Author Archives: itlandm

Not losing weight here!

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“I’ll definitely work out for what I ate later…” This may not be quite as easy as one would believe, even if you really do work out. I speak from experience here.

Today I will write a small article about health and physiology. After all, I assume my reader to have a body and be keenly aware of it. Even though our lives in the body are rather short, we try to make it last a little longer and serve us a little better.

And there’s the small point that for each day you live, life expectancy rises by approximately 5 hours. (That’s in the first world, obviously things are improving faster in the third world.) So, death is approaching, but not by 24 hours a day. The longer you live, the longer your life expectancy. Nifty, huh?

Now, second only to smoking, fat is one of those things people know is Bad For You. There has been so much writing and broadcasting about this, there is hardly anyone in the English-speaking world who does not have a wary eye on their weight, or the weight of others. While some feel it is more important to enjoy life, most people have at least some interest in the issue. So here we go!

***

In official statistics, is is assumed that a grown man will burn about 2400 calories a day, a woman about 2000. The reason why we men burn more calories is that we are larger and have more muscles. The few remaining people who have hard physical work are not counted in these statistics, I believe, and neither are professional athletes. These are people who lie outside the normal range.  There is of course some individual variation.

Now that I walk an hour after work,  I burn 500 calories extra each day (my pulse watch shows 600, but that includes the basic 100 calories I would burn in an hour just by being myself). The smart reader would assume that these calories would be taken from my fat reserves, such as they are. I am not quite overweight, but my normal weight is right on the upper border of the recommended range.  (“Normal” weight in the literature, not that it is normal to be normal these days, it is normal to be moderately overweight.)

I went on the bathroom scales again. There is no sign of losing any weight after over two weeks of this.

Now, two weeks is not a lot. One pound of fat is approximately 3500 calories, which is roughly what I burn extra in a week. Diets or other techniques for rapid weight loss don’t actually reduce your fat very fast, but instead cause you to lose water, which can be lost and gained much faster. Some foods bind more water in the body than others, so it is possible to “lose weight fast” that way. Sweating a lot without drinking more can also cause you to “lose weight”, but is not good for your health at all!

Even if I burn 500 extra calories a day, I won’t lose weight if I eat 500 more calories too. That could easily happen: A large box of yogurt (half a liter is a common size here) contains about that many calories. So it could easily happen if I am just a little more hungry than usual. With light exercise this is very common, unless you also go on a diet and count calories.

Then there is the small detail that “weight” is not the same as “fat”. If I use my muscles more than usual, they may become larger – this happens especially easily to us men – and muscle mass is actually heavier than fat. So a man who is not overweight could easily gain weight by exercising! Obviously this requires that one eats that much protein, which muscles are made from. But there is plenty of protein in the western diet, both from plants and animals.

In my case, there is yet another reason why I might not lose weight: I may be actually burning 3000 calories a day already. This is not so relevant for most of my readers, who get a fairly large percentage of their calories from fat. I did too, until I got a chronic illness that strikes if I eat more than a few grams of fat in each meal. So I cannot eat typical fatty foods like cakes, cookies, sauces, chocolate, butter, margarine, mayonnaise and similar bread spreads, or most meat dinners.

In the first months after I dropped eating fatty foods, I lost weight, and quite a bit of it.  Some of it never came back. But gradually my digestion adjusted so I could eat larger portions of starch and sugary foods, and digest them efficiently. It is entirely possible that I eat 3000 calories a day, I have not sat down and counted them.

You would think that if I actually ate 3000 calories a day, I would have gained weight steadily over the last years.  But it is not that simple. When you eat both fat and carbs, the body will prefer to burn the carbs (it is faster and easier) but store the fat.  If you eat very little fat, the body will not be able to store much.  Carbs cannot be converted to fat easily. It is possible, but unlike some animals, humans really suck at converting sugar to fat. Only a small portion makes it over, almost all of it is lost along the way, and simply becomes waste heat.

(Fructose, which is a common sweetener in the USA, is more readily converted to fat. If I lived in America, I would probably be fatter. But I live in Norway, where fructose is rare. It is mostly found in honey, and I don’t eat much of that.)

So you can see, there are numerous reasons why I may not lose weight even though I burn 500 calories extra on fast walking each day. That is not a tragedy for me, since I am not dangerously fat. And in any case, there are health benefits to being active beyond losing weight. In fact, it is uncertain whether overweight is dangerous at all. Obesity probably is, but moderate overweight may be more a symptom of inactivity rather than a danger in itself.  Danish statistics show that overweight people who bike regularly (a common combination in Denmark, thanks to the flat terrain and delicious pastries) don’t suffer the metabolic syndrome that plagues overweight car drivers.

