Yesterday not only have I managed the 3 obligatory morning pages by delaying feeding myself, but since it was close to 6pm as I was wrapping up with all my “morning” online activities (work, pages, language learning) I decided to skip food for the day all together. While intermittent 1 day fasts were easy enough to do last year in Melbourne while I was barely present home and always running around doing stuff (what stuff I don’t even recall myself now), sitting at home in Vienna makes it more difficult. Even right now, 24 hours on, I don’t feel hunger as such, but the psychological addiction to food is too pervasive. And probably not so much the addiction to food, as the lack of a strong motivation to not eat. 1 day fast is a good practice to give the body a break, 1 week or more is a good detox and overall organism revitaliser, but 2-3 days only don’t seem to carry that much health value so I am bound to make my way into the kitchen eventually and eat something.
I just realized what all this “I don’t know what to write” constant thought is – a writer’s block! I must be a writer then, heh? 🙂
I have contemplated a number of times of picking a particular topic to write about which should make it easier to come up with words, inspire some opinion. But the Morning Pages instructions are to write whatever is on my mind, and I still have not figured out why it is so hard to do. I mean I have somewhat of an idea – it is because it is published and readable by others so it prevents me to truly ramble on 3 pages of totally incoherent unfinished sentences which seem to reflect my internal thought reality. But somehow contemplating writing private Morning Pages does not give me a good feeling, but maybe I should try just as an experiment.
I seem to be doing lots of experiments lately, in fact, the whole life is an experiment. If you can’t really take for granted anything anyone says, experimenting is really the only way to go. Do something and see how it makes me feel and what result it produces. Forbidding myself food until the 3 pages are written seems draconian and rather brute, yet it works with multiple positive side benefits. Another wacky experiment I have done yesterday was from Osho’s Book of Secrets that I am currently devouring: a test to see if you have a strong imagination or if it has been destroyed by all the learning. I knew I had one powerful imagination, I manifest most things I choose to, and those that I haven’t yet manifested in my physical reality I indulge in quite frequently and with abandon during my numerous lucid day dreams. But I also acquired a lot of learning. So I approached the experiment proposed by Osho with some trepidation – I did not want to have my imagination self esteem damaged in case I “failed” it. All that was required to do is to lock my hands together and for 5 minutes pretend in my imagination that they are stuck together and can not be unstuck. Which I did, vividly imagining that the hands locked at the fingers have grown a single layer of skin and are in fact one limb now coming out of both shoulder joined in the middle. I even imagined how I would go about my day and do various activities if I had just one limb like that. 10 minutes on (I cheated just to make sure I give my possibly weakened by all the learning imagination the time to work) – lo and behold – I could not pull my fingers apart. Just like experiment suggested, I tried harder and harder and exerted some will yet to no avail, even the singularly joined at the tips thumbs would not come apart. So it was not until I really wanted to turn off the alarm clock going off beside me for some time now, I have used Osho’s advice for those who find themselves suddenly with stuck hands, to use the power of imagination to imagine them unstuck. As imagined the hands come apart forming a miraculous 2 limbs with even more astonishing 10 limb fingers at the end (quite a sudden upgrade from a single limb with a joint at the end) I could then pull them apart with glee.
Having proved the formidable power of my imagination with the above experiment, I could then dedicate myself fully to one of the 112 suggested meditation techniques, one that is particularly good for people with strong imaginations. The amazing coincidence that brought all this about to begin with started with Osho’s suggestion to explore all 112 methods and choose one that is right for me (to read all 1000+ pages of the manuscript to do so – I think NOT!). So I went looking online for the accompanying Book of Secrets card deck mentioned in the book for a more intuitive and FAST mediation method selection but could not find anything of this sort anywhere at first. Finally I found one site that provided such a deck (along with other Osho’s decks) for online perusal (I think the site might have made them up from the book excerpts!) and the very first card I pulled had the “Imagine any part of your form and limitless” meditation with the preceding experiment to test whether your imagination is strong enough for this method to be of use to you. Herein comes the coincidence part – I have had just such an experience a couple of months ago during my first Shamanic Breathwork experience and ever since then the perceptions of reality altered in just such a way for me – every time I close my eyes, I experience fully and completely having absolutely no body, only a single point of perception in the formless limitless whole, a point of observation. Physical sensations and thought still arise, but they are more like electric blips on a heart rate machine: Blip… and then nothing… Blip again… So there you have it, total randomness of a series of events including 1 card out of 112 probability brings me the exact method that has invited itself into my life experience and have been patiently waiting for me to play with it. Which I am going to go do right now before venturing into the kitchen to make the long awaited experimental mushroom hash browns – meditation time!