'Raw Foodist' Or 'Conscious Eater'?

For a while now, & even though I use it to describe myself, I've been bothered by the term 'raw foodist'.

This breaks down to three main reasons:

1. It implies that I only eat raw foods (ie, I'm 100% - & possibly militant about it at that)
2. It misses the whole point of raw (more on that later) - thus treating it as a diet, rather than a lifestyle
3. It seems to make my friends worry about whether & what they can feed me

I realised recently that if my friends are wasting their brain cycles thinking about what I'm eating, then something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

pic by LeoFagiano

Umm, so to speak..

Having to keep the details of someone else's diet in your head is a bit tedious, to say the least - particularly since there are so many variants out there, vegetarian, vegan, ovo-lacto-pescatarian, the list goes on. Of course, it's simple to us, I mean "raw fruit, veges, some nuts & seeds", what could be simpler? Except it could also be described as "no meat, no dairy, nothing cooked. Yes bread is cooked, so is vinegar, & most herbs, etc etc etc" And from the point of view of a host, 10 people visiting all with different dietary preferences, some of them militant ("Honey? Do you know how many bees died to make that?!?! AND YOU HAVE LEATHER SHOES!!") it's enough to make you pull your hair out.

pic by sugarpuss4ever

..or, you know, someone else's.

The irony here is that raw foodists (with the odd luminous example) are generally the most chilled people I've ever met with regard to their food. Which brings me to the second point. Most raw foodists have slightly different diets. Some eat more fats. Some are what's called raw primal - ie, they include raw animal products, meats etc. Some eat honey or dairy, some don't. Some are super strict (no herbs, no cooked salad dressings, no chocolate), most aren't. Few are a super pure 100%.

One of the key reasons for this is that eating raw isn't a destination, it's a journey. Even in the short time I've been on it, what has best suited my body has changed drastically. My tastes have changed enormously. Juice fasting particularly altered my body chemistry markedly - kale used to be way too bitter for me, now I can't get enough of it.

Eating raw isn't about eating one specific way. It's about being conscious of what you're eating, and how it's affecting you. The common refrain is "Eat whatever you like, just be aware of why, and how it's affecting you". You want to have a coffee? Go right ahead - just watch what it does to you. Feel like pizza? Be my guest. Feel better afterwards or worse? And how? Keep that up long enough, and you'll naturally settle on foods that make you feel great. Voila, you're a raw foodist.

pic by dboo

Also, and here's a little secret about raw food. You want to have one salad a week, eat steak at every other meal & call yourself a raw foodist? Go right ahead. The community will welcome you with open arms. It's about loving and supporting each other, not about who's eating what. People want to help you. Want you to succeed. To find your own path. They realise it can be hard, and can take years to find that ideal balance. I know I've sure as hell struggled. Yesterday I ate an entire loaf of bread. Yes, by myself. Worse yet, I'm still not really sure why. Is there any guilt about that? No, even though it made me throw up, just curiosity. Adding negative emotion to food-that-is-bad-for-me only exacerbates the situation.

That's what raw foodism is really about. Going easy on yourself. Being patient, understanding. Paying attention to what's happening to yourself - being conscious instead of critical. Losing all those negative emotions around food. Instead, surrounding yourself with love, and loving people. It's a lifestyle, not a diet.

Mostly, eating raw is just about eating what makes you feel good. If you pay really close attention, and honestly feel that eating a specific cooked food makes you feel better, then go right ahead and do it. After all, it's your body. Eat what you like, just be conscious. Pay attention. Think about what you're shoving in your cake hole. That's all that really matters.

If you're trying to eat as raw as you can, and a friend serves up something that doesn't match your preferences perfectly (a salad with dressing, fruit with yoghurt, whatever) then go ahead and eat it, if you think you'd enjoy it. Why not? Is the world really a better place for making a huge fuss - particularly if you can see they've made an effort, even if they've screwed it up a bit around the edges?

I'm not suggesting being a push-over - it is important to have strong boundaries (ie, self respect), and if your 'friends' are serving barbecue & getting upset if you bring a salad for yourself, maybe it's time to question how much those friends really have your best interests at heart. But also, if you're spending the whole time whinging about their choices, well, maybe you're it's time to question how much you have their interests at heart. Everyone is on their own journey, and judging theirs is as wrong as them judging yours.

The best term I've found (so far) to describe my choices is a 'conscious eater'. Eat what I like. Take my own time on my own journey. Respect others' choices. Do what I like. Just be conscious.

