I agree with Suncloud. If you stay raw, that's a great goal in and of itself. Sometimes I think sticking to a regimen like 80-10-10, Quantum eating, juice feasting or any of them is just really really hard. I'm not able to do any of those yet. Normally, I don't follow anyones diet, just my own because I stay raw that way.

Sounds like perhaps what you've been doing lately has created opportunity for a little cleansing activity? One raw "guru" I know told me, "if you feel tired, rest. If you don't want to do anything, rest. It's your body telling you it's healing and needs rest." Don't know if that's true or not, but just thought I would pass it on. Hope you and Jonathan feel better real soon.

Love,

Mona

HOPE = Hang On! Peace Exists

Every time I encourage, I receive courage.

Thanks guys. I'm feeling quite a bit more energized today. I guess I will try to just stay in the moment and not plan ahead. Right now I'm craving fruits like bananas, with some greens. And my ever-present staple: pineapple/banana green smoothies.

Hey, good news: went to a meeting of our community garden group yesterday afternoon to plan our garden activities for the coming season, and found out that MIT doesn't have any immediate plans whatsoever to claim our land for the development they're eventually going to build on across the street from the garden. So we are safe for at least a year, maybe longer. So we can concentrate on growing food instead of hiring lawyers. Yesterday we assigned work tasks, and I'll have watering duties on Wednesday evenings (with a buddy) in May and June. My favorite work task is weeding; there's nothing like getting your hands in the dirt and pulling out purslane (which I put in a bag and take home to eat, because no one else wants it, but it's a great green). I've since found out why weeding feels so wonderful: putting your hands in the soil is very grounding and drains off negative energy. Sounds very 'new agey,' but I believe it's true, because I always feel fabulous after an hour or two of weeding in the garden.

I'm off to eat a bunch of bananas and some romaine. (Gotta have the romaine or my stomach will get bloated from the bananas.)

Sharrhan:


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Remember the 'gift waves' (my term) of energy we were talking about a few weeks ago-- those healing energies people see or feel at times, when meditating or in need of healing? I was reading a book last night called Miracles of the Mind-- Exploring Non-Local Consciousness and Spiritual Healing, by Russell Targ (physicist, esp researcher) and Jane Katra (spiritual healer) where Jane was talking in depth about her spiritual healing experiences. I got a real shock when I got to this paragraph:

"When i am in the connected state, I see concentric spheres of vibrating light behind my closed eyelids. The colors and movements of the circles change as the patient's pain and other symptoms change."

She also speaks of 'engine-like vibrations' moving through her body.

Really fascinating.

was that an online book sharrhan or liabrary/store?

...Jodi, the banana eating buddhist

I got the book through paperbackswap.com-- great book in brand new condition.

Yesterday I started feeling all my energy coming back, after a week-and-a-half or so of both of us feeling kind of blah. Great feeling! Had 2 pineapple/banana smoothies, grapefruit juice, and a huge salad and steamed vegies for dinner. A great day-- got busy with my music again and had fun rewriting a couple of jazz pieces, transposing them into another key for my alto flute in preparation for practice today. Ran about 1-3/4 miles at the gym on a circular track and did about 5 minutes on a step machine. Got a lot of household chores done -- I can always tell when I'm in peak health and my immune system is humming, because I feel like cleaning house and washing clothes.

For breakfast today I'm going to juice a cantaloupe. If you haven't tried one, I recommend it-- it's delicious and foamy like a milkshake. Just make sure it's really ripe and sweet.

Sharrhan:


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FIRST DAY OF SPRING!! :-) THIRTY-FOUR DEGREES!! :-/

Ahhhh, but it feels more and more like spring every day, and today the sun is shining, so it's a good day, even if the weather is a bit strange. (Nothing new there!) Jonathan and I are celebrating our anniversary yesterday and today (we met on the first day of spring, but that year it was March 19th, so we get a couple of anniversary days most years).