In other good news, weight loss from exercise is far more likely if you are already unnaturally fat. Obese people will generally not feel hungrier after moderate exercise than without; in fact, most of them will feel less hungry after light or moderate exercise like walking, biking or swimming. This is because this level of activity stimulates the brain centers that regulate the appetite. Moving about is the normal behavior in humans “in the wild”, so the body works best when we do this, including the brain.  So if you fall in that category, you should definitely start walking or something like that, but very moderately at first. Don’t suddenly start running without consulting your doctor!

I, however, may have to start running if I want to lose weight. Or I could eat less, I suppose. I have not really decided whether I should do that, though. I just want to maintain the body so I don’t lose it from sheer negligence.

 

Work and the new me

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It has been said that love is the source of all energy and vitality in life. Not to mention work and school.

I fear I may have written more entries of that type, but I have found at least two: “Work sucks” from the year 2000 and “Head against the wall” from 2003. I am pretty sure there was at least one more over the first ten years of my journal. In these I complained that work was God’s punishment and that I would just as well live in chronic pain on disability pension rather than work until I was 65.

What the hell was wrong with me?

As usual when I seem to be using profanity, I actually mean it in its original, religious meaning. In religious language, we could say that my attitude was one that comes from Hell and leads to Hell.

When reading the biblical account in Genesis, it may certainly looked like God is angry and wants to put the hurt on Adam and Eve. But can that really be true? In some families here on earth, the main difference between a toddler and his father seems to be that the father is physically stronger. But is God, the heavenly Father, the Creator of all and the original parent of the human spirit, really someone who looses his temper and decides to punish his small creations and their offspring for the foreseeable future?

It may have seemed reasonable to Israel at the time they received the Torah. They lived in a harsh world filled with senseless violence. A master would treat his slave harshly, and a father his child. So it may have made sense to read this story as if God flew into a rage and cursed his disobedient creation. But is that really so? Another perspective is that work was not part of the problem, but part of the solution.

In Heaven, there is no need to do any work you don’t want to. If you for some reason were to want anything, it would at once be there. And if you wanted to communicate with someone, you could do so instantly and fully, with no risk of misunderstanding. Your love would be clear for all to see. But in the 3-dimensional world on Earth, things are different. There are many wants that cannot be fulfilled, and we cannot just radiate our love telepathically. The combined solution to these two problems is work.

Through work, we can satisfy our own needs and at the same time those of others. In that regard, work can be compared to making love.  (Obviously we should not actually confuse the two, or strange things may happen in the workplace!) You may say that in marriage, you express your love by making love, but in society you express your love by work. (Of course, in either case this should not be the ONLY way you express your love! Or that’s what the voice in my heart says, I have not tried.)

So the problem, such as it is, is that we are not in Paradise, at least for the time being. Work is part of the solution.

***

I had an idea of this when I began to work around the age of 20. But then I saw injustice, how some people got away with crime and others were persecuted for no reason, and how difficult it was to know the truth. And as Jesus Christ had warned before he left this Earth: “Because injustice gains the upper hand, love will become cold among the majority.” This happened to me, but so slowly that I did not notice. I became disenchanted and forgot to love. Work, which should have been an exchange of love from Heaven to the world through me, and of gratitude back toward God or the Light, became instead a dark stretch, eight hours lost from the days of my life.

As can be seen from the darkest of the two articles I wrote back then, I knew that something was terribly wrong and my subconscious tried to warn me. But I just could not get what it was saying. I was looking in the wrong direction.  This was to last for several years.

To my shame, I did not realize my error until I read Master Ryuho Okawa’s book The Laws of Happiness.  By the standards of today, I have generally been a happy man for many years. But there was this big dark spot in my life. Reading his introduction to improving work performance, he almost casually mentioned that you will rarely get good at your work unless you can say: “This is what I was born to, this is the way I can give back to society for all the love I have received.” Suddenly, like when the sun rises on a clear morning, the darkness of ignorance fled from my mind and I saw how terribly I had been mistaken.

Looking back over the years, I saw how my work had steadily changed, with little or no input from me, from the things I found difficult to the things I was  interested in. By now, I had a job where I could work with things that interested me and spend my time helping other people all day long, never troubling them or causing conflict. It was amazing. My whole sector of the economy, and society itself, had been changed as if specifically to give me the best possible opportunity to enjoy my job and do my best. Life had changed for thousands, even hundreds of thousands of people, as if they were all being shifted around for my benefit. It was as if God had spoken to his angels and told them to do whatever it took to make me happy with my work, even if they needed to transform society itself.

