Non-theist

Non-theist vs Atheist

The difference is simple. I, being a non-theist do not give a damn about what you think, while the Atheist thinks there is no god and that you should also think that way. Non-theist is in keeping with the Prime Directive, for you fans. We do not interfere with other cultures. You can believe what ever shit you like.

We talk about pealing the onion, one layer at a time, until we get down to the authentic me. When I pealed it, I found a void, nothing, empty, meaningless void. So I adopted a purpose, to live as nature intended, to work for the good of all in ways that I found enjoyable. Personalty is controlled by our beliefs, and as such can be built up, one layer at a time. Tranquility - acceptance of all that is beyond my power, should be the first layer. Maslow's hierarchy of human needs gives some indication of the layering. Physical survival, and those issues comes first. Next Maslow put social, but I think authenticity is more important than social at this stage of life, then social and self realization fulfillment, but this realization is the fulfillment. It is understanding that our beliefs, which we have control over are the thing we test against for emotional control, satisfaction, automatic responses, and similar. Expectations, values, any cultural values we adopted, and the like reside in our beliefs, and hence within our power to accept, reject, or withhold judgement on. What freedom. We are steeped in our culture. When we put it down, and look, we can become separate and free of the society around us. They will not even miss us for the most part. We still can go to work, carry on life as before, if we wish, or we can do something else.

Are we slaves to money, as the government would like, or are we free? I say screw the government's desires, they do not care about me.
Do we control our wants to the essentials, and few non essential items, books, communications, and the like of utilitarian items?
Do we consider what is up to us and what is not?
Do we live up to our duties?
Do we shut down other's "expectations" of us?
Do we need to do a bit of retraining on those around us, to bring their expectations of us inline with our authentic selves?

What are your thoughts on this heady concept?      

What do you believe?

Know yourself question

Are you an abstainer or a moderator with respect to food?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-P4HjfqkxKU&feature=youtu.be


What do you believe is a massive question, yet can produce tremendous relief.  Now lets consider that stressed irascible ill depressed feeling that many of us suffer from time to time. What is the cause?

Well lets look at what the mystics and other old wise have said.

Buddha... the cause is expectations, desires, aversions.
Diogenes... believing the false values of civilization or society.
Epictetus / Rufus... some things are up to us, somethings are not. If we place value on the things  up to us, we will suffer. If we do not value the things that are up to us, we will suffer.

Is there a common theme here?

Circuits of Overeating

after reading http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2910406/ , it is obvious that a review of the other factors should be conducted for the sciences.


There are a number of circuits involved in the overeating process. These include but are not limited to:

1. insulin  and glucagon
2. ghrenlin
3. leptin
4. dopamine
5. sertonin
6. and for the ladies, two additional reproduction circuits

All these circuits drive overeating, and there are no healthy circuits that inhibit eating. The best that we can do is absence of drive. There may be some short term discomfort from overeating, and lots of long term issues with the result, obesity.

One bite, one taste, of food can reset the insulin drive to full on. No snacking, only three meals per day may be the easiest. 

Now for a bad part; with overeating we need to go through the action >>> maintenance stage of change (DiClemente, Change for Good) (summary: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transtheoretical_model) three time each day. There is no such thing as long term recovery; we need to eat to survive. That is likely why eating is such a driven circuit.

We never get out of the cycle.

Reward can be a short walk, taking us from in front of the food something else.

Is there any interest in exploring the science of recovery? 

Theorical vs practical advice for life

http://www.livingthestoiclife.org/2014/09/on-crime-and-punishment.html got to me.

When dealing with drunks, addiction, and the like what is preventable?

We need to survive our youth to be of value to society, and yet society does not provide much help to survive. Survival is and must be our primary consideration. The ivory tower platitudes "all is necessary for evil to triumph is for a few good men to do nothing" is one more of those "necessary but not sufficient" concepts like "positive thinking".  This is a facility of logic or something, or public logic, aka illogical.

But what would I know? I am more passion based than logical, when food is concerned. Other times, who knows.

