Letting the days go by….

I don’t want to find myself concentrating on the days, thir names, their number. I want to lose track of them, have them fade away like ghosts on vanished horses. To know the days is to know the distance and I don’t care about fathoms or furlongs, meters or miles, counting strides and . No journey begins with two steps. It’s always just the one followed by the other. I dont want to know how long it’s been since my last banana, my last avocado, my last juice.

On the other hand, I’m thrilled to have made it to day five. It’s here (say the sources) that the pangs diminish and energy returns. It’s here at day five that the food addictions begin to break and the relationship with food becomes less needy. I think I can already feel (if one can be said to feel a negation) the detachment.

A bowl of fragrant roses for a meal,
The jollity of friends.
Chick peas with garlic
Smell delicious, too.

I have a journal that I’m using to copy a prayer of St. Francis of Assisi’s until I have it memorized. No time at all, just ten minutes, to copy it three times each day (yesterday, the day before, and this morning) and, although I know i haven’t the order cemented yet, all the content is in my noggin, now. Here it is (corrected… I did forget a line):

Lord make me a channel of thy peace,
that where there is hatred, I may bring love,
that where there is error, I may bring forgiveness,
that where there is discord, I may bring harmony,
that where there is wrong, I may bring truth,
that where there is doubt, I may bring faith,
that where there is despair, I may bring hope,
that where there is darkness, I may bring light,
that where there is sadness, I may bring joy.
For it is by self-forgetting that one finds it
is by forgiveness that one is forgiven,
and it is by dying that one awakens to eternal life.

Neither the meditation sessions (two to three a day) or the yoga (one heavier, one lighter session) have shown any result, but (Ok… yesterday I was pretty spaced out after forty-five minutes of meditation in the afternoon, but I have no idea what the cause was. I haven’t been eating! It could as easily have been a lightheadedness, a dumfoundedness that just came on upon arising from my sitting posture) I have no expectations about them, either. I just got started. My concentration will improve as I meditate more. My body will become more limber with frequent stretching. However, according to Andrew Newberg (How God Effects your Brain), meditating for just fifteen minutes a day will show brain changes at the end of a single week, and according to Rachel Gonzalez, daily yoga will evince changes in posture and energy also within a week.

I’m still so new to both, however, that they’re hard for me. It’s hard to concentrate for an hour. The monkey mind goes wandering. It’s hard to hold a pose and not give in to burning numbness. I’m counting on improving. I think it’ll be hard to do this thing if I don’t.

After my early afternoon sitting meditation yesterday, I went for a walk. Maybe that spaciness I mentioned was the result of chanting the mantra ‘hare Krishna” in my head the whole time I strolled. Still… it could be the not eating. Either way, I was in fine, spaced-out head-set for the rest of the day.