I was shocked. Seeing the truth, I was  horrified at my own behavior. I realized that I had made a great mistake and blasphemed against the Light. I regretted deeply and decided there and then to change my ways completely.

Actually, that was not so easy. I had made bad habits and due to my lack of effort I was way behind my coworkers. Furthermore, no one thought they could rely on me. I had become one of those middle-aged men which people consider to be half retired, coming to work only to get their pay, who cannot be relied on to get anything done. So it was a bit of an uphill struggle, and it still is.  But I keep at it. I also have certain physical limitations, but for the most part I can work around that, doing other things instead.

Starting in May, I have begun working 100%, after many years of working part time. I have received permission to work from home on those days when I am too sick to commute but not too sick to think. I also brought up with my boss a new technology which I am competent with, and which it just so happens that our clients are about to start using. I politely asked that I be allowed to use this technology at work so as to be better able to help our clients. At first, my request was turned down; but a few days ago our boss sent a mail to the whole team saying that we could and ought to acquire this new technology.

So I love my work, and I love my boss. ^_^ (Very platonically, of course!) I have no idea how long I will be allowed to live and work, but I am living each day as if it is not my last, planning for a life of working far into the future. If the Light wills otherwise, there is probably a reason for that. Despite my many mistakes and weaknesses, I have begun to really hope that I will one day come home to the Realm of Light, my eternal home. But until then, my job is an opportunity to bring that Realm of Light down into this world, that it may shine for all who are in the house. And if I fail, I will learn from it and become stronger, Light willing, until I become a blessing on legs or die trying.

Doctor visit

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My doctor commented that it was quite a time since he had seen me. I assured him that I was happy at work and overall in good shape. But, I pointed out, there had to be some excuse for sneaking away during work hours to see him. And so I told him the sad story of me suddenly having to get up before the alarm to empty my bladder, starting in January / February this year.

(The truth is that I don’t need to do that most nights now in summer. I assume I am simply sweating that much more. Although I would not mind if whatever had just plain reversed itself.)

The questionnaire he gave me almost made me ashamed to complain. Evidently there is a list of rather severe symptoms, and some patients have to get up five times a night! 0_0

Anyway, I got an appointment for Thursday morning to draw a blood sample, so they can test for the prostate cancer protein. To be honest, I am not sure what I would do if they found it. I have seen several serious-looking articles that say there is no statistically significant difference in mortality with early treatment of that particular cancer, unlike most others. The biopsy and treatment between them are as dangerous as the cancer, on average.  Well, hopefully there will be no indication of cancer, there or anywhere else.  I thought it was a good idea to be ahead of the curve or some such, but who knows.  Also, tomatoes and walking are better than I imagined.

The doctor did in fact ask me whether I still took walks. He must have made notes when I spoke with him in the past. Or perhaps he says that to everyone who has functioning legs. He is notoriously eager to get people to exercise, it seems he believes this to be a panache, a universal cure for all illness. And it also seems he is pretty much right.

A further appointment is made for June 24 for a prostate enlargement check.  I would only be mildly surprised if the problem was entirely disappeared by then. Well, if I am able to keep walking an hour a day until then. I did it today too. Seriously, what is up with using less calories to move faster for the same amount of time? Am I developing yet another superpower?  In addition to my ability to… oh wait, I haven’t told.

See, here in Norway we have a chocolate snack called Nonstop. I believe it is similar to Skittles, although the core is made of milk chocolate in all cases. The hard sugar shell tastes slightly differently depending on the color. Anyway, this snack comes in small bags, and the size I have bought lies comfortably in a grown man’s hand, and has a weight that is just about right to throw at a coworker.  If the bag is not opened beforehand, there is a good chance that the content will not spill all over the room. Depending on whether she throws it back, eats it, or neither of the above, you can estimate her opinion on the relationship between you. Or so I would assume, I have not even considered trying. I just wanted to describe roughly the size and weight of the packaging, since I failed to write down the weight.

Anyway, I have one of those small bags at work. Admittedly it is behind me, so that it does not distract me unless I feel like eating something sweet, which is not uncommon. But the thing is, one of those hand-sized bags lasts me for a week or more.  That’s because, despite the name “Nonstop”, I actually do stop after a few of them instead of waking up when the bag is empty. So that is my superpower. The blood sample is not going to reveal my secret power, I suspect, because it is probably not mutation but magic. I mean, it certainly sounds like magic, right? ^_^

 

Sims 3 reinstalled

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My test sim has completed a “Deep Thought” ice sculpture. This entry hardly qualifies as “deep thoughts” though. Still, it may interest some younger readers.