It is like Bush's ignorant statement "if you are not for us, you are against us". It misses all those who are neutral, and those who just do not care. It is like the government and the 2 second rule, yet do not provide sufficient roads to make this practical. Or the idiot who was killed on the 401 who was driving aggressively, over-driving his  stopping distance, and ran into a abandoned car. The car owner had gone off to chase ducks. A lot of imprudent decisions on both sides. It is like the no-win situation of driving in fog.  Slow down, and get hit in the rear, hold speed and hit someone who has slowed, The driving manual says slow down, put on flashers, but the public ignores the advice.

These are not unlike the Positive Philosophy people who say claim all wins and yours, but never take responsibility for a failure. We all need to take responsibility for our actions, and decisions, but we also should not judge people too hard if their decisions do not match with our philosophy. My safety, when dealing with drunks outranks your or the public's safety.  The public (culture, society, customs, beliefs, government) created the possibility. They will need to take their chances.   

Philosophy loses every time it is not realistic or practical. OH, well it matters not. The prime directive applies. (prevents us from interfering with the internal development of alien civilizations), but not alien, less psychologically evolved, or greater evolved. I do not know what direction our population is headed in.

Enough. 

The Cause Important or not?

Are the causes of overeating important or not?  OA states in Our Invitation to You that they are not. I struggle with that. They are not important in that the solution to any weight loss must be to follow a diet for the remainder of our lives. They are important in that if we remove the causes of overeating, the problem dries up and blows away. Well, at least reduces. We may still need to overcome an entrenched habit and/or addiction. The cause is therefore critical from the members view, not from the program survival point of view. Recovery, the member view is most critical. I have learned that I have control over my beliefs, and am responsible for my beliefs. It is the necessity for rigorous honesty that drives this question.

 There is value in the program; it puts me in contact with many people who have eating issues, some of which have solutions to some of the problems, few have a good long lasting solution to all the problems. But back to the causes. In the Big Book, Doctor's opinion, the "causes of alcoholism"  are listed: maladjustment to life, seeking oblivion, mental defective, overcome craving. With food issues the list must be longer. It must start with lack of food knowledge or amount, at least for some of us, for that will be required for recovery.

Willful overeating is the first cause that must be removed. It may have been the cause of us starting down this path of destructive eating, but it likely is not a big issue, although it could be if we get into a free wonderful food situation or and entrance price that covers all the food we can eat and I, being a cheap bastard, want my money's worth. I need to just stay clear of those environments.

Next, many of us were trained intentionally or unintentionally to overeat. Clean your plate or your do not get desert,  the sugar rich addictive part of the meals. It was always there, always present. Any disturbance and I got a cookie shoved in my mouth. Silencer plug. It becomes habit, unconscious, and then addiction.

Next we need to understand that, having become addicted, we physically need and crave those foods. Insulin raises just thinking about food, and we develop appetite, and desire. This is made worse by lack of impulse control and availability of food 24/7. Environment and temptation is everywhere.

Then there is all the maladaptive behaviors, where I never adapted to life's situations. I did not know how. Never learned that skill, those useful beliefs. Instead we had god concepts pushed on us, pure rubbish, I now know. Nature is an system, not a thinking system; it cannot have purpose, it is all random generation,  and selection by survival. It is empty and meaningless unless the human defines and believes in a purpose. Stress, anxiety, emotional upset all have belief solutions; all we need do is learn these and practice these. We are responsible for our beliefs, and these are within our control and we can change them.

The last is food addiction, when our mind and behavior becomes chemically dependent on high insulin, low leptin, high blood glucose, perhaps a few other chemicals, and we crave to return to what we are comfortable with.

Enough. My purpose is to keep the message out there that we can change. Epictetus is the place to start, or perhaps Jules Evans, I do not know. Start where you are, recovery is possible.      

For this, I am responsible.

Epictetus notes some things are up to us and some are not. OK, so about the only thing that is up to us is our beliefs, our judgements, our opinions, and our thoughts. All else is not up to us, that is events, situations, acts of others, and all acts of nature. This sort of defines the wisdom spoken of in the serenity prayer. Now there is a potential power concept. 

