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Day 3. Truth be told, it will be truly day three once the clock hits noon, but I’ll consider this day 3.
Certain things are becoming clearer to me.
The difference between hunger and all the other reasons we eat.
Hunger says, it seems to me, I NEED food. But obviously the body is not the smartest thing, because most people can fast for weeks, and they are not hungry. Hungry for the first two, maybe three days, and then not hungry.
So hunger is, maybe, a lot like greed.
Then there is the ‘I could eat’, or ‘I feel like eating’.
Muscletest says that with my current level of activity, I need 600 calories a day to maintain activity and weight. But all the ‘scientific’ data says double, triple, quadruple numbers.
When I look at my students, many of them has a ‘backdrop’. A default context of ‘not enough’.
So they are always in ‘lack’, in needy, in wanty, and contentment eludes them.
Happiness, some say, is when nothing is missing. Need says: something is missing.
Not enough also says: something is missing.
But here is what I thing: not enough is an attitude.
It is words that give the person a nagging sense of wrongness. And it has nothing to do with what is, which is reality, and it deals with, ENTIRELY, in unreality.
Some 30 years ago I saw that the four expressions, having to, wanting to, needing to, and should all deal with unreality.
All make you experience the lack, the missing, that doesn’t exist in reality. And all four lead to a nagging sense of wrongness.
Animals are happy because they only deal with what is. They don’t wander into unreality.
Humans do.
But all it does is make people unhappy.
It’s the comparison.
And the result of comparison the want to get OVER the other… the more, better and different. WANTING.
WANTING that results, inevitably, and always to misery.
If you want but don’t do. If you want but expect it to be given to you. You are miserable… Because ‘if you are not for you, who is for you?’
If you want but go about getting it the only way you know to get it: just for yourself, you are miserable. Because ‘if you are only for yourself, who are you?’
No matter if you are a have or a have-not, you are miserable.
Because the spirit, the soul, the divine inside will not allow you to be happy.
I live very modestly, and I live with nothing missing.
The spiritual teaching of practicing gratitude and appreciation for what you have is a step in the right direction. But it rarely silences the Wanting. Wanting the more, the better, the different. The discontent.
Not creating it. Just wanting.
Society, the culture makes sure of that.
—
I just swallowed a few probiotics capsules.
Big mistake on one hand, big learning on the other.
The hunger, the bacteria screaming for something to eat, is deafening.
More often than not what is masquerading as hunger is some microorganism wants to eat, not your body.
When I had an overgrowth of yeast in my body, the yeast was screaming for sugar. It was very hard to resist.
I have been eating for two for the past year or so.
—
I am autistic. And like everything, the condition is on a scale. Or in the case of autism, it is called a spectrum.
I didn’t know I was autistic, maybe it didn’t even exist when I was a child. Instead I was weird. And different.
Most people get bullied in school. I was bullied at home.
I watch movies with autistic characters. Or novels.
But I just realized that being different is feared by the masses…
Astrid, the main character in the French series I am watching says: They laugh at me for being different. I laugh at them for being the same.
Maybe it is nature experimenting to evolve into a species that isn’t jerked around, isn’t dominated by its emotions.
—
My IQ just dropped 40 points.
So writing an article is suddenly a struggle. I can only think of things that concern me.
I wonder if caring, caring about others depends on the IQ. Source says yes. Wow. I didn’t expect that.
I expected that spiritual capacities were independent from intellectual capacities. But looking at it with new eyes: in the case of caring it takes intellectual capacity to see that caring doesn’t take anything away from you, whereas most people don’t want to care, because they live in an either you or me world. And can’t change their minds about that… that would require some intellectual capacity they don’t have.
Caring becomes possible at 150 IQ. Even love doesn’t need such high IQ. Love becomes possible at 120 IQ. The fact that it comes possible doesn’t mean that smarter people love.
Love is a function of acceptance. Accepting the other for what they are and what they aren’t. Acceptance, true acceptance is not common. Even though acceptance is the key to happiness.
Attitude
Before I started this project, I spent some time deciding on an attitude that can secure success in the face of inevitable difficulties. Hunger. Discouragement. Well-meaning advice or concern from others. Difficulty working. I expect all of these. So I mounted a defense ahead of time.
The attitude I invented is this: ‘I can do it. I can and will deal with whatever comes up. Because if I’ll live, I want to be able to be well as long as I can. My idea death comes to me in the middle of writing an article…’
The worst death is drawn out suffering, vegetating, so I am not interested in that.
What are the capacities that are required?
The most important one, I say, is allowing. Allowing A to be A. Allowing pain, for example, to be pain.
If you want to learn allowing (in my opinion allowing is just another word for acceptance!) you can buy this recording…
See what is to allow