After I put in a SSD as my boot “hard disk” and upgraded from Windows XP to Windows 7, all my old programs were gone. I have installed the few I am still using.  From a couple days ago, this also includes The Sims 3.

The game worked horribly badly on Windows XP and Vista. The frequent crashes on the Windows XP machine may have to do with the widescreen driver, which I believe was not made for XP in the first instance. But in addition, both of the machines were hit by sound issues, including one where the sound began to loop and there was no way to exit from the program in a dignified manner until the sound stopped looping, which was random and could take hours when I was unlucky. Force closing the program could cause Vista to display a black screen until I logged off.

As expected, the program runs much better under Windows 7. I am slightly surprised that they could not be bothered to keep the game backwards compatible with the only Windows versions that existed when the game was new. -I have the Ambitions expansion pack, but even if you have none, the game will occasionally update itself. Most notably it will implement small bits from the expansion packs even if you don’t buy the whole thing. So for instance I have the new photo memories feature and life phase length adjustment launched with Generations, and the zodiac system for romantic compatibility from Late Night, and my sculptor tries to make objects from the World Adventures expansion – except they end up as blinking red cubes instead…

Anyway, the game seems to be rock stable now under Windows 7. I have run it for several hours one evening. Unfortunately my favorite modification, the Awesomemod, is not yet compatible with the latest version, but this is unrelated to the operating system. It just so happens that the game has been upgraded for the recent release of the Generations expansion, and as usual this broke some of the modifications that worked before. I have no doubt that Pescado will make the Awesomemod work as well as it did before, probably better.

The Sims 3 is a pretty big program, and more so with expansion packs. As you play, the number of people and objects and data about them will continue to rise. So the game is one that benefits from having a SSD for your swap file, unless you have a lot of RAM in your machine. Of course, RAM is even much faster, but it may not be feasible – for instance my 32 bits computer cannot handle more than 3.25 GB RAM. In any case, when running the game now with the Ambitions expansion, on my Quad-core with 32-bit Win7,  there is no pause anywhere at any time: Everything appears instantly wherever I go on the map.  I am not sure whether this will continue if I play the game for a very long time, but I probably won’t do that. I have a lot of other interests now, trying to maintain my body and soul more than I did. So this will have to do for now.

They let the Pope write now?

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Everybody who was something rejected Jesus Christ as a blasphemous cult leader whose death would mean the end to his crazy movement. “Errare humanum est.”

I recently bought a book written by the current Pope, Benedict XVI. He was in fact a well known Catholic writer before he was called to be Pope. I suppose there must have been some hesitation in calling him away from his writing: Being the Pope is sure to be very distracting. Even so, he has managed to finish at least two books, or a book in two parts if you will, a biography of Jesus Christ. Now, it is not often you see a Pope write a biography of Jesus Christ, so some curiosity is in order.

I also hear reasonably good things about this man (the Pope, I mean, but of course also Jesus). I grew up in an officially Lutheran country (although it was already starting to turn mostly atheist) and anything about the Vatican was viewed with severe skepticism, to put it mildly. I have a more nuanced view now. Some of the intelligent religious literature I have read the last couple years has come from Catholic writers. They have a tradition for intelligent religious literature, going back at least to Thomas Aquinas, one of the geniuses of the Middle Ages. (Yes, there were some, contrary to what you probably imagine about the Middle Ages.)

Also, contrary to what you probably imagine about the Pope unless you are Catholic, his writing is not medieval either. He expresses his gratitude to the advances in historical realism in Biblical exegesis, although he thinks it cannot stand on its own. Comparing a number of recent Jesus biographies, he draws the insightful conclusion that they are so different, they probably say more about their authors than about Jesus. That may well be true. While this is not entirely a good thing, it is thought-provoking. In one way, I think we are all doomed to find Jesus in ourselves if at all… but hopefully in our greater Self, as the Eastern spirituality calls it, rather than our small self or ego. In the spirit rather than the flesh, to use the language of St Paul, who seems to give people the willies these days.

Anyway, I have read little more than the foreword yet, but I already found something interesting. There is a tendency these days to regard the Bible as either 1) God dictating his word to men, or 2) men writing their own opinions about God. But the Pope inserts a 1.5 that makes a lot of sense: The community or people of God. The individual writers did not live and teach in a cultural and spiritual vacuum, but rather were part of a community steeped in the earlier revelation. It was to no small extent through this community that God spoke the Bible, rather than simply through the individuals. What they expressed was often dependent in content or form on spiritual impulses in the community, thinks the Pope.