Of course, 'raw food' as a phrase has its own uses - it's a good way for people on a similar journey to identify each other (hello twitter friends!). In terms of self-labelling, it will still have uses, but in terms of how I think of myself, conscious eating is definitely how I'm living.

The amusing part of all this, of course, is that as I said, it's a journey. Right now, I feel I'm a conscious eater. But in time, who knows? Can someone who's further down this path shed any light where I might be headed? As always, I'm super curious.

A Trip To 'The Nongs'

Being a busy Thursday, I decided what better to do than bugger off out of town & head to the local mountain/forest range.

(Some) locals call these "the nongs", but officially they're the Dandenong Ranges. It's about an hours drive east of where I live.

Anyway, they're green, and, you know, mountainy. That's all I care about. Thursday was one of those days where I definitely needed more green.

So what do they look like? Great question. I'm glad you asked, because I have pictures, nothing but pictures, just for you. Really, just you!

Before you enter the ranges, there are important notices to pay attention to. Note the picture. I was relieved my arms & legs would still be attached when I'd left. I was less sure about my head.

There are lots of these. Birds in Australia are very bright, and make particularly unusual sounds. I'm not sure why. Maybe because there are crocodiles ('crocs') here. Not the kind you wear on your feet, although they have those too. The kind that eat your feet. If I had neighbours like that, I'd make weird noises too.

Here's a tree that utterly captivated me. Bizarre thing is, it's actually dead (or perhaps just faking it very well). It still managed to be incredibly majestic. The stunning blue sky backdrop helped. There was a natural clearing right next to this which seemed a great place to hang out for an hour, lying in the sun, listening to birds complaining about our intrusion & watching the trees sway in the gentle breeze.

Here's what walking through the Dandenongs is like. 'nuff said.

A peculiarity of Australian trees is that they naturally lose their bark in summer months. This creates a ton of kindling which helps spur bush fires in the undergrowth. If the fires happen regularly enough, then the forests as a whole are spared. How this evolved just boggles my mind, but man, it's awesome. You can see in the above pics a whole stand of trees where the fires have come through - the trees are still alive, and the burn marks go about 20 feet up the trees.

Here's a close up - an alive tree, but the entire inside has burnt out. Crazy, crazy country this.

I also saw a camo goat.

& in case you had trouble spotting the goat in the above pic, here's a close up. You're welcome.

So anyway, after walking for, I dunno, 4 or 5 hours, leaving from a town called Sassafras, we ended up in a town called Olinda. Umm. We were trying to go back to Sassafras, honest. Middle of the day, being pretty careful to backtrack as accurately as possible, and still ended up one town over. Sure am glad it wasn't raining. Or dark. Or full of man eating goats.

Turns out there's an award winning pie-ary in Olinda.

Oh, and if you're curious (I know you are) a pie floater consists of pea soup, with a meat pie floating in it, all covered in tomato ketchup. It's a lot tastier than it sounds - I had one once. My Dad used to live on them.

Not the best choice for a raw foodist, but I figured we were in pie country now.

I had a salad.

A Silly Party Game

I was chatting with my sensei this evening, and he told me about a party game he learned. I'm sure this is as old as the hills, but it was new to me, and I found it more than a little eye opening. So, I thought I'd share it with you.

First of all, grab a piece of paper (or whatever new fangled gadget passes for paper these days). Write on it:

1. Your favourite domestic pet
2. Your favourite wild animal
3. Your favourite dessert

And for each, the specific attributes about it that make it your favourite - ie, what appeals so strongly about each.

Go ahead, I'll wait. Won't take you more than a couple of minutes.

Finished? Ok, good. Well, here's what I answered:

Fave pet: a cat - reasons? It's inquisitive, sassy & elegant

Fave wild animal: the shark - reasons? It has an efficiency > 1 (until recently thought impossible), it's fast, incredibly beautiful & a little scary

Fave dessert: durian - reasons? the sheer perversity of it, it's exotic, and orgasmic(ally tasty)

So what does this all mean? Well, there's a reason I left the explanation till the end - so you could write your answers down (yes yes, I know you're reading ahead. Stop being cheeky, & jot them down).

