New Year's Resolutions
I usually don't make New Year's Resolutions. Because of internal issues, I usually don't see things through, so why make a resolution I know I won't keep. There's also the issue of me worrying that I'm too ineffectual to pull anything off, and also my worrying that a strict adherence to a resolution or resolutions could jeopardize my learning to learn to live and feel in the moment.
With all that working against me, you'd think I wouldn't even try. Yet, I do have the desire to change some things in my life. Even though the plasticity of my life may keep me from adopting some bad life changes and from becoming too goal oriented at the expense of living in the moment, the internal issues I have that lead to my tendency to adopt no strategies or goals at all are also a detriment to my learning to live in the moment, because they keep me from trying out strategies I think might work, I'm so afraid of sliding back into the rigid, goal-oriented, unaware person I was.
But I'm going to try. This year is going to be my year of the month. It's something I did a couple of years back when I made more progress towards awareness than I did before or since. It's basically this - I try things out for a month. Different consciousness strategies. For the entire month, my whole goal is trying this one strategy. If it doesn't work, I abandon it after a month (but no sooner) and try something else.
That's what this year will be - the year of the month.
I might add to this in the future, but so far, here are the things I know I want to try.
January - Understanding my urge to eat
Previously I was on the Atkin's diet. Then I become a vegetarian. My New Year's Resolution for January and maybe longer is to try to become an Atkin's vegetarian.
This won't be easy.
The two main staples of the Atkin's diet are cheese and meat. Well, when you take meat out of the mix, what do you have? You can't go the whole year just eating cheese.
Well, luckily, I stumbled on these vegetarian burgers and pizza burgers that are not only yummy, but also only 3 and 4 carbs each, respectively. So I'll give it a whirl and see how it goes.
What I see as my biggest impediment to pulling it off, and also of the most danger to derailing my living in the moment, is the internal urge I get when I haven't eaten for awhile. It's weird because it's not hunger. I'm not physically hungry. It's like a mental urge to eat. It's probably deeply rooted in my subconscious.
I think my only chance to both stick to the diet and to not fade into the busy mind mode I expect this urge to provoke is to try to meditate and be mindful when I feel the urge welling inside me. If I can do that - if I meditate on the urge when it arises, before long (maybe even less than a month) I may be able to learn to accept, experience, and understand the urge, and in so doing it may lose its grip on me.
We'll see.
February - Adopting the experiencing mind mode in conversation
Whenever I currently talk to people, my logic is leading the way. Whenever someone says something, I reflexively apply my logic to what they've said, determining whether or not I myself believe what they've said to be true, and then either agreeing or disagreeing with them and logically explaining why. I want to try for a month to instead BELIEVE AND EXPERIENCE whatever the person says as the truth straight away.
This won't be easy.
There is NOTHING I associate more with the word "I" than my logic. Just the thought of abandoning this logic for an experiencing mind mode makes me shiver. That means that someone could say, "The Cubs suck" or "You're stupid" and I want to believe and experience that possibility as if it were true.
The reason I want to do this is that I've totally lost the ability to believe and experience things. My logical mind is ALWAYS going, to such an extent that I see everything as no more than conceptual. As fuzzy probability. Well, by adopting other people's beliefs and experiencing them, I can build up that ability. Then, down the rode, when I'm confident in my ability to do this, I'll be able to instead discover what it is that I truly believe and experience it.
I think this will be my February consciousness task, assuming January's has gone okay. And if February's consciousness task has gone okay, March's may be that discovering-what-I-believe-and-experiencing-it process I spoke of.
Note
What's nice about these consciousness tasks is that they revolve around certain activities that only comprise a minority of my day. The rest of the time is still "plastic", allowing me to work on some other consciousness things I'm working on, and at my own pace.
With all that working against me, you'd think I wouldn't even try. Yet, I do have the desire to change some things in my life. Even though the plasticity of my life may keep me from adopting some bad life changes and from becoming too goal oriented at the expense of living in the moment, the internal issues I have that lead to my tendency to adopt no strategies or goals at all are also a detriment to my learning to live in the moment, because they keep me from trying out strategies I think might work, I'm so afraid of sliding back into the rigid, goal-oriented, unaware person I was.
But I'm going to try. This year is going to be my year of the month. It's something I did a couple of years back when I made more progress towards awareness than I did before or since. It's basically this - I try things out for a month. Different consciousness strategies. For the entire month, my whole goal is trying this one strategy. If it doesn't work, I abandon it after a month (but no sooner) and try something else.
That's what this year will be - the year of the month.
I might add to this in the future, but so far, here are the things I know I want to try.
January - Understanding my urge to eat
Previously I was on the Atkin's diet. Then I become a vegetarian. My New Year's Resolution for January and maybe longer is to try to become an Atkin's vegetarian.
This won't be easy.
The two main staples of the Atkin's diet are cheese and meat. Well, when you take meat out of the mix, what do you have? You can't go the whole year just eating cheese.
Well, luckily, I stumbled on these vegetarian burgers and pizza burgers that are not only yummy, but also only 3 and 4 carbs each, respectively. So I'll give it a whirl and see how it goes.
What I see as my biggest impediment to pulling it off, and also of the most danger to derailing my living in the moment, is the internal urge I get when I haven't eaten for awhile. It's weird because it's not hunger. I'm not physically hungry. It's like a mental urge to eat. It's probably deeply rooted in my subconscious.
I think my only chance to both stick to the diet and to not fade into the busy mind mode I expect this urge to provoke is to try to meditate and be mindful when I feel the urge welling inside me. If I can do that - if I meditate on the urge when it arises, before long (maybe even less than a month) I may be able to learn to accept, experience, and understand the urge, and in so doing it may lose its grip on me.
We'll see.
February - Adopting the experiencing mind mode in conversation
Whenever I currently talk to people, my logic is leading the way. Whenever someone says something, I reflexively apply my logic to what they've said, determining whether or not I myself believe what they've said to be true, and then either agreeing or disagreeing with them and logically explaining why. I want to try for a month to instead BELIEVE AND EXPERIENCE whatever the person says as the truth straight away.
This won't be easy.
There is NOTHING I associate more with the word "I" than my logic. Just the thought of abandoning this logic for an experiencing mind mode makes me shiver. That means that someone could say, "The Cubs suck" or "You're stupid" and I want to believe and experience that possibility as if it were true.
The reason I want to do this is that I've totally lost the ability to believe and experience things. My logical mind is ALWAYS going, to such an extent that I see everything as no more than conceptual. As fuzzy probability. Well, by adopting other people's beliefs and experiencing them, I can build up that ability. Then, down the rode, when I'm confident in my ability to do this, I'll be able to instead discover what it is that I truly believe and experience it.
I think this will be my February consciousness task, assuming January's has gone okay. And if February's consciousness task has gone okay, March's may be that discovering-what-I-believe-and-experiencing-it process I spoke of.
Note
What's nice about these consciousness tasks is that they revolve around certain activities that only comprise a minority of my day. The rest of the time is still "plastic", allowing me to work on some other consciousness things I'm working on, and at my own pace.