This is certain true to some degree, although I have to point out that a disturbing number of God’s prophets and apostles were killed by the community and the supposed “people of God” of their time. Not least famously Jesus himself. But I am sure there will be more to read about that in the second book.

As for the biblical writers expressing the will of God after being shaped by the spiritual community of God’s people, it is hard for me not to see the parallel to Joseph Ratzinger, now Pople Benedict XVI, himself. But then again, we tend to see in others something of ourselves, whether we are the Pope or not, I guess.

The book is simply called “Jesus of Nazareth”. The author may be given either as Joseph Ratzinger (his name when he started it) or Benedict XVI (when he finished it).

 

Personal health reform

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You also need to exercise to balance your eating. (And your nation’s budget.)

In America in particular, there is a bitter debate about how to finance the ever growing expenses of the country’s health care. The same problem faces most developed countries, although the debate is generally more civil in those I know. Still, there is much handwringing and various not-so-great ideas.

In the middle of this is the small voice of reason, belonging to Dr Dean Ornish: How about people stop eating fast food and starts walking at least a couple hours a week, meditating from time to time and be nice to their family? That way we would have much less illness to contend with in the first place.

Dr Ornish and his colleagues have proved, and in the sense of hard science, peer reviewed large-scale clinical tests, that radical lifestyle change can actually reverse coronary plaque, diabetes, and some cancers. A less radical change can prevent them in most cases, and even when not, improve your chance of survival and your quality of life.

The approach is fairly low-tech:  Cut down on fat, to no more than 10% of your calories. Avoid white sugar and corn syrup like the plague. Eat your veggies. Exercise at moderate intensity. Meditate. Stick with your loved ones. The  more of these things you do, the less likely you are to contract the illnesses that make up 75% of the country’s health care budget.

If we don’t do it for the sake of the country, at least it makes sense to do it because being terminally ill sucks.  You are going to die sooner or later, of course, but later usually seems like the best alternative – after all, that is why people will pay an arm and a leg for expensive new cancer drugs, although they were not willing to move an arm and a leg back when they could have prevented the whole horror.

***

Now, I am fully aware that it is not easy. You come home from work, your head is already tired, and perhaps your feet too. You want nothing more than sit down in a good chair.  And as if it was not bad enough, you have to drive your kids (if you have kids, and most people do sooner or later) to some far-off destination.  When you’re back, it is already late and the weather is not good for walking, running, biking or whatever. There may be criminal elements out there too. No, it is best to stay inside and eat snacks in front of the TV, just like every other day.

I totally understand. After all, I keep a bottle of cola in the house at all times, if possible, and another at work. True, I mix the cola with water before drinking it, but I am sure it is still an unspeakable sin in the eyes of every nutritionist worth his diploma.  Sugar = poison, after all. But it all boils down to this: We have to do something, we have to start somewhere, we have to make a sacrifice for the sake of our own future and those we love, and those we don’t particularly hate. Someone has to go the extra mile. Or, failing that, eat their veggies.

You know quite well that you would do it if your life was at stake, and it is. The thing is to do it BEFORE the doctor tells you that you have X months left to live. I am sure that is very motivating, but by then we’ll probably feel even much less energetic than today. By then we may pray to God, but today God is praying to us, so to speak, imploring us to not be idiots and waste the body we’ve been given.  It is not by accident that the world’s religious traditions put emphasis on various exercises in self-control. Holding back our impulses was never easy, not 2500 years ago and not today. But it is a good idea, not just for ourselves, but for others as well.

It is true that for the time being, at least, most people will probably still continue to eat their fast food and veg out in front of the tube. So that if you eat your greens and work out, you’ll be paying for their bypass and they won’t be paying for yours. Sure it is unfair. But we should love our neighbor, right? It is more blessed to give than to receive. No, seriously, it is; I have tried. But even apart from that, it is more blessed to go the second mile than to receive diabetes, constipation, knee pain and heart infarct. For the love of ourselves and others, we have to make at least some effort, and encourage each other to do what we can.

And of course, if you happen to live in America, there is the small matter of your country not defaulting on its debt and sliding rapidly to banana republic status. Or at least, when that happens anyway, to be able to say “It wasn’t my fault… this time.”

 

May 2005

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Nostalgic – this was the last stretch of the road to the bus stop back when I lived in the original Chaos Node. I would also walk there frequently in the afternoon, as one of the several round trips I could take.

I have  lately been reading up on some of my entries from May 2005, a time which was in some ways similar to now. For years up to Easter 2005, I was moderately overweight. Well, my