An interesting side note. Almost 20 years ago, I did one of those journeying experiences, where you find your power animal. I'm not totally sure about the practical usefulness of this information, but I'm curious about everything, so I gave it a shot anyway. For me, it turned out to be a hedgehog. I kinda realised, over time, that that was a good representation of myself. Prickly as hell on the outside, squishy on the inside. Also interestingly, my favourite dessert has changed radically over the last couple of years, since I started aggressively on this healing path.

So, side note aside, here's the interpretation, I know you've been dying for it:

• The pet is what you look for in a partner
• The wild animal describes your own attributes
• The dessert is how you like sex

.. and I looked at my list, and I thought to myself "You know? That's a little bit bloody scarily accurate". I'd guess this also means my power animal has changed (although the implications of this are beyond me).

Sweat The Small Stuff

I had a weird dream last night. So, as usual, I tapped on it.

Thing is, I could feel that while it was helping, it wasn't really getting to the root of the problem. In my dream, I dunno, I was in this weird war zone - kindof. I had a gun, there were people out to get me - all of them, it seemed. Very odd. When I woke things weren't very clear, so I was struggling a bit to connect with it.

So, I did what I often do - pulled up a text editor, cleared my mind, and just started typing. Whatever popped in my head I wrote down - particularly the stupid stuff. Almost like automatic writing, I suppose. Meditating around the subject would do the same thing, but this way I have a record.

Here's what popped out:

WHY IS EVERYONE STILL OUT TO GET ME? [nice big header to keep me focussed]

• or hurt me
• or make things difficult for me
• or trip me up

And a little lightbulb came on in my head "trip me up"? WtF? That's.. odd.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, a very specific incident came to mind. When I was 7, running along in school, some random kid sitting next to the path stuck his foot out & tripped me up - just for laughs, I think. I grazed my hands & got a bit upset.

On the scale of things, how big is this, I mean. Really? Getting tripped up at school? It's ridiculous. I know people that have been caught in the middle of mass murders. Killed dozens of people in wars. Been repeatedly raped for years. That's trauma. Getting tripped up? It's so trivial it's laughable.

And yet.

I started tapping on this, and the picture started to open out.

pic by jeaniepaul

The thing that's important to remember is this: What's tiny to an adult is gigantic to a child. Also, at that age, we have very little experience & our brains haven't even finished developing yet (they don't until our early 20's).

You can pretty much guarantee that we will interpret things in a way that is both wrong, and childish, to our adult brains. However, we never stop & reassess these situations. Even as adults, we take these childish interpretations, and they become our truth. Our core beliefs. The basis for our lives.

For me, this innocuous situation left me with the beliefs that:

• I couldn't trust anyone
• Everyone was 'out to get me'

This trust issue is something that's been niggling me for years now - and of course caused problems in every relationship, intimate, business, or otherwise, that I've ever been in. However, until now, I haven't really been able to see below the surface.

Could it all stem from that one silly incident? Now, there was another kid who tripped me up on my birthday once (same school, boy oh boy). But those two incidents combined together? Sure. Definitely.

It's ridiculous, looking back as an adult, to see such a forgettable incident causing such long term damage, and yet this sort of thing happens all the time.

There is no incident too small. Remember, we were children then, we saw things in a childish way. If we're looking to heal ourselves, it's important to pay particular attention to the kinds of things that as an adult we now see as trivial. If we still remember them, they're still in our consciousness, in our awareness. So they're significant, no matter how they might look now. In fact, a good rule of thumb is - the sillier & more trivial it seems, the more important it really is.

After all, if an event is really that trivial, why have we bothered to remember it all these years?

Bacon, Bagels & Noodles

A week or so ago I got rid of my final cooked food addiction... or so I thought.

I'd been reading a really interesting thread on Give It To Me Raw about being addicted to cooked food. At the time I was eating all raw.. except for going out for hot chips, ohhh, 2 or 3 times a week.

*scratches head* What the hell was up with that?

Well, it turns out that potatoes (and wheat) have a similar effect on the brain to mild opiates - ie, they cause a slight distancing from your current concerns. At the time I had been feeling some heavy emotions coming up, and had been fearful of dealing with them (no, I hadn't thought about just tapping out the fear *slaps forehead*), so of course I was instinctively gravitating to potatoes in order to quell those emotions & keep myself 'safe'.

Keeping me safe, & making me feel good being the primary aim of all these sorts of automatic behaviours - it's just the "little us" inside, our minds, trying to protect us. The irony, of course, is that typically the behaviours actually worsen the situation, they just feel like they help.

