Wednesday, January 07, 2009

On Laziness

I knew it, I knew Ram Daas would help.

Just a refresher, Ram Daas (also known as Richard Alpert) was a Harvard professor in the 60's. He met up with Timothy Leary and joined in on the LSD experiments. He told a story about how they would sit outside this house and just take acid all day long to see what would happen. So Richard Alpert got fired from Harvard and eventually started getting quite sick from the LSD experiments. He went to India, like so many did, and met his guru, the maharaji. He learned there that any effect of LSD he wanted, any drug-induced effect at all could be attained through his own mind.

He became a famous yogi, was renamed Ram Daas (servant of God) and came back to the States to teach. He taught so many, and is so very cool and not at all creepy. He was a little as a younger yogi,but now Ram Daas is like 70 and is awesome.

He had a stroke a few years ago and was paralyzed on his right hand side (the opposite of my mom) and he had to reinvent himself once again, find his spiritual path....again.

He was the one who taught me, and I have tried to teach my mother, that suffering comes from trying to keep things the same. He tells a story about how he cannot drive anymore, and his suffering comes from trying to be the driver, instead of enjoying being the passenger.

Anyway, I watched his movie, Fierce Grace (such a powerful phrase) and he just...he's very touching and the smartest man ever.

I've been so lazy over the past few weeks. John and I have been talking about what you feed yourself (not literally, but also literally) is what you start to crave. We saw this with Morgan Spurlock in Supersize Me, if you feed yourself McDonalds all the time, you start to crave it.

If you feed yourself laziness...

So I knew I was stuck in this, thinking I was sick even, so I could keep myself on the couch. I haven't been eating all that well and haven't been filling my mind with the right things.

So today I had to force myself out of the condition of laziness. I had to break the pattern. I worked out extremely hard this morning, even though I was so close to pushing stop so many times. I'm here at the library now, to get out of the house and to work, tonight we go to the store to buy delicious veggies (you know when the Hixx is CRAVING veggies that something needs to be done), tomorrow we go to the Museum of Science and Industry to do some filming.

But it all comes down to mindfulness. It always does right? Taking care of yourself, enjoying yourself, being comfortable with being uncomfortable.

Instead of racing around to get things done so I can sit on the couch, it's about work for work's sake, writing for writing's sake, exercising to exercise, washing dishes without hating the dishes for it.

It feels so good. I want to exhaust myself, my brain and my body, so when I go to sleep at night I know I have done all that I could today for myself, so I am tired in mind and body from what I have learned, so that tomorrow I will crave the same thing I gave to my life today.

And...DAMAGES STARTS TONIGHT! OMG!

One other thing about Daas, one day he went to his maharaji and the maharaji said he wanted to try acid. Ram Daas had EXTREMELY strong acid and was worried about giving it to his guru. The maharaji took every single pill Ram Daas had and Ram watched him and saw nothing, not one change from his maharaji. And then Ram knew that everything he was searching for, he could find in his own body.

Click your heels three times everyone.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Seriously? The man took ALL that acid and stuff and nothing happened? Huh.

Erica said...

Wow--thanks for this. How inspirational.

Life is what we make of it, and we can get all the fulfillment we want out of it. I needed to hear that.

xo

Hixx said...

Yeah, John says the acid/maharaji thing sounds like an urban legend, but this was a really enlightened man, famous all over the world, so who knows.

And Erica, I agree, Ram Daas is something else. Watching Fierce Grace really reminds me of the important things.

Wendy said...

Wow...is all I can say.