A way to control your karma

In my last post I said how when I get sick I can look back at the choices I made and see why I am sick again. I also wanted to make clear that is not how I try to live. Sometimes bad things will happen and I could drive myself crazy trying to figure out what choices I made that made something so bad happen, or worse let myself feel guilty because of my past choices. Isn't that how karma works? If you want to exist without much control over your life then that is a good way to look at karma, but it is not how it has to be looked at.

When I let myself become aware of my present situation that is the moment the power of karma now takes over. If I become aware that I am not meditating or calming my mind down enough for me to stay healthy, I now can start to use karma or conscious choice making and control what happens next. I could just become aware of it but stick to the way things have been and the karma will obviously be me getting sick. I could also let myself become more aware of each choice I make picking only the actions that feel like they are good actions and I will get strong again. It was the same situation with two different outcomes because I slowed down enough to let myself become aware of my present situation. So instead of using karma to waste our time looking back at why we are in this situation, karma can become a powerful tool in life that lets us control where we want to go.

Choices for gaining your health

When I am teaching someone a yoga class and they can’t go that far into a pose because of tight muscles I say to them, “When was the last time you focused on stretching those muscles.” Usually I hear things like a long time, or never, and that is okay with me. I do think what is more of a big deal is that they thought they should be going all the way into the pose in the first place. I let my students try to understand that they are exactly where they should be in the pose; the pose is perfect for them at that moment. Now a few deep breaths while focusing on the tight muscles will create a new perfect as they slide further into the pose.
I thought I could use that theory when I have to get control of my health again. I’ll look back at how much I’ve actually put into making the healthy choices that help me keep my health and can usually see what choices I made that made my health slip. Just like my breath I can start to focus on making the right choices and I will witness myself slide right back into good health.
Here’s why this works for me. I break up a day and say on average there is 16 hours of the day that I am awake. If I meditate twice a day for 30 minutes, do yoga twice a day for about an hour each, and eat healthy meals during the day that would be about 4 hours of focusing on the right choices for dealing with whatever my major problem is. That might not sound bad because that is a lot of yoga and meditation; mixed in with the right foods I should be healthy again in no time, but jump back to thinking about what I said about 16 waking hours.
If my health goes bad again and I think that only 4 out of 16 hours are going to bring my health back, I am only fooling myself. I need to be careful not to focus on my bad health and focus on the choices I make to get my health back. I also need to do this at least 15 of the 16 hours that I am awake. Almost every choice I make needs to be made with the thought “is this the best choice for me right now.”
I guess I also have another choice when I am having problems, I can always let myself think this is the way it is and I’ll just have to learn to live with it. That choice is a downward spiral into more problems. Trust me, I know..

Feeling good makes me feel selfish

The more I help other people, the more I help myself. That thought makes me feel selfish or guilty. Selfish and guilt because I help others doesn’t really make sense to me, so I thought I would ponder on it for a little bit. Selfish and guilt to me are part of my ego. The ego is the “I” or “mine” part of my life, and the part of my mind that attaches itself to things. What part of helping others makes me feel guilty or selfish? I know I have spend most of my life on the receiving end of the helping others in life, giving is something new to me, but not something that I think would make me feel guilt or selfish. It is such a good feeling when I know that I am helping someone who needs help and then somewhere at that point of feeling good I turn it around and make it a negative feeling. Maybe I don’t feel like I deserve to feel good when I help someone else. It should be like doing work or doing a deed without expecting anything in return, but I get flooded with warmth and the feeling like I did something good. If I look at it that way I guess I can see where guilt and feeling selfish can come in, but that is not what I want. I am doing what feels natural to me when I help someone else, and my natural actions makes me feel good. If it happens to help others that is great, but I can also see how letting myself feel good about doing what seems natural as something good. Problem Solved.

One year ago

It was 5 years ago this month that I started to convince myself that eating and then throwing up was normal. At least as far as what was real to me, vomiting daily was a part of life. I checked myself out of the hospital realizing that if I was going to stay alive it was going to be up to me. I figured the best way would be was to just accept that throwing up my meals was going to be part of life, quit fighting it I thought. That is when I was lucky enough that the energy and information of the internet threw me some good info where I learned about a place called The Chopra Center for wellbeing. It was 5 years ago that I decided to give something that I thought was a little weird a chance. It was after just 3 days at The Chopra Center that I started a 10 day streak of not throwing up anymore. I showed myself that being sick did not have to be normal. After getting sick again I had to try what I thought was helping me and I went back the next month in September of 2003 and the same thing happened where the food I ate actually stayed in me. I guess the best lesson I can learn from that is to realize that what is real and normal for me today, doesn’t have to be that way tomorrow. How I view things, my choices, and my will to survive can in the blink of an eye change my life for the better.