So, once I tapped out using chips to numb myself, voila! Last cooked food addiction! I am now perfect & worthy of adoration, green smoothies all round!! (for the humour deprived, I'm joking.. oh, except for the smoothies, they rock, please, have one, you'll feel much better).

Ok, where was I? Oh yes, hot chips.

So, that was well and good. Back on the wagon I go, and sure enough, start feeling awesome again, bouncing around the room Russian cossack dancing to Billy Holiday and so on, as I am wont to do.

If there's one thing I've learned on this food journey, starting way back with that insane juice feast, it's that a lot (all?) of the time we crave or feel drawn to a specific food - and particularly those we've had a lot of in the past - it's not the food we're drawn to. It's the emotional feeling we attach to that food. Occasionally there are biochemical drivers, of course, but emotional attachment is definitely the major one.

Since the great hot chip realisation of 2008, I've had the chance to see this in detail with three more separate foods (the alert readers among you will already have a good idea what they are).

Bacon

pic by Bobby Stokes (note the opiate bread+hashbrowns too, always a bonus)

After a recent mild financial setback, I had a definite desire to go out for a cooked breakfast. Ok, no big deal, being raw (for me, at least) is about eating whatever-the-hell-you-want, but being conscious about why. That's what's important, not necessarily what I shove in my gob.

After a bit of thought, I realised - it wasn't the rest of the breakfast that mattered, it was really all about the bacon. Why? Well when I was growing up, we didn't have bacon very often - with 8 kids, that's a LOT of bacon, and it's pretty expensive stuff. So, at some level I associated bacon with wealth - it was my 'wealthy food', as it were. I'd eat it, and feel wealthy.

Like so many things, in hindsight, this is both amusing & kinda ridiculous.

Of course, breaking this connection was as simple as tapping it out (2mins, done). Now I'm still free to enjoy bacon, if I choose, but it won't be because of some illusory feeling I ascribe to the mythical powers of the fried pig!

Noodles

pic by サンドラ (These are the fancy ones, we only dreamt of these)

I've always enjoyed noodles, and even discovered a great little place here in Melbourne that makes their own noodles on the premises. It's super cool - you can actually watch the chef in the window swinging them around. I just love that kind of thing. Oh, plus it's super cheap - always an unexpected bonus with great food. Ironically I discovered this place only after I decided to seriously up my raw food intake. Hehe ewps.

Of course, I do realise that noodles are in the flour+water=glue-in-my-belly food group - not particularly easy to digest & will tend to make me sleepy as my body fights to digest it.

What's taken me much longer to realise is the emotional association I had with noodles. I didn't twig to this until I was in the supermarket downstairs watching a guy building a gargantuan stack of 25c packets of instant noodles.

This took me back in a flash to a time over a decade ago, living with my little brother Rob in a dilapidated place in the centre of a town described by the CEO of Glaxo Wellcome as "the arse end of the universe" (Glaxo was founded there). We were basically living off the cheapest of the cheap of the horrid little packets of two minute noodles at the time. We used to wait until there was a sale, then go and fill up an entire shopping trolley of the things at discounted prices.

Ahh, good times.

*cough*

Anyway, got rid of THAT connection. Still love my brother, can live without the deep fried flour+god knows what else.

Bagels

pic by sionfullana (no, my sister is not Asian, but I do like the size of that bagel)

Bagels were more interesting. I never ate them until my sister Ruth went to the Atlanta Olympics in 1996. She came back and raved to me about how good they were - even just eaten plain.

So of course there was the association. Hanging out with her, having bagels together. Definitely a positive connection there.

There was a little more to it though. When I was working in London, at a particularly productive time in my life, I used to have bagels for breakfast every morning - with an orange juice (see? health conscious!). So as well as the association with her, I'd also connected them with being productive. Since I love being productive, if I wanted to feel that way, I would have a bagel.

This sounds like lunacy, and in a way it is, but this is the way our minds work.

The result
So what does breaking these connections achieve? Well, several things:

1. Eating those foods won't pump my brain with endorphins or whatever-other-chemicals are created by the emotional connection I've made
2. I don't feel compelled to eat those foods when what I actually want is the emotional feeling
3. I'm still completely free to eat them, if I want, and enjoy them for what they are as foods - unclouded by anything else I've attached to them.

Stopping to look at it - what's more healthy? Missing my sister, and eating a bagel to remind me of good times hanging out together, or missing my sister & picking up the phone to tell her I love her?

