Awareness shifts happening everywhere – the Book of Secrets is amazing, my personal Bible! Not only the things I have so far read and practised brought me the results promised, but there are observable changes happening everywhere else across all daily activities. Noticing habitual patterns and easily breaking free from them simply through awareness. Everything that I read, either in the normal course of the book or by picking methods that sound good and reading just them, everything seems to be addressing and shifting the precise issues I am working on at this present time (or have been working on for a while):
- trying to developer a habit to chew, eat slowly, be present to the taste of every bite – all of it happened completely automatically at the last meal with no effort whatsoever and was a completely different eating experience, awareness was there as if by its own accord.
- unconscious eating and overeating – gone. Perhaps only for the day, but maybe not, we’ll see.
- dissipating energy throughout the day in a myriad of unnecessary compulsive actions – solved by the STOP method. Whenever I have an impulse to do something – simply STOP – completely freeze, even stop breathing. An impulse is the energy wanting to move out and if you stop, but the energy is still moving, it will not go out but will go back in. Practice with any impulse – to sneeze, to drink, to sleep. I have had some amazing results using it with drowsiness – as soon as I feel drowsy – STOP – and I can feel the energy moving inwards and revitalising me – drowsiness gone! Its incredible.
- habit of having chocolate with my tea – worse yet, while I read. Sounds harmless enough but I was able to see for the first time how totally unconscious it was! What is the purpose, I can not taste anything anyway while I am reading or doing something else. If I want to drink tea – pour a cup, put the book down, enjoy the taste and have a contemplative break. And if I want some chocolate – get a piece and enjoy the taste fully, don’t even contemplate while at it, just be present with the taste. So simple but what a completely different experience once the awareness was brought to it. I can’t wait to discover what other silly habits I can deconstruct now.
- attempting to drink 2 litres of water every day – putting my unconscious to work – simply placing a bottle of water within easy reach and voila – unconscious reaches out and has some every half an hour or so.
I am close to giving up this morning. Really, really nothing comes to mind to write about. It feels like torture.
I will summarize here the results of my emotional saga of the past month and a half titled “To Vanuatu or Not to Vanuatu”. Its last culmination happened a few weeks ago in Italy with the Result of NOT following my feelings and it has since subsided entirely. I have written and talked about it to anyone and everyone who’d listen and, as if by magic, while typing up my internal emotional state yet again in yet another email, it finally dawned on me what the lesson in all this conundrum was – I need to let go of what little planning I still was attempting to do in my mind and leave utterly and completely in the present moment. Ever since that realization happened all my emotional ups and downs completely subsided and its a simple matter of asking myself each day (lol sounds like a program code, might as well write it that way for fun):
If (Am I still happy here? = yes)
Then
stay another day
Else
book ticket and leave
Also following my friend’s advice to connect with what Vanuatu means for me and bring it into my present experience has finally taken root. So all I am doing all day is doing a bit of work and online stuff, writing, reading, learning things, walking around and enjoying nature, cooking and eating. Simple really.
I also wanted to dive deeper into my chocolate making obsession. I have attempted to do it here but alas Viennese shops don’t stock vanilla extract (only vanilla sugar in multiple varieties everywhere!) and forget about trying to find raw chocolate. So the result was most definitely sub par so I gave up and started buying the bar again. But yesterday I finally tackled austrian ebay and with the help of trusty google translate manage to find myself my superfood ingredients and vanilla. Impatiently waiting for it all to arrive so I can create my chocolate goodness again – yeepee!