Every environmental issue that I examine – and I have carefully examined many in the past 25 years – has the tendency to give me the same basic overall answer, namely that self-mastery is THE KEY to securing the survival of planet Earth and its inhabitants for the foreseeable future.
Personally, when I think of self-mastery in this context, I think of getting to know myself really brutally honestly well, learning what my true motives are for doing every little thing I do, learning what kind of effects various external influences and stimuli have on me, what kind of effects my own actions have on the external world. From this follows learning how to consciously override automatic responses and self-direct every decision in my life in a way that is authentic and appropriate to me.
This is just one perspective though. I’m sure there are many more as to what self-mastery being the key could mean.
What is YOUR take? What does “self-mastery” mean to you? Do you feel affinity with the term? To you, what does it have to do with solving environmental and other problems in the world? Is it something you feel could empower you to make a difference?
Yesterday I presented the first of two centering meditations to help perceive the reality of the oil spill disaster as it is and relate to that reality in a meaningful and helpful way. Today it is time for the second of the two. This one I call The Inner Picture. Where the previous one is about liberating yourself from limiting factors in your personal background to arrive at a universal perspective, The Inner Picture takes the opposite angle. This one is about deep introspection and soul-searching on the most individual, microcosmic level.
Assuming a relaxed position, consider the activities that are part of your daily life and the goods you make use of in those activities. Now envisage the inputs of different kinds of energy that make up these various goods and activities. How much of that energy was produced by you moving your body, or others moving their bodies? How much from burning various forms of fuel, how much harvested from sun, wind, and water? Do this for every way of using energy in your life that you can possibly think of. How does food get to your table, how is it kept from going bad, how do you get to work, how does water get to your faucet, with what and how was your home built? Etc. etc.
Now just from a limited, deeply personal perspective, without theorizing, is there anything about the emerging picture that you don’t like? If so, ponder how you would go about changing it, and what is blocking you from already having done so. What else do you have that you are willing to sacrifice so that this part of the picture can be the way you desire it to be? Keep shuffling the pieces of the puzzle until you have an overall image you’re quite satisfied with. Make sure that any pieces you offer up in exchange for your desires are yours to begin with, created by you.
Once you are happy with your vision, write it down or mind map it. This is now your own original action blueprint for being a sustainable energy hero. From here on, the key is acting on it diligently, and impeccably walking your talk. Alternately practicing the Big Picture and the Inner Picture helps to build your own authentic relationship to the environment and find ways of taking care of it that work. I look forward to hearing of your experiences trying out these inner technologies.
When a devastating disaster such as the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico takes place, it is natural for people to react with a wide range of thoughts and emotions, depending on their background and interests. Expressions of fear, anger, rage, sadness, attempts to answer the questions of why and how this could happen, who is responsible, what can be done about it, and who is going to do it, and how do we prevent such a catastrophe from happening again? These are all legitimate, important and meaningful issues to work through.
However, all this can and does at times turn into a cacaphony of directionless voices that accomplishes very little, if any, toward a satisfactory solution, and probably leaves you feeling down and powerless. I would like to suggest two complementary meditative approaches that you can practice to enrich and empower how you relate both emotionally and intellectually to this extremely challenging world event. Here is the first one:
The Big Picture – the macrocosmic approach. Placing the incident in its proper context in terms of the whole phenomenon of our human need for energy technology and its role in civilization, past, present, and future. Here the goal is to distance yourself from the limited perspectives that spring from your personal identity, your personal background in terms of time, place, and culture.
Take off and leave your everyday persona at the threshold, kick off, spread your wings, be an eagle or an angel or whatever winged being occurs to you at that moment, and soar into the sky. As you do so, you find yourself expanding more and more. Now you’re so big you can lovingly wrap your wings around the planet. Do so for a brief moment, then let go and keep on moving away and expanding until you’re as big as the entire solar system. Rest here as you look back at Earth from a state of relaxed alertness.
In a sudden flash, you catch a glimpse of the totality of human endeavor, past, present, and future, all concentrated into one single moment, filling you with compassion. Savor this feeling for a few more moments, then start slowly growing smaller again and gliding back towards Earth, until finally you alight at the same place from where you took off. Cross the threshold, put your persona back on, give thanks, and reaffirm your daily identity by saying “I am [your name]“.
After practicing this, you will be able to take in and consider information on the disaster from a position of inner clarity and peace in which your creativity and resourcefulness can flow more freely toward contributing to remedies for the situation. Tomorrow I will add another exercise that is the microcosmic counterpart.
In the mean while, I must emphasize how important it is to get your information on complex events like the oil spill from high-quality sources, avoiding those that have degraded into blame games and pity-parties. A longstanding outlet of some of the most insightful coverage out there on all energy-related issues is The Oil Drum. Before signing off for today I’d also like to link to three other stories that provide great food for thought. Here is one about some unwelcome repercussions the oil spill is likely to have in another corner of the energy sector, and two more upbeat and inspiring ones about people who are actually doing something to make a positive difference are here and here.