If I really must, I can always eat a bagel while I call her - it won't be the first time she's heard me talking with my mouth full. That way she gets the love AND an earful of bagel - the perfect solution!

My First Durian (aka Stealing Alien Babies From The Mothership)

I decided a sunny Saturday afternoon was the perfect time to try durian. I'd had a small bite of one before, but was now determined to try the whole thing. Choosing, buying, opening & hopefully having enough nerve to actually eat one. I steeled myself to the distinct possibility of getting part way in & throwing the whole lot in the bin.

For the unitiated, a durian looks like this:

This came from ye regular olde supermarket downstairs - so it's obviously not that bizarre a fruit. It comes in a handy dandy carrier bag, but the checkout girl still eyed it very suspiciously & placed it inside first one, then two plastic bags (which the spikes promptly & happily ripped through).

It's difficult to see in the above picture, but there are tiny splits in the shell of the durian. When I bought it, this particular split was about 2" long. By the next morning it had expanded to this:

So, after much researching & watching youtube videos on the matter, I discovered that you pry your fingers into these holes, and you can pull the fruit apart, thus:

This can only be described as.. uhh, vaguely sexual. *cough* anyway, it added to the experience, for me at least (I forgot to ask how the durian felt about it. Guess that's a guy thing)

So how big is a durian? Well, I wish I'd got a photo of this, but alas, I didn't think of it - it's roughly as big as my head. Instead, here's a picture of my head:

Two keys points - 1. See how extremely unconvinced I am by the durian (this was before I started eating it). 2. Note the extensive collection of booze in the background which will now probably never be drunk. If you'd like it, just shout.

So, once you pry out a section, it starts to look like this:

And you can see the little fruit sections inside. They have large softish pips in them (which you don't eat, uhh, I think).

What do they look like? They look like ALIEN BABIES!!! No, I'm serious. Check it:

I swear. You're stealing alien babies from the spikey mothership. This fruit is CRAZY. I kept expecting it to jump out of my hand and suck onto my face.

Of course, there's also another *cough* minor detail with durian.

Ok, let me explain. With most food, it smells more or less like it tastes.

In geographic terms, durian smells like Oklahoma, but tastes like Nepal. They are NOTHING alike. So, in order to enjoy it, you kind of have to detach the part of your brain that links smell & taste, because your nose & tastebuds will be telling you completely different things. One part of your brain is saying to grab your cowboy hat, the other your prayer beads & pitons. It just doesn't work.

The taste is.. hmm. very hard to explain. Remember Charlie & The Chocolate Factory? How there was the chewing gum that had an entire three course meal in it? Well, it's sort of like that - except that afterwards you don't blow up to the size of a house. It's sort of creamy, a bit like custard, sweet, but less sweet than banana. Damn delicious though.

Also, on the subject of smell, the outside & the inside smell quite different from each other. I tell you, these things are stunningly weird. But ok, while we're on the subject of alien foods, who the heck invented Daikon?

Coz I tell you, if that doesn't look like some kind of insane frilly UFO with massive vertical exhaust fumes, what the hell does?

Oh, and the durian? I'm offically hooked. I ate the whole thing in a day (probably a bad idea, they're quite high in fat), & went back for more today. SO GOOD! I am officially a hippie.

How To Get What You Want In Relationships (But Not What You Asked For)

I've been giving a lot of thought to how we attract people into our lives - who we end up in relationships with, and so on. This applies both to intimate relationships, and more importantly friendships (since we generally have far more & are less discriminating with friends than lovers)

It's pretty obvious (in hindsight) that while a bunch of factors determine our partners - very few of these are actually at the conscious level. You want a guy who treats you well, and yet somehow always end up with angry drunks? Huh?

Here are some of the reasons why this sort of thing happens:

Your Patterns
If you look back over all your relationships, what recurring themes can you see? I don't mean obvious things like age difference, or hair colour.

I mean things like - were you meeting damaged people & trying to fix them? Were you with people who supported you as much as you supported them, or was it all one sided? Did they respect you? Do you often find yourself in relationships with people that were selfish or self-centred? That have no money themselves but lots of ideas how to spend yours? People that are angry? Rude to waiters? Lazy?

The problem is - whether you're aware of these patterns or not, whatever it is inside you that is creating them will continue to create them - at least, until you heal the patterns or otherwise clear them out.

