- Foreward
- Introduction
- My Journey
- Adversity
- Anger
- Body Wisdom
- Love Knocks
- Money Tree
- HealthLoveWealth
- Simplicity
- Generosity
- Shock! Treatment
- Responsibility
- Grateful
- Growth Notes
Eat for serenity
Often I eat meals without realizing the effect food can have on my attitudes. I experiment today by watching how I feel after eating. Some foods make me peaceful and serene; others make me uncomfortable, sleepy or irritable.
Beauty within
Our culture teaches vanity. We measure ourselves against impossible standards of beauty, thinness, poise, intelligence. No wonder we feel lacking. Today I toss out cultural standards of beauty and define my own. My beauty may have nothing to do with that of anyone else.
Find Light in Dark Times
Chapter 4:
Body Wisdom: Food and Action
(sample excerpts)
Find Light in Dark Times gives you philosophical and spiritual tools to help you recover from
losses of all kinds, then emerge into the light. These are sample sections from Chapter 4.
If depression dogs your spirit, your body shows the strain. You might eat too much and gain weight. You avoid exercise because you don’t have the heart for it.
If you suffer from injury or illness, your body needs spiritual strength to gather energy for healing and recovery. Pain clouds your ability to feel your body and restricts your ability to move. A troubled body clouds your consciousness and limits your ability to be as fully spiritual. While pain can focus the mind, usually the focus is on the pain.
Meditation works well to regain connection between spirit and body. Sit and watch your breath go in and out. This primary function of breathing goes on whether you decide to breathe or let your body automatically breathe itself. Try breathing slowly and deeply. Hold your breath for a few seconds. Then breathe rapidly in and out, hyperventilating. By choice you can breathe under conscious control.
Just as you can decide to manage your breath, so can you decide to manage other functions of your body such as healing. Meditation provides a time to focus consciousness on whatever part of your body requires attention.
If you broke your leg skiing or by falling in the bathtub, the bone will gradually heal on its own after a doctor sets it properly. By communicating consciously to your leg during meditation, you can send it additional reserves of spiritual energy that translate to physical healing. Use your imagination to recreate the leg as strong and healthy. Imagine blood flows through your arteries to the ailing leg, feeding it everything needed to rejuvenate itself. Using this injury as a tool to focus self-healing consciousness can bring light to your spirit. Any time you can fuse body with consciousness, you gain light.
. . . (Body fuel section)
When you eat more than your body needs for fuel, you numb your consciousness. The excess weight that results makes it difficult to move and reduces clarity. Food can undermine even the most enlightened souls. What you eat affects your physical and mental power, but how much you eat has even more impact. Eat less and you will feel physically and spiritually light. Your body has a chance to clean itself before the next meal if you don’t overdo it.
Since people vary so much in bodily makeup, it’s impossible to determine an ideal diet for everyone. There is no such thing. Diet plans that specify particular diets usually fail for most people. You may be powerfully allergic to a few foods, modestly allergic to others, and slightly allergic to a large number. Probably you can tolerate small amounts of these foods. But load up on several of them in quick succession and your physical self will weaken. You will reduce your potential for lightened consciousness.
Find the foods that make you feel emotional stability, mental clarity and physical strength. Experiment regularly. Keep changing foods until you find what works best. Don’t assume that other family members or friends know better than you. Their bodies, their spirits, differ from yours.
Strip down the number of foods to just a few each meal and you will better be able to discern which ones truly feed you. This experimenting goes beyond taste. Your goal is to find foods that make your body yummy as much as your tongue. You want to nourish the light within you, feed it what it wants to grow bright.