Currently we are bombarded every day with news about eating disorders, obesity epdemics, contaminated food supplies, and other indications that all is not well with how we relate to food and eating, especially in the United States. At the same time, we have had for decades an army of “experts” equally bombarding us with their prescriptions for specific diets, exercise regimes, supplement pills, one-size-fits-all food regulations, etc. Can you see the irony in this picture?
Problem: much of the available advice is rife with contradiction, controversy, and conflict of interest. How do you make sense of this overload of confusion being poured out? How do you choose from the myriad of diet and food access options to arrive at a nutritional pattern that will sustain the unique human being that you are at your ideal body weight and optimal wellness?
In order to help you successfully find your way through the nutritional quagmire, I have drawn up a very simple set of blueprints. No matter what your background, genetic makeup, or personal preferences, you can use this as a guideline for discovering what kind of eating habits are the most beneficial to YOU. Somewhere deep down, your body KNOWS exactly what’s good for it, and what’s not. Unfortunately, access to this knowing has been socialized and conditioned right out of most people. However, with a very small amount of dedicated effort every day, it is possible to reconnect to this amazing resource inside of you.
I’m going to start by outlining a basic boundary within which you can safely experiment to your heart’s content. It is a very short list of hazardous things to avoid when food shopping, much shorter than the typical avoidance list out there with most diets. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to be easy, because these few items on the list have become extremely common ingredients in most of the processed foodstuffs you can buy today. If you’re new to this, take it easy, practice one point at a time until you feel comfortable enough with it to move on to the next one.
Avoid all GM (genetically modified) crops. In practice this means anything that contains corn, soy, canola, cottonseed, sugar beets, or a substance derived from any of these, UNLESS specified as “certified organic” or “guaranteed GMO free”. Beware of “vegetable oil”, vegetable protein”, “vegetable broth” – usually telltale signs of soy, and “sugar” without any further qualifications is now likely to be from GM sugar beets.
Avoid monosodium glutamate, the popular “flavor enhancer”. Watch out, due to the bad rap this additive has been getting, it often hides behind names such as “nutritional yeast”, “Torula yeast”, and “hydrolyzed vegetable protein”.
Avoid High Fructose Corn Syrup. It’s what sweetens many things nowadays, from sodas to ketchup.
Avoid all artificial sweeteners.
By now it will be clear that this part of the exercise requires a good bit of label reading at shopping time, especially in the beginning. The good news is, you can skip that part of the label you may have been trained to read in the past. That’s right. Skip the calorie count. Skip the carbs, protein, and RDA counts. Go straight to the list of ingredients. If you see anything there that was mentioned above, or anything you don’t know how to pronounce, put it back on the shelf.
Another great food assessment technique is this: while you’re turning the item over in your hand, imagine taking a trip with it in a time capsule to go and visit your great-grandmother 100 years ago. Does she recognize the thing you have in your hand as food? If yes, you’re good, if no, put it back and try something else.
Now that the hard part is out of the way, let’s have a look at the really fun part. As you go through your day, whenever you’re hungry, eat whatever you have in the house that you feel like eating. But only if you find you really are hungry. That means that whenever you feel the urge to eat, first check yourself to see why you feel the urge to eat. If it is because of boredom, nervousness, sadness, or any other reason that is not tummy-rumbling hunger, don’t eat yet, go do something active: take a walk, start decluttering a room in your house, call or write a relative or friend and express your appreciation for that person, do a business task you’ve been putting off doing…anything that will keep you actively occupied for a little while.
Keep going until you feel real hunger in your body. Then prepare and eat whatever you fancy. Eat slowly and savor every bite. Take your time to really enjoy your meal, without anything else to distract you. When you start feeling full, stop. Sit back for a little yet to let the food settle in your stomach. From here on, it’s basically “rinse and repeat”, throughout the day, throughout the week. If you find that an urge to eat without being hungry more often than not coincides with a certain behavior, it may be sending you an important message as to whether or not that behavior is a good fit with your unique, authentic life path.
After the first few weeks of doing this, you will have opened up a vital line of communication with that part of your body that knows best what is good for it. Your body will have started telling you its secrets because you are bothering to listen to it. No matter what kind of eating habit ultimately emerges from this process, whether you become a vegetarian or vegan, or a carnivore, whether you end up eating one big meal a day or frequent small meals throughout, or the middle-of-the road 3 square meals, it will be the eating habit that is right for you. And since the emphasis is on awareness and acceptance of what is rather than forcing changes according to some contrived external ideal, it is very likely to become an enjoyable and empowering journey towards radiant health and happiness.