For example, I know that until very recently I've had a very deep need for approval (Thanks, great-great-great grandma! Fortunately this is sorted now). As such, I've regularly got in relationships with "broken" people - not bad people per se, just those with a lot of issues I could then help them with. As I help them, they're grateful, and voila, my need for approval is fulfilled.

Now, I saw this vividly in my very first relationship - with a suicidal bulemic - and swore I'd never do it again. At a conscious level, I chose to stay away from these situations, and yet - they continued to echo through my life regardless. Despite my best conscious attention, I've been involved with a violent alcoholic, an anorexic, sociopathic liars & many serious abuse victims. Most interestingly, none of these attributes were visible in the early stages of the relatonships. There was no way I would know until it was too late.

At some level, I was drawing these situations to myself, despite my best (conscious) intentions.

Their Patterns
There are two people in every relationship (well, ok, excluding polyamory), so it's worth remembering that any characteristics you have will attract people looking for those attributes.

Think about it this way - whatever you dislike most about yourself? There will be people who are drawn to that (for many reasons). You will be part of completing their deepest desires - even if it's a part of yourself you don't particularly want to be sharing with anyone.

Your Fears
One of the most maddening aspects of life is that you not only attract things that you desire, but also things you hate, or fear.

It breaks down like this - anything you place attention on - whether positive or negative - is drawn to you. Yeah yeah, law of attraction, etc etc.

So how does this pan out in relationships? Well, if you have (as I have for years) a fear of being used for your dosh? Sooner or later (or worse - very often) you're going to end up with someone who is mostly there for the bling. Have a deep fear of jealousy - you're going to end up with people who make you jealous. Trust me on this - like crazy. Afraid of being cheated on? Your partners will cheat on you. Afraid you might be a loser? You'll attract people who believe you really are.

And so it goes.

pic by McNeny

What To Do About All This
This could get frustratingly depressing very quickly. Hold your hankies though! There is, as always, good news!

The first is to be aware that you always have choice. With the exception of family, every single person in your life is there because you (at some point) chose them to be there. So, you can also choose for them not to be.

It's also important to realise that unless you're VERY careful (on an energetic level) every person you interact with will affect you, at some point. Your friends that you see all the time? They're going to have a huge, cumulative effect on your life. Your boyfriend gets angry at the traffic? You're going to end up road raging along with him.

So, it's worth thinking about who you want near you. It's an important decision, and needs to be made for every significant relationship you have (not just your intimate partners)

Secondly, once you figure out the worst of the patterns, merely being aware of them will help you avoid the most egregious examples. While I may have not have successfully avoided girls with eating disorders, that was the last time I spent time with anyone (friend or partner) who was aggressively suicidal. These are small but important steps that will still save you a world of hurt.

Thirdly, by seeing the patterns, you'll be able to track them back & heal them. There are tons of tools for doing this of course (heh, I feel like I'm always saying that - but I do keep discovering more of them every week).

Even just giving some thought to your most recent relationship - or your closest current friends, you'll be able to see definite patterns. If you were using EFT, for example, you could start with something really general like "Even though I attract people that don't respect me..". Something non-specific like that probably won't clear the problem out completely, but it will definitely give you enough traction to really find out what's going on, & then kick that junk to the curb.

pic by Mark_2000

The greatest thing is this - if you're, say, 30 now, you may live another 100 years (yes, the typical life expectancy for 30 year olds today is 125-150 years).

So, how many friends will you have in the next 100 years? If you make 5 new friends a year, that's 500 friends. If you have one new partner every 5 years, that's another 20 intimate relationships. So, even just clearing out one negative pattern will mean you straight away get 500 better friends & 20 better partners. How awesome is that? (answer: unbelievably!)

And if you really get into it? Why, the sky's the limit! Awesome relationships all round, on the double!!

The Healing Power Of Music

When I was in my early teens, my mother 'encouraged' me to do three things - take up an instrument (guitar), learn a language (French), & do gymnastics. I pretty much sucked at all three of them.

I was talking to a friend yesterday about doing some chanting (in Sanskrit) - the thought of which freaked me the hell out. Ok, so what the heck is up with that? Of course - this hits two of the three - languages & music. Pretty obviously this was teenage rebellion at "being forced" to do something - I was thus insisting on being right, & on proving Mum wrong.

