TV and Eating

In your never-ending, nearly obsessive pursuit for the ideal body shape, you never thought much about how your TV watching was very much part of your eating ritual.

Perhaps over the years, you unconsciously related eating and watching TV as one and the same thing. Observe that TV watching and eating is very much alike. One is the consumption of images, sounds, and concepts, and the other is the ingesting of foodstuffs and liquid. None of them is always beneficial or detrimental, but both are processes of making something external into part of us.

The problem is that your awareness tends to be rather one-pointed. That is to say, if you are watching TV and eating at the same time, you can only be totally engage with and aware of one of them at any time. In your case, TV usually got the upper hand. As a result, you would be paying more attention to the TV, and be quite oblivious to the food that you are eating. You would be unaware of its texture, smell, and taste, etc.

The unfortunate thing is that if you are watching TV for two or three hours, you would also be continuously eating for that same duration. It is just a habit that you never questioned. Why you would watch so much TV would be another article for another day.

The funny thing is that you attempted all kinds of diets and exercises, while leaving the TV-eating connection intact. You would force yourself to eat less or follow a very rigid schedule, or do a new kind of exercise, but you would still eat and watch TV at the same time. Of course, as you can guess, the attempts were quite futile.

Without disconnecting the association between TV watching and eating, your attempt for health and fitness would be in vain.

Simple Guidelines on Eating

• Freedom to eat anything, anytime, anywhere, aiming for maximum aliveness, clarity, and light.
• Eat in Peace without TV and other distractions. TV watching and eating should be separated by 10 minutes interval.
• Constant Vision of your body as light and love in perfect and ideal shape, especially when you begin to worry about your body shape.

Freedom and Binges

You have always been puzzled by the uncontrollable binges that are plaguing you to no end. Please understand that your binges are caused by a lack of freedom you placed on yourself. You have never allowed yourself the freedom to eat whatever, whenever, and wherever so that it would be appropriate for your body and the particular condition in which you found yourself.

Such lack of freedom, of course, comes from your sincere but misguided desire to be physically perfect by controlling your diet in all ways conceivable. From this lack of freedom, your mind is constantly fearful of being starved of energy or some particular types of food, be it sweet or oily or otherwise. Hence, your mind is constantly looking for opportunities to stuff itself with all kinds of food, which might be prohibited by you in the next moment. This translates very literally into what you would call the Binges. All binges are caused by a fearful mind weary of scarcity and uncertainty.

As binges caused discomfort and guilt, you immediately force yourself into starvation mode by food type, portion, or by time. So you swing between starvation and binges, and you become the diet yo-yo, which is most detrimental to your well-being.

What is the only way to stop this pointless and desperate cycle? You must allow yourself the freedom to eat whatever, whenever, and wherever, unconditionally. Only in such total freedom and assurance, would your mind disengage from the ever-fearful grasping, and allow your physical body to have a say in what, when, and where to eat. From this lack of freedom, you have totally lost touch with your natural biological need in terms of nutrition, and you have totally lost the ability to listen to your body’s guidance on the diet most suitable to you under different circumstances.

It is now time to free yourself. You have always wanted freedom, but you never gave yourself any freedom to eat. Let this be the first freedom you give yourself, and there will be many more hereafter.

Freedom and Control

Whenever you have forgotten about your freedom to eat anything, anytime, anywhere, you invariably slip into insecurity and fear without your slightest knowing. As a result, you begin the hide and seek with food again, not knowing when to stop, and constantly wanting more, stomach stretched beyond capacity, but mind starved as forever.

Why is this so? Why is the mind unable to hear the utterance of the body? Why does it constantly want more?

It is because the mind is fearful that it might not be able to have anything the next moment. You must always remind yourself, “I am free to eat anything, anytime, anywhere.” Let this thought live deeply in your mind, and live there forever, so that the mind will cease controlling pointlessly, and allow your body the freedom to respond appropriately.

Purpose of Eating

You have never really thought about the purpose of your eating, and you have frequently used food and eating as means to stimulate, numb, distract, and binge. To you, eating occasionally serves the purpose of physical nourishment, but mostly for the purpose of unenlightenment. Your regularly aimless eating had made you restless most of the time.

Without clear and well-defined purpose, your activity will bring you equally chaotic result at the end. Your purpose for eating should be positive, upward and forward looking.

Remember that you do not eat in different ways to be thin or full, but you eat in the right way so that you will feel maximum aliveness, clarity, and light. Observe your body and be aware. If your body and mind do not feel maximum aliveness, clarity, and light from your eating activity, then take a timeout, so that you can feel your center again and return to your sense of aliveness, clarity, and light.

Then when the time is right, try again.

Eating: Books that Help

One Bowl: A Guide to Eating for Body and Spirit
By: Don Gerrard

Think Yourself Thin
By: Dr. Frank J. Bruno

Think Yourself Thin
By: Debbie Johnson

Light is who you are

God

I Am God

To reach the principle of Godhead, which is the goal supreme, you have to start your journey with the first stage of the path, wherein you consider yourself to be the servant or the messenger of God. This is the stage of dualism. Gradually you enter the stage of qualified non-dualism, the second major step on the spiritual path. Here you experience the divinity within yourself, in your own heart. At this stage you identify yourself very closely with the Lord. You will have the feeling, "God is within me. He is the one I truly am. I am he. I am he." Then, as you continue still further on the spiritual path, all duality will disappear completely and you will be left with only the I, the pure self, without any modifications or limitations.

If you develop within yourself the sacred and lofty idea, "I am God", you will not be bothered by anything; nothing can come in your way. Of course, it is of no use to merely utter these words. You must first overcome your body consciousness and maintain a firm control over your senses. At the same time, you must develop an intense love for God and live it by continuously identifying yourself with the divine. This will lead you to the supreme wisdom. Or, you can express your love for God by following the path of the servant. This will quickly remove the egoism from your heart and fill you with bliss.

Wherever you look you see your One Self

When you declare, "I am he, I am God," there is still some duality, because there are still two entities, I and God. So, this is still not complete non-dualism. At the very beginning, when you say, "O Lord, I am your servant," the Lord is separate and the servant is separate, and their status is clearly different. On the other hand, when you say, "I am God," although there is still a trace of duality, the distinction is not one of separate subject and object but more like seeing the reflection or image of yourself in a mirror.

Whenever people are different, when there are many separate entities, then there will also be many different images or reflections. But in the stage of qualified non-dualism, you see only your own image everywhere, because you are all there is. You are the one self being reflected as many images, just like the one sun is seen as separate images in a number of different water-filled pots. So, in the stage of qualified non-dualism, you are alone; there is none other. The only thing that still comes between you and the divinity is the mirror. You constantly perceive your own reflection, and so you see yourself as very near and very dear to the Lord - face to face with him.

But when you perceive only the one God who is all-pervasive, then where is the need for any image or mirror at all? Can there be a place where he is not? When the entire world is the mansion of the omnipresent Lord, then where should you look to find the door to enter his mansion? If there were a separate street and a separate house then there would have to be a door which opens onto the street; but in truth, there is no street at all. When the all-pervasive Lord is everywhere, how can there be any special place where you must seek him to find him? No, there is no special place where he resides.

Once you realize that he is everywhere at all times, then the true perception of the divinity is not that of an object whose reflection is seen in various places but the realization that there is only you, the one immortal self, abiding everywhere, present in everything in all its fullness. This all-pervasive perception of the divinity as the one without a second, is called non-dualism.

Excerpt: Sai Baba Gita

Link: http://laluni.helloyou.ws/askbaba/saibabagita/index.html