For breakfast I'm going to juice a cantaloupe, and there's a lot of fruit in my refrigerator right now, calling out to me; also a bunch of tomatoes, summer squash and zucchini that wants to become a nice 'fake pasta and tomatoes' dish with a touch of toasted sesame oil and garlic for flavor, probably for my dinner tonight.

Sharrhan:


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Happy Anniversary and springtime to you.

We've had beautiful weather here, but sometimes foggy in morning. Here in San Diego we complain at the least provocation.

I also had a canteloupe for breakfast, so good. And I love the colour. I'd like to paint something that colour, a table, or a closet, something.

range">>Here in San Diego we complain at the least provocation. <

New Englanders are real good at that too!

> I'd like to paint something that colour, a table, or a closet, something.<

Ooooh, yum! Do it!! What a gorgeous color. If I had more rooms in my house I'd have a 'cantaloupe' room too.

Sharrhan:


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Whew! Had kind of a rough week, but today was great and I enjoyed the bright sunshine on my hour-long walk this afternoon. Last night I wrote to a friend that I needed to 'rebuild' my own internal hard drive and operating system (obviously speaking of my being, not my computer). And this morning I had a wonderful but crazy dream in which I accidentally hit the 'SUCCESS' button on my computer. I was all freaked out about it, for some reason. (Ha ha, got it-- fear of success!) And then there was this beautiful message in blue letters on a darker blue background that filled the screen: "We forgive and redeem."

Those of us who have been struggling with our eating patterns will probably soon get some relief as the weather moderates, too-- can't wait! This afternoon I got 3 cantaloupes and 2 papayas, and a lot of other fruits and vegetables. My appetite is waning a bit lately; there seems to be not much that I'm really interested in eating. So I just try to eat healthy and not get caught up in any special regimens till I feel especially motivated.

Happy Spring, everybody!

Sharrhan:


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I'm not even going to go into what I'm doing dietarily right now-- due to my penchant for changing my mind every few days. ;-p However, things are currently going very well, and I think I've made some serious headway in dealing with my 'overeating at night' issues.

I realized something yesterday about the anxiety that often causes overeating. Mine seems to be related to concerns about the economy and, especially, the future of our food supply. The latter, of course, is ironic: eating too much now to assuage my fears that there won't be enough good food in the future!? It's not intentionl, of course. I'm actually trying to learn to eat less and less, but in the past year I've really felt less in control of my eating habits. The subconscious mind appears to be a primitive child who must be gently trained and disciplined, so now I'm really concentrating on the work at hand.

So what I realized about anxiety/fear is that fear is an emotion that is uniquely felt on the material, human plane of duality. In the spiritual realm it doesn't exist. Well fine, my human mind says, but here we are, clearly in the dual realm, and there are a lot of things that go 'boom,' or at least might go boom, causing real worry!

On the other hand, when I still my mind long enough to really meditate and disengage from superficial reality for a while every day, mysteriously, a lot of my background anxiety mysteriously disappears or at least dies way down to an indistinct dull roar. The trick is to sit still long enough to settle down into meditation; the anxiety itself interferes with going inward and getting to the stillness within, so it's always a bit of a struggle, but well worth it.

Sharrhan:


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This week I've thankfully had a much easier time with my food habits-- probably because I'm getting a lot more sunshine now, and the weather is warmer. I'm back to eating at mid-day and not eating after 5pm. One thing that helps a lot in the evening is that lately I've been wrapped up in a music project, so my mind is too occupied to think much about food.


Today so far I've had a papaya/kiwi/banana/lime juice smoothie for lunch. I'll probably buy some dried mango slices and have that later this afternoon. Dinner might be cole slaw-- I've got a big bag of shredded cabbage I need to use up, quick!