In some kind of synchronicity, I've also had this song brought to my attention - "Fall At Your Feet" - by Crowded House:

The lyrics of which are:

I'm really close tonight
And I feel like I'm moving inside her
Lying in the dark
And I think that I'm beginning to know her
Let it go
I'll be there when you call

And whenever I fall at your feet
You let your tears rain down on me
Whenever I touch your slow turning pain

You're hiding from me now
There's something in the way that youre talking
Words don't sound right
But I hear them all moving inside you, go
I'll be waiting when you call

Hey and whenever I fall at your feet
Won't you let your tears rain down on me
Whenever I touch your slow turning pain

The finger of blame has turned upon itself
And I'm more than willing to offer myself
Do you want my presence or need my help
Who knows where that might lead
I fall

Whenever I fall at your feet
Would you let your tears rain down on me
Whenever I fall, ever I fall

(courtesy of lyricsfreak)

I start listening to this song this morning, and immediately felt stuff start to lift off me. Singing along with it only amplified the effect. I ended up singing this for the best part of two hours, tears streaming down my face as long buried memories surfaced & layer after layer of rubbish cleared away. As I sang or struggled with certain phrases completely different things would lift off. I also instinctively began by singing in a much higher (ie, adolescent) register - then, as the healing progressed, my voice dropped significantly. My vocal cords hurt - they'd never been used at that pitch before.

Here's what singing this song lifted off me:

• "Finger of blame" - that it was time to accept learning
• "Let it go" - it was ok for Mum to be right
• I kept forgetting the lyric - which echoed French vocab - & was accompanised by a definite visual of my 13 year old school hall
• "Want my presence of need my help" - obstinance
• "Something in the way that you're talking" - French vocab tests
• Any time I lost the tune - took me back to 14 year old music & not being able to remember any guitar at all
• Some obvious residual breakup stuff
• I was continually starting singing too early - much like business ventures I've started that have been a decade (or more) ahead of their time
• When singing in the higher register, I couldn't hold "I fall" for the entire length - realising that when I am now is where I am supposed to be
• I was much more comfortable in a higher register - the belief that things have to be comfortable, familiar, to be safe
• Still struggling to find the right notes - & the right place in my life
• The subtle words kept tripping me up - echoing accents/graves, etc in French
• The 2nd verse got rid of some residual anger at having things hidden from me (despite my fully knowing)
• "Let it go" - much trickier in the lower register - fear that it was harder to do things this way, easier/safer the old way
• Was still struggling to remember the most basic words

At this point I started singing the song without listening to the music or reading the lyrics

• Still can't get it right - hit my residual perfectionism
• At the higher register - I was warbling a bit - not as good as I thought I might be
• Kept saying "you" instead of "her" - afraid to get close
• Kept screwing up verb tenses - just like French
• Kept saying "happy" instead of "willing" - I wasn't happy, & wasn't willing to be happy
• "whenever I touch your slow turning pain" - that I was addicted to other's pain
• Kept saying "moving" not "turning" - also addicted to helping them with their pain
• Kept saying "know" not "go" - knowledge being more important to me than action
• Kept saying "touch" not "fall at your feet" - that I'm desperate for touch, having spent a long time with minimal human closeness
• Still singing flat - just like music class when I was unable to tell notes apart
• Timing was all screwed up - just like when I've been trading
• "Whenever I touch" - that my addictive personality - I can't get high without assistance (via food, chemicals, whatever)
• I really struggled with "let it go". hehe.
• "I fall at your feet" - I kept warbling "your" - because I had a problem with what others have that I don't
• Got a complete mental block at "I'm more than willing", thought it was "more than ready" - realised I wasn't "more than ready" for anything

Needless to say I drank a TON of water & went through a LOT of tissues through this process.

I've seen & used a lot of healing techniques, but this absolutely blew me away in terms of how much it cleared. Amusingly, I'm sure this comes as no surprise to the musicians out there.

Ok, so now let's dissect the frog (ie, examine in ridiculous detail an otherwise beautiful thing).

Here's what I like, lyrically, about this track:

1. The subtle tense changes showing the emotional growth of the relationship - first "I'll be there" when she calls, then "I'll be waiting" - you can feel him hanging on more as he gets more involved. In the chorus, first it's "You let your tears rain down on me", then "won't you.." - begging, then finally resignedly pleading "would you.."
2. The growth of the relationship: from early sex "Think I'm beginning to know her", the development of behaviour patterns, sympathy from her as he falls at her feet; to her hiding something, pulling away; then, finally, his desperation and pain.
3. The subtlety of the final line - the implication of aloneness - he falls, but there's no-one there to pick him up "whenever I fall, ever I fall" - so he stays fallen forever.
4. The tie in - first he's moving inside her, then, when she's pulling away, he can hear the (wrong sounding) words moving inside her - as she's avoiding subjects, wheedling around the (obvious) truth - since he's already picked up that there's something in the way that she's talking.
5. The subtle transition from - thinking that he's knowing her, but telling himself to relax & just enjoy the moment "let it go" - to hearing that she's lying, "words all moving inside you" & breaking up with her - the imperative "go".
6. The transition early on from singing about her, to singing to her.

