Fri, April 24th, 2009

How To Know When You've Out-Grown The Matrix

This morning I found myself in a situation where I was looking at the drip-tray from one of those ‘healthy’ grilling machines. It was half full with the all too familiar white, back and brown animal fat ‘stuff’.

I wondered if an alien was to come down and want to learn about our habits here on earth, we showed her people actually eat from the machine that produces that residue, what she would think.

I mean, it just seems bizarre to me that someone can think the food produced from that as edible.

But you know what?

I used to eat that stuff as well!

Yep, I used to eat the worst fat-dripping, no-idea-what-the-hell-is-in-that type of burgers. And kebabs too! Jason Vale calls it mystery food, because it’s a complete mystery what exactly is in kebab ‘meat’.

This is not an attack on meat-eaters or any other group, stay with me here….

Sometimes I find myself looking at smokers and just wondering why they do it. It just seems ridiculous to me that someone would pay such a high-price, financially and in terms of their health, for something that they don’t actually need to do (non-smokers get stressed too but don’t need to have a cigarette to calm them down). Even taking into account addiction you’d think smelling like an ash tray whilst killing yourself and paying for the privilege would be enough to stop someone.

Actually there’s a lot more factors involved in ending destructive behaviour, I know. A great book about changing behaviours is Change Or Die by Alan Deutschman.

But you know what else? I also used to smoke, too.

So the fascinating thing for me is that I used to do these things and not question them because of my ego-defence of being in denial, yet now these things just seem bizarre to me. No matter how bad things got I just could not bring myself to eat from that grill (despite actually still quite liking the smell of bacon, for some reason) or lift that cigarette to my mouth.

I guess that’s true change; it’s out-growing the matrix.

It’s knowing that when someone asks you if you ever feel like you’re missing out by not drinking alcohol, not eating meat/bread/diary or eating a mostly raw diet…whatever it is for you, it seems like a strange question, because why wouldn’t everyone want to feel so good?

‘Missing out’ doesn’t even come into the equation sometimes.