Two delicious looking Kiwi Fruit are sitting on my desk at
work… they’ve been there all week while I stuff some kind of sponge cake filled
with hand whipped cream into my ungracious gob! Leftovers are always set aside
for me in the fridge at work. Everyone knows never to throw food out when I’m
around. My budget’s tight and to waste food seems criminal so I eat it!
It’s the dry season and people are beginning to roll into
town. Old friends have turned up out of the blue so on Wednesday I stole some
personal time, went and ate lunch with them at the Casino. All you can eat
stuff yer guts, there’s half price vouchers at the back of one of their dry
season pamphlets. Personally I hate casinos but have no qualms about taking
advantage of the misery subsidised meals they serve in their restaurant. I walk
past stricken gamblers joyfully anticipating a full lunch… (Usually all I tend
to eat is stale peanut butter and jam sandwiches… I don’t really like them.) What
a weird sensation to be sitting down to eat lunch with friends… I couldn’t
avoid the guilty feelings as I thought of Sam at home looking after our
youngest and recovering from a terrible episode of Shingles (Or so the medical
report has finally diagnosed and the centre for disease control confirmed when
they called later the same day). Guilt passes over me… I think about her for a
moment and then head back to the food bar for some Chicken Korma with rice!
Early last week we had a terrible episode. After a week of
considerable neck pain Sam collapsed in the shower, (Overdose on painkillers)
and had to be taken by ambulance to hospital. She was a mess, with sores all
over her right shoulder, neck and chest. Dr’s thought it was a chemical burn
from Tiger balm but swabbed her anyway and called just this week to say it was
actually shingles. Shingles, apparently come from having had Chicken pox and
usually affect elderly people. The condition can be brought on by stress and I’d
have to say that stress is definitely the culprit! STRESS!
We don’t have many real causes for stress in our lives but
the mind can be a dangerous thing… sometimes the greatest enemy of all! An
obsessive mind can fixate on a problem and before you know it you’re stressed
out!
So the problem appears to be Stress or Tension and what is
the opposite to this? Well obviously it must be relaxation. Now this got my
brain going on an idea that I can’t put down. We’ve been discussing matters of
religion, God the universe and everything and several experiences just seemed
to fall into place… (These may be obvious to everyone else but an authentic realisation should not be sneezed at no matter how many people may already know
the same thing already. Here is the basic concept I’ve been contemplating.
Tension vs Relaxation – Ego vs God consciousness – 1 vs 0
Tension & relaxation
-
There’s a basic principal in the martial arts which
utilizes the energy created between alternating Tension and Relaxation,
conservation and concentration of energy combined with good timing can produce
a powerful result.
-
Significance of the play between sound and the
absence of sound in music. Tension the finger strikes the key producing sound,
relaxation the tension or pressure is released the hand rests and is then able
to be reapplied to the next action. Sound…. No Sound…
-
All actions require a period of no action in
order that the body can rest, rejuvenate and be ready to be applied again to a
new action.
God & Ego
-
This may press some buttons if you have a
concept of God that is not compatible… I haven’t checked this with God so can’t
be 100% sure if it is correct but when I think of myself or at least who I
think I am… or basically Ego… I am reminded of the Will. We exert Will, it is
an agent of action, driven by basic instincts but subject to our intellect to
some degree. In this physical world we simply must, ‘get shit done’ and without
Ego we wouldn’t get much done at all, what would motivate us to act. By my
reckoning Ego = Tension. To seek to become closer to God it is necessary to
deflate Ego… For most of us (Well for me at least) There isn’t enough room for
Ego and God to be in charge at the same time so one must give way to the other.
When we want to allow God to take charge we say things like ‘Hand it over’,
‘Surrender’, ‘Submit’, ‘Let Go’. I have to clarify that this theory won’t work
too well if you think of God as a Super Ego in the sky who can Make Shit
Happen. The idea I guess I’m working on is that as opposed to the Ego which is
Tension, God is without Ego and therefore to all intents equal to no-thing or
no action and therefore Relaxation (Well in terms of physical transference of
energy)
0 & 1
-
OK so because we’re in the computer age and I’ve
been told that computers work on Binary Code (I don’t know how it works but
apparently that’s what it’s called). All the information we view is basically
transmitted in a combinations of Zeros (0) and Ones (1) on and off. Now this is
easily translated as Tension - Relaxation. Or Ego – God. OK I know it’s all
really obvious but it’s the kind of thought process I have to go through before
I understand anything that can be explained to a 4 year old and accepted on
face value.
So where is this theory leading me? Nowhere really. It is
obvious that if Shingles are brought on by stress then the solution to reducing
the chances of getting shingles is to avoid stress.
But to learn to walk the middle road you’ve sometimes got to
ponder… ;)
Oh and Sam is slowly recovering now... this illness really knocked her out and she's trying to de-stress as much as possible.
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