Sharrhan:


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Feeling great this weekend-- it must be spring! ;-p My energy is coming back. I had felt a noticeable lack of energy over the past 2-3 weeks, probably because I was allowing myself to get entirely too stressed. Wow, stress sure is an energy drain. I was getting pretty morose there for awhile.

Yesterday I did something I haven't done in years; I was able to run on the track at the gym for an hour. I usually can't make it past 30 minutes. The difference probably had a lot to do with listening to a tape of music I love while running.

Sharrhan:


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it is spring ! my energy bio rythm or whatever you want to call it is at huge high right now .. i feel like a dog wagging its tail till it almost falls off ..

i love spring

...Jodi, the banana eating buddhist

>i feel like a dog wagging its tail till it almost falls off ..<

Haha, cute image of Jodi the tail wagging, banana eating Buddhist

I so look forward to detoxing and taking better care of myself, but I think I'm going to have to wait a bit. Today was rough! We just lost a valuable source of income, and Jonathan is despondent and talking about giving up our gym memberships and/or giving up Comcast. Yikes! And tonight when I excitedly plugged my mic, reverb and tape player (with my accompaniment music on a tape) into my amplifier to practice in preparation for going out tomorrow and finally playing all this wonderful new music that I've been working on for so long (and also making some money), I discovered that the amp is now defective and distorts wildly, and I can't use any appreciable volume whatsoever. It's almost brand new, but now useless to me, and I'm realizing I need a much more expensive, powerful amp for the music set-up I have.

I'm sort of freaking out right now, not sure how we're going to survive at the moment, or where on earth money for the new amp will come from. I need to manifest a miraacle. And I was so thrilled and looking forward to getting out and busking again. Poor Jonathan is really having a hard time right now; his oldest son (who also sometimes fixes our computer) has cut off communication with him and threatened to block his phone calls for no reason whatsoever... just pure meanness. His dad loves him to pieces and is heartbroken.

When things get tough I usually tend to get super-stressed out and I shut down emotionally for awhile. I just can't do that right now. I have to someehow rise above all of this and not get 'lost in the woods' again.

So sorry to hear this, Kwan! I wish there was something I could do for you.

yikes sharrhan ! thats terrible , it seems like when it rains it pours. Keep your head up and eyes peeled wide open so you dont miss any opportunities coming youre way , i know how you feel you want to put your head down and shut it out but something will come of it all, you are too great of a person for it not to!

If you have to lose the gym membership for awhile , at least the weather is getting better and you have more opportunity to work out , outdoors. You can always re-join in the winter, when your financial situation improves. Im so sorry you are going through this right now

...Jodi, the banana eating buddhist

Thanks, Sundancer. Things look a lot better today. I probably can get a new amp next month sometime when I'm working for the city again part-time and Jonathan's stimulus check comes in the mail. (Jonathan wanted to buy a new tent for our camping trips, but he's graciously offered to help me buy an amp instead.) The hardest part is waiting--- waaaaaah!, I want to go out and play!! It'll be super-exciting when it finally happens though, and in the meantime I can practice like crazy. I wrote an 'SOS' to all my musician friends last night; maybe someone will come through with a lead to a 'Crate' or 'Maxi-Mouse' amp I can buy from someone who has a spare sitting around.

Anyway, back to food!..... Yesterday I got a bunch of cantaloupes for 88 cents each. I love to juice them for breakfast. I'll follow them with a couple of navel oranges, and then I've got a quart of agave lemonade to work on.

Sharrhan:


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Jodi--

Yeah, sometimes a whole bunch of stuff happens all at once. That's good though, because then you get all the negative crap out of the way and you can relax, in relative confidence that nothing else bad can happen for awhile.

Jonathan's son, who's pretty wealthy, has helped us out a LOT financially every month, paying our DSL bill and helping out with other expenses, but now I just have to find a way to make up for what he's no longer contributing. It'll be all right.

