Tuesday, December 06, 2005

Practice

For several years now I have had a little voice whispering in my brain, telling me to eat foods that are more alive. I am slowly learning to change eating habits as we learn more about food and nutrition.
Lynn and I spent the evening putting hundreds of pounds of various sproutable organic seeds into zip-lock baggies and 5 gallon buckets. Our goal is to learn to actually practice eating sprouted everything. This is not to say that we will go nuts and eat nothing but sprouts. This is just another gentle nudge to eat healthier and more nutritious foods.


I have to marvel at how difficult it is to actually change living habits. We can talk about it. We can all agree to it. Sometimes we even go so far as to start it. But do we stick to it?
Not likely.

The basic laws of physics apply to our spirit too.
Newton's first law:
Every object in a state of uniform motion tends to remain in that state of motion unless an external force is applied to it.

Just change the word "object" to "habit" and it's talking about you and me at our essence. That means we need to apply big force (such as the pain of necessity) to get any quick change in our habits. The other way to to change our direction is to apply a small force, constantly, for a very long time.
I have patience and persistance. I can do that.

3 comments:

George Breed said...

Beautiful understandings expressed clearly, Paul. Or is that clear understandings expressed beautifully!

I think you have tapped into some of the laws of the universe with direct transformational application.

Thank you!

Paul said...

I've learned to implement small changes that have a cumulative effect over a period of time. Implement one small change today, make it a habit over the next few weeks and then move on to another small change. It works for me.

I didn't have the patience for this when younger. I wanted instantaneous, dramatic change. An attitudinal change came about when I began thinking about arithmentic and geometric progressions, geology and evolution.

Paul said...

I wonder, You think very much like I do. I wonder if that is why we have both written software.

George, We will have to contemplate some of the other analogies between physics and spirit. i have the nagging feeling that we will eventually find no difference between the two.

Thom, Perhaps our mind is one.
(Then again, that is a scary thought.)