobiotic, and for a time ate only raw foods. Now I eat just about everything, in moderation, though I’ve learned to listen to my body, as it tells me very clearly what to avoid. As Pollan states in his book: “…nutrition science, is to put it charitably, a very young science. It’s still trying to figure out exactly what happens in your body when you sip a soda, or what is going on deep in the soul of a carrot to make it so good for you, or why in the world you have so many neurons—brains cells!—in your stomach of all places.”
Studies of how the human body reacts to trauma reveal the presence of these brain cells as well, as during trauma the brain is the last part of the body to receive the message that something is happening. If we start paying attention to the messages from our stomach-brain we might just survive. Chuck wrote in his blog the other day about the serious state of the earth due to our modern world’s dependence on petroleum. We’ve destroyed the environment, and continue to do so, even though we are fully aware of our gross neglect. Greed is more powerful than truth. Greed is also inextricably linked to our Western diet—corporations are growing fat while our bodies are suffering. We take pills to correct what our diet has done to us, and somebody else makes a lot of money in that area too.
We’ve stopped thinking for ourselves. We aren’t using our brains or our stomach-brains. I laugh at the sign in the vegetable section of the grocery store that proudly states: Our organic produce is grown without the use of pesticides, herbicides and chemical additives! That simple statement clearly states the other truth, that what is not organic is grown with pesticides, herbicides and chemical additives.
A lot of people start off the New Year with the classic resolution to lose weight and get fit. In order to really do so we have to change not only our diets but how we think about food and how we treat the environment—the health of our planet is just as important as the health of our bodies. There’s a lot of information out there about food and diet, but as Pollan suggests, the science of nutrition is very young. I propose that no one really knows what they’re talking about. We’ve made some serious blunders, a lot of them connected to money. Crisco, corn syrup, and margarine have destroyed our bodies, but fattened a lot of wallets.
Fermenting beverages… – Photo by Jan Ketchel
We must learn to go easy on our bodies, to not overtax or wear them out. It’s our vehicle through life, but a lot of people treat their cars better than they treat themselves. We must learn to love ourselves as much as we love material things; treat our bodies kindly by eating real food. “If it came from a plant, eat it; if it was made in a plant, don’t,” Pollan states. Wise words. Something to think about as we head into this New Year with our resolutions to get fit and healthy. Time to listen to our other brain perhaps?
Here are some basic food rules from Pollan: Eat fresh food. Eat leaves. Eat wild foods and plants. Stick to the small fish; herring, sardines and anchovies. (They can’t be farmed and their oils are good for us.) Eat animal food that is free range, raised without hormones, antibiotics, and chemicals. Eat fermented foods. Buy as much local and in-season as possible; this cuts down on the amount of petroleum products that are needed to get things into the stores from great distances but is far fresher and more nutritional as well. Plan to start a garden this spring. It’s healthy in more ways than one!
Wishing everyone a happy and healthy New Year,
Jan