Sharrhan:


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yep sometimes its just better to deal with all at once rather then many small things linger all the time

you should phone your dsl provider and tell them due to economical times that you may not be able to continue with their service unless they negotiate a better price for you or some freebies or somethign .. look around for a better deal even if you are not going to switch .. it gives you some leverage .. no business right now wants to lose their customers and you may get the same service at a reduced price

i just renegotiated all our cellphones, cable , internet here and im paying about 30% less for the 3 servcies than i was last month ! thats huge !(like an extra 50$ in my pocket. (600$ a year !)

hopefully jonathon and his kid smooth things over , but its certainly a lesson to not rely on (not that you were relying on him) someone whose fickleness can disturb your lifestyle. i try to hammer this into my fellas head about saving for a rainy day even it its a little bit cuz you never know who or what is gonna kick your feet out from under you. (or try to !)

...Jodi, the banana eating buddhist




Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/02/2009 04:32PM by Jgunn.

> i try to hammer this into my fellas head about saving for a rainy day even it its a little bit cuz you never know who or what is gonna kick your feet out from under you. (or try to !) <

Yep. Good advice for normal middle class folks. For us, it's pretty well nigh imposible to save anything.

I manifested a bit of a miracle and worked out my musical equipment problem! I'm SO happy. Tonight I had a 'eureka' moment (after meditating and calming down about the whole situation, wouldn't you know) when I suddenly just instinctively knew exactly what it was that was wrong with the set-up. (It's not the amp. Hallelujah.) One of the inputs is raised and the other is recessed, and I remembered that my mic wire has to go in the recessed one or it doesn't sound right-- something to do with the impedence device on it.

Lately Jonathan has been tending to take over and set all my equipment up for me (big daddy complex), and this time I shooed him away and made him just sit quietly while I used 'woman's intuition' and did it myself. (Sometimes he forgets I used to busk by myself full-time all through the 1980s and did just fine without anyone to help me or be my 'bodyguard'.) ;-p Turns out the only problem-- and it's minor-- is the tape player and its cord are both quite old, so all I have to buy is a brand new tape player and a new cord-- very doable. The flute sounds amazing now, coming through the other input, and the music on the tape is coming through a lot better too, and I'm sure will sound even better when I get a new tape player tomorrow.

So tomorrow I get to go out and play, making money doing what I absolutely love. YIPPEEEE!!!!!!!!!

Thanks, everyone, for your loving thoughts and support.

Sharrhan:


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i bet you end up making more in the end than you were being subsidized by jonathans kid... you are that special

glad you got it all figured out! sometimes we cant see the forest for the overgrowth lol

i had a total freakout over my car thise week as well of course i thought it was the worse thing possible (transmission) awell i rely on my car for work without it i lose all my accounts and im screwed. so i figure OMG its gonna be like 2000$ which about 1500$ more than i happen to have at the mometn lol... turned out to be some cracked wireing harness and 200$ later i was back on the road but i had to have my little freak out none theless lol

...Jodi, the banana eating buddhist

>i bet you end up making more in the end than you were being subsidized by jonathans kid... you are that special <

Thanks, Jodi.
I suspect now that I'm playing jazz instead of meditation music, which wasn't very lucrative, I'll make some good money, and that'll be really rewarding.

I have to explain something about Jonathan's and my lifestyle that's not apparent on the surface. I can't play much in the winter (very cold, even in subway), and for Jonathan's sake I chose long ago not to be a full-time office worker because of his extraordinary handicap, being blind as well as deaf. It's gotten harder and harder for him to be safe walking around by himself, because as his eyesight left him, his hearing has deteriorated too; he may be completely completely deaf later in life, but we have to wait and see. His audio cues don't work very well when he's out alone, and so I worry about him. He's extremely dependent on me (my friends would say co-dependent), and I've become his designated seeing eye person, so to speak, and I consider myself -- hate to use this analogy, but it's the only one that's worked with a supervisor who considered me a shiftless, lazy bum if I didn't want to stay 2 or 3 extra hours and work my ass off for her past my agreed upon 4 hours a day transcription job shift -- very much like a mother with a child she needs to take care of. (Employees treat mothers like saints, but people in a situation like mine are not understood at all.) Jonathan would truly be a nervous wreck if I went back to the regular work force and was away from him for any significant length of time daily. I have to take him to the gym almost every afternoon, and I need a lot of extra time for doing errands and shopping, etc., because he can't do any of that stuff for me.