In the words of Jules Evans, when "we try to exert absolute sovereign control" over something beyond our control, we are in for a world of hurt.  If we do not take responsibility for the things in our control, our beliefs and thoughts, and instead blame our thoughts on the outside world; those who we first developed or acquired these thoughts from; we will be in a different world of hurt to walk through. (http://avantlive.wordpress.com/2013/09/07/philosophy-for-life-and-other-dangerous-situations/) ,   http://philosophyforlife.org/

So there we have it, some things are up to us and some are not. We are responsible only for those things that are up to us, the rest can go toot. Then the reciprocal opens us up to a world of hurt.

So we are responsible for our beliefs, for these I am responsible. Well now, a house cleaning is in order. God is a pronoun for a belief system will still work because that would place my belief system in control, but it really is anyway. The Stoics said our consciousness was a sliver of divinity. OK. so those two separate concepts lead to the same no god place.  It is all empty and meaningless until we apply a purpose. But since I am responsible for my belief system, I can change it to anything. What power. A heady experience, this Epictetus concept, and freeing.

Sugar and wheat and that long list of chemicals are not food. It is improper to eat between meals. Nobody knowingly does wrong, according to Socrates. So where does that all lead to? It points to no eating between meals. Everything can be build from first principals.

So, consider what bothering you; is it up to you or others by Epictetus rules or not? Is it our belief that is the issue? Then change our belief to Epictetus and away we go, with tranquility at our back and the joy of life in our heart. Remembering that there is a space between the event, and our interpretation, and that there is a second space between our interpretation and any decision to do anything or react; never forgetting the zero alternative, blanking, we have time to respond or not appropriately.

I have never seen before such a clear concept of we are responsible for our beliefs and can change them at will. We do not need to even see events that are not up to us, we certainly do not need to judge them good or bad, nor even have a response.

Enough.

What will you do for recovery?

When I started around the program, I was desperate. Everything was new and I was interesting in studding it all. Of course, that was 2x (or should that be 20+X) years ago, when I was less old. I explored my belief system and and separated out what I believed and knew from all the crap and lies I had been told to believe. You will never believe how brainwashed I had been, through my youth, and early working life. That was all interesting and fun, but now that I have started to rebuild my belief system, I have all this spare time. Much things that I thought important are just time burners.

To me, within program, god is a pronoun for a belief system. What we believe is not of importance, but it may be better if it is true. We people range from the empty, meaningless futility of purposeless existence, to the human has assumed a purpose, and goes out from there, with all his finite daily energy, to fulfill that purpose.

Today I was out training future "potential terrorist" to shoot arrow or darts with a recurve bow. Some ass-hole within government, with their infinite wisdom, has decided we may be "training future terrorists", and now we need to "justify our actions in training".  We are just a volunteer club with a 24/7/365 day  20 yard indoor range. How re-dick-u-less petty is the public service anyway? 

anyways...

 What has this all got to do with keeping busy where food is not. It is just Epicurius statement on death: "were death is, life is not; where life is, death is not; what is death to a living soul (person); it is not (nothing). This is the toggle switch decision. A or B, one has nothing to do with the other; they are mutually exclusive.

Haroldism:  I will let you in on a secret; I was not always old.

Ok. Enough. OK. 

   

How far?

How far are you willing to go to lose the desire to overeat?

Home again, finally.

It has been a long summer, too many miles. Is it finally back to a routine?

First from around the web more expert bullshit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wE3fyQV_chI 

Caused: well maybe not directly,  but they often have a major hand in creating the situation where the trained in habitual response was overeating. Much of overeating is trained in, and becomes habitual. We then, as adults need to overcome that early training. Not an easy tasks when overeating/overfeeding becomes cultural. We need to step back from our culture to overcome this problem.

I am not saying they are to blame. We may not have learned what they intended to teach, but overeating is what we learned. It is our first time through life, as it was our parents, but they had a hand on the wheel also. Nobody understood the ditch was there. It was a accidental result of unknowing collaboration, but to hold them blameless is a bit untrue, however, coming from an expert, who is dependent on a parent to select them and pay the bill of any child with eating disorder, I can see why they would say that. Overeating may not be the disorder they are referring to, but it is the most common.

Now on with recovery; the act of living well while not falling back into the habitual / cultural / part of this disease, while living with family in our native to us culture. Not an easy task.