Guess I spoke too soon about a gap between journal entries lol. Thought I would finish up this journal and start a new one in KC but I was mistaken. Writing this on the way back to Charlotte now.
KC trip was an interesting one. I came in with a couple of days of momentum after moving into my new place, getting back into my normal routine practices. But I didn't really continue any of them back in KC. I'm not keeping up with content as well as I'd like to, now having skipped my last 2 weekly newsletters. I did catch up with a few friends in person so that's always fun to relieve our high school experiences, catch up, and create new experiences. My diet was I guess healthy enough but the volume of food that I ate was just wayyy too much. I don't normally eat breakfast when I live alone but pretty much every day I had a fat ass breakfast. I just feel like I need to fast for a day or tow to get back to my physical, detoxed, lean healthy self. I also didn't really exercise at all so I've def lost some gains that I had built up over the last few weeks.
From a mental health standpoint, it's definitely gotten worse. I got to a point of self-loathing the other day, just hating why I can't find the motivation to do certain things for work or for personal. Part of me is thinking I asked for this a few weeks back. Another part obviously isn't happy that I'm going through this right now. Yet another part is grateful that I can experience what it's like, at least a bit, to be not as mentally fit as I had been for the past several months for a more prolonged time period than a day here or a day there.
Meanwhile. I'm set to catch up with a few friends mostly every day this week and weekend. I don't want to shy away from speaking to them even if I'm not in a great mental fitness state. I want to be open and vulnerable so that it allows others to do the same. As Ketan bhai had mentioned in a comment on my IG post earlier this year.
But I don't think it's any coincidence that during this valley of my different bodies, that Tuesday middle of the night I had a pain in my lower abdominal / intestinal area which rendered me essentially vegetative for a solid 1 - 1.5 hours. It was a test from the Universe to see if I could practice what I preached of trying to visualize and experience a fully healthy self even, especially, in the midst of physical and mental pain. I tried meditating sitting up, half laying down, and other positions before finally deciding that I would listen to the Mrutyunjaya mantra 108 times 2 times through while essentially sleeping. After I had awoken, the pain was all gone, almost like a bad dream I had come back to reality from. Definitely supports the fact that stress, lack of mental, emotional, spiritual peak condition, even for a few days or couple of weeks can have significant repercussions on our physical body. It's almost like I wanted to go through this. Damn dude, I'm frickin' psycho. I'm twisted.
Over the next few days, just going to idea dump everything that I didn't get to from the past couple weeks.
Listened to an episode of the Rich Roll podcast with Sanjay Rawal that Sai Santosh had sent a few weeks ago. Listened to the 2 hour convo over the course of 4-5 days on my commutes. Absolutely one of the bets podcast episodes I've ever heard. Had to pause every couple min it felt like because Sanjay was dropping knowledge and wisdom bombs. He talks about how running is a part of culture, identity, source of spirituality for groups across the world. how it's not just training physically for a mind-boggling amount of miles for a specific race. It's a self-transcending experience connecting the mind, body, and spirit. I want to watch the documentary on Amazon Video - 3100: Running to Become as it shows all these incredible stories. This is definitely the type of content that I'd want to do my Content Synthesis / Synthesize podcast series on. There's just too many good things to not share in multiple ways with folks. One of the cool things that Sanjay mentioned is that documenting those events is not a one of two assignment. You have to be committed to documenting the entire process b/c "magic happens in moments." It's not something that you can create on demand.
When I translate this to my life, there's 2 things. 1) I'm trying to document essentially everything so that I and other people, if interested, can see these magical moments. 2) For me, a majority of those magical moments happen in silence. That's the time I'm able to reflect on my thoughts, learnings, actions, interactions the most of the deepest. And this journal captures those magical moments. As I increase my perception and awareness, I'd ideally be attuned to these moments even while it's not silent or if I'm by myself. That's the goal.
The other related topic here is how we learn. In the Planning Period podcast, one of the questions the host asks every guest is "Who is the best teacher you've ever had?" Many people say an actual school teacher. Others say their parents. For me, my greatest teacher is my life. My experiences. As my awareness increases, I'll continue to be perceptive and receptive to all energies, experiences. So if that happens, I should continue to find the lessons each day, why and how things happened the way they did, how I can continue to become the person I want to be, etc. I'll take it even a step further. If our own life is not the best teacher we have, then we're not experiencing life to the fullest!
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