Oh, & here's a version I just recorded of myself singing this. It was all done from memory (no lyrics in front of me), and acapella (since I don't have any instruments here). For comparison, I estimated once that I've listened to my all time favourite song, "One" by U2 probably around 1500 times. Last time I checked, I still had no idea what the entire lyrics were. Oh, and this is both the first time I've sung in public, the first time I've recorded myself, and it was done in one take, with no edits. Fall At Your Feet

Two Approaches to Trans-Humanism (Who Wants To Live Forever?)

Post humanism is, essentially, what it will be like to be "more than human" - ie, what are we going to evolve to next. This could be purely biological, purely mechanical, some kind of nano-tech, or a combination of the lot.

Transhumanism is more or less synonomous with "human enhancement". This is the stepping stone to post humanism.

Of course, many people see this as complete nonsense - and that's totally fine.

However, assuming people think "Hey, become better? What a great idea!", there are two main approaches:

1. Wait Till Technology Does It For You
I know a guy who's a great example of this. He's 29 (but looks 49), chain smokes, does a lot of drugs, and so on. He plays guitar, but his body is so massively crippled that he can't play it for more than 5 minutes at a time without extreme pain. He can't do any exercise because every joint in his body hurts. This isn't a genetic disease - bad life choices have gradually crippled him.

He's firmly convinced he will live forever.

I suggested that perhaps he should cut back on the smoking, but he disagreed. Why? Because he's sure that 'science' will catch up soon enough that it'll be able to fix all his smoking related issues - oh, and all his other health problems as well.

Ahh, well. Ok then.

2. Start Now
Aubrey De Grey is a main figure in the immortality movement. He's opinionated as hell, so unsurprisingly, his ideas are hotly debated. He does however have some interesting points.

One of his key tenets is that if you can live another 30 years, then medical technology will improve enough to allow you to live another 30 (in robust health - we're talking quality of life here too, not just quantity). In the 30 after that, technology will improve to allow another 30 - and so on ad infinitum. A longevity equivalent of Zeno's dichotomy paradox.

The critical first step is that you want to hit that +30 year mark in as good a shape as possible. It's touch & go which aspects of human frailty will be dealt with first - so if, say, you have destroyed your lungs but the rest of you is fine, you might die anyway if medical science hasn't quite figured out lung replacement (or lung cancer) yet.

Now, health & wellbeing is a many faceted thing. Is it worth having a healthy body if your mind has completely deteriorated (or vice versa)? All the different aspects of your system have to be kept above a certain baseline, otherwise the entire system will collapse in on itself. Witness how quickly old folks can spiral downhill if they lose their mobility, catch pneumonia, or lose a loved one.

So, unsurprisingly, this is the approach I prefer. Working on improving my physical, mental, emotional & spiritual wellbeing, more or less all at once - thus ensuring maximum longevity (more importantly quality of life, not just quantity), and, eventually immortality.

The really interesting thing is - once you start looking at some of the technologies that have become available to assist & improve in these areas (and boy, the internet is a godsend for this kind of research), you quickly become exposed to more & more ways to improve your life. Not only that, but many of these technologies are both exponential in benefit & complementary to each other. You start using even a couple of them, and massive chunks of your life radically improve at once. The more you use them, the faster & more significantly your life improves. Even better than that, many of them are both free and stupidly simple to implement.

Of course, which technologies (or indeed any) to use is always a personal choice - and different things do just seem to work better for different people.

An unexpected benefit too is - once you start looking at some of these diverse aspects of the human system, you'll start to see that it is possible to live a life with higher highs (& much higher, or even non existent lows) than you might ever have previously dreamt possible.

Happier. Fitter. More energy. More peacful. More fulfilled. Wealthier.

I look at all this, and to me at least it seems obvious - why wait for the future to arrive when it's becoming easier & easier to race up to meet it, with a giant smile on your face?

But of course, as usual, there is always choice 1.