💾 Archived View for dk.smol.pub › 1649029446 captured on 2023-09-08 at 15:49:04. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
⬅️ Previous capture (2022-04-28)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
All men contain several men inside them, and most of us bounce from one self to another without ever knowing who we are. - Paul Auster
Every once in a while it's worth stepping away from one's usual habits and patterns in order to reappraise their value. A good starting point for this practice of reflection that can also be generalized to other areas of one's life is fasting once or twice a week. Abstaining from food is a good way to develop the required mental discipline that can then be applied to other habits. The kind of mental discipline and awareness required for fasting can then be used in other contexts in order to reappraise the benefit of some mental habit or other and the actions associated with them.
You will probably not be able to do so the first few times you try this but if you keep at it you will eventually manage to abstain from food for 24 hours. If you keep at it for a few months you will elevate your awareness and start noticing other things that you and others take for granted without realizing. This awareness is a generally useful skill to develop because the contemporary world is full of shiny objects and distractions that prevent us from developing our individual selves and realizing our true potentials. I think this is a great loss for human culture because the problems we are facing now will require everyone to contribute what they can and the more people there are that have become more aware of who they truly are then the better off we all will be in the long run.
A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving. - Lao Tzu