Thoughts: Does it feel like you have split personalities? One part of you wants to be healthy and good, the other part wants to indulge and binge; thoughts like "I will start tomorrow, I will never do so and so again, or never eat this again" only to come tomorrow and the cycle is repeated yet another day. I did this for years and in an attempt to break my vicious bingeing habit I created The Earth Diet.
Gurdjieff a servent seeker after esoteric knowledge shares his teachings and how man is a plural being. When we speak of ourselves ordinarily, we speak of 'I'. We say 'I did this', 'I think this', 'I want to do this' - but this is a mistake.
There is no such thing as 'I', or rather there are hundreds, thousands of little 'I's" in every one of us. We are divided in ourselves but we cannot recognize the plurality of our being except by observation and study. At one moment it is one 'I' that acts, at the next moment it is another 'I'. It is because the 'I's' in ourselves are contradictory that we do not function harmoniously.
We live ordinarily with only a very minute part of our functions and our strength, because we do not recognize that we are machines, as we do not know the nature and working of our mechanism. We are machines.
We are governed entirely by external circumstances. All our actions follow the line of least resistance to the pressure of outside circumstances.
Try for yourselves: can you govern your emotions? No. You may try to surpress them or cast out one emotion by another emotion. But you cannot control it. It controls you. Or you may decide to do something - your intellectual 'I' may make such a decision. But when the time comes to do it, you may find yourself doing just the opposite.
If circumstances are favorable to your decision you may do it, but if they are unfavorable you will do whatever they direct. You do not control your actions. You are a machine and external circumstances govern your actions irrespective of your desires.
I do not say nobody can control his actions. I say you can't because you are divided. There are two parts to you, a strong and a weak part. If your strength grows, your weakness will also grow, and will become negative strength unless you learn to stop it.
If we learn to control our actions, that will be different. When a certain level of being is reached we can really control every part of ourself - but, as we are now, we cannot even do what we decide to do.
Question: What is a higher state of being?
Answer: There are several states of consciousness.
1) Sleep, in which our machine still functions but at a very low pressure.
2) Waking state, as we are at this moment. These two are all the average man knows.
3. What is called self-consciousness. It is the moment when a man is aware both of himself and of his machine. We have it in flashes, but only in flashes. There are moments when you become aware not only of what you are doing but also of your self doing it. You see both 'I' and the 'here' of 'I am here'.
www.gurdjieff.org.uk
Challenges: A man will renounce any pleasures you like but he will not give up his suffering. G. I. Gurdjieff
Triumphs: There have been times on this Earth Diet challenge where I wanted to give up - I even held a packet of oreos in my hand - I felt tired and defeated, like it was a struggle. Then I remembered that I created a habit of eating processed foods, junk foods, bingeing and overeating for many years and that me expecting these urges to just go away in a week or two is very callow of me. If it took 5 years of me creating a habit, why shouldn't it take the same to create another?! Gurdjieff said “Without struggle, no progress and no result. Every breaking of habit produces a change in the machine.”
What I Ate Today:
Food fest 1: A orange and grapefruit juice.
Food fest 2: Chocolate Peanut Butter Balls!
Food fest 3: A avocado.
Food fest 4: A bowl of peanuts in a shell :)
Food fest 5: Lentil Veggie and Potato Pie! Created with olive oil, onion, celery, carrot, garlic, tomatoes, bay leaf, thyme, lentils, potatoes, coconut oil and egg.
Recipe: Both of these recipes and more are available on The Earth Diet website! www.TheEarthDiet.org
Exercise: A run and a bike ride :)
89 days to go!!!
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