QUOTE(peter falk @ Apr 15 2005, 09:19 PM)
i think you can transform anything that comes into your body with enough cultivation. whatever you do, enjoy it. if you're supposed to stop doing it, that will come naturally with the work.
i had this discussion with micahael winn one time about smoking. i told him with all the qigong i do it wouldnt harm me. even my acupuncturist who cures cancer and other diseases modern medicine has trouble with, said he's observed no ill-effects from it, and that it indeed does not cause cancer. the causes are other elements.
now, michael did also say "but why work against yourself?" and that point is well taken. since dao is the effortless way, i let things work themselves out. i smoke hash a cupla times a year. i drink alcohol a cupla times amonth. i eat shit a few times a week. but i have noticed significant changes in al these habits since i took up "the way." i used to smoke everyday. i used to drink alot several times a week. i ued to eat way mnore shit thatn i do now.
so be comfortable and accept yourself as you are. the development proceedes from there. the minute you start trying to change a habit, something inside of you will resist it and make it difficult. let shen guide you.
I'm finding something similar emerging in my practice as well. I've always failed when it came to using willpower to stop my self-destructive habits. Something that stuck in my head that Dan Millman wrote in a book once, "Don't try to manage the addiction, clear the obstruction." For years and years, this quote never made any sense to me.
Once I got to a place where I could do emotional work practices which I avoided like the plague for years, like healing sounds, and eventually, fusion one, I found myself in a rather strange place. Instead of doing everything I could to resist inhaling my junk food and getting all bent about it later, I found myself desiring to eat less, and a desire to eat slower, and a desire to wait until I was hungry.
When I feel the desire to eat ravenously or have a drink, I actually feel okay to do it with gusto, and without guilt, and in a way, celebrate the desire. If I do that, the next few meals are easy to take lightly or flat out skip, until the belly asks for something else. If I catch myself doing it unconsciously, that's something to work on in fusion practice.
Gets me pondering the idea that maybe what we call 'bad habits' might not be bad at all. They may be one way our shen communicate with us. To bring deep issues up to the surface, to act out so they can be brought to completion in the physical world. If we can do it energetically without acting out and possibly damaging the body in the process (or not, if the acupuncturist is right), so much the better, but if not, the habit can still serve to draw our attention to it and drive us to make changes without our being totally conscious of the process.