I've given up on mainstream jobs because I've found there's no niche for people in my situation, and I get pegged as 'the lady of leisure' and a prima donna when I'm anything but. So I play in the subway and street in the spring, summer and fall, and I work as a street performance monitor from May to the end of October. It's been tough finding part-time work in the winter, so we muddle through, and I didn't feel the least bit 'guilty' letting Jon Jr. help us out. Hopefully my band will start getting paying gigs at some point, and they'll carry us through the winter.

Hooray for your miracle, Kwan!!! You are an angel, and the proof is in how your situation worked itself out. I think you are 1000% doing the right thing, and you obviously love your man very much! Sounds like you are both very lucky to have each other. I'm sure you'd much rather play music than work in a crappy office anyway, right?

sharrhan i think if i ever saw or heard someone put you down for what you do to help keep your lives together and running smoothly , i think id punch em in the nose

i keep forgetting to mention that visa/mastercard thing that we talked about before. my techy guy said the program is only up here in canada propreitership so it wouldnt work with your banking system anyways.

what he did suggest was for you , if you are concerned about security, paypal and your current bank accoutn was to go to a completely nother bank , set up an account just for paypal, then setup paypal to go to that account then set up whatever online services you want to subscribe too and sell. he said that way there is very little risk and your main accounts are completely safe because they are elsewhere, and you periodically withdraw those funds and go to your other bank and deposit or cash and spend etc.. and if you are really worried you can access the accounts through the liabrary computers instead of your home ones.

perhaps now would be a good time to reflect wether or not jonathans fears of onlien commerce are a bit restrictive to you. millions use paypal everyday with no issues .. ive been using it for 6 years and never have had a security issue .. not to say it wont happen but im pretty small pototatoes and anyone lookng for a big score certainly wont be looking my way. I really think you are losing out on a potentially good source of income

just my 2 cents

...Jodi, the banana eating buddhist




Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 04/03/2009 06:07PM by Jgunn.

sharrhan please disregard what i said about jonathan , reading back what i wrote it looks like im being judgemental .. whatever his reasons are for being afraid of ecommerce, they ARE his reasons and their valid. sorry

i was just trying to give you some ideas to get around that and get your music on the net !

...Jodi, the banana eating buddhist

>sharrhan please disregard what i said about jonathan , reading back what i wrote it looks like im being judgemental .. whatever his reasons are for being afraid of ecommerce, they ARE his reasons and their valid. sorry <

Oh no, I didn't take it that way Jodi. Not to worry. :-) I actually agree with you, and I don't think it was inappropriate for you to notice the elephant in my living room, lol. (I confess sometimes he drives me nuts!... and I'm sure I drive him nuts too, so he and I are well suited to each other.) The good news is that awhile back he and I discussed the possibility of a second account just for online purchases, and he agreed it would be fine. We just haven't done it yet. Finances are not my forte.

Sharrhan:


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yep it takes a couple of nuts to make a glorious wonderfull tree

if you want some night to get on a live chat on icq or something along those lines i can tutor walk you through the whole paypal, ecommerce, ebay whatever things. it might take more than one night tho depending on both our attention spans lol

i just remote helped an online friend of mine set his tattoo shop on paypal so he can take ecommerce deposits and appointments over the net , and also sell his artwork and flash on ebay.... it was pretty quick set up and he was kicking himself for not doing it sooner lol

anyways id be glad to help you

...Jodi, the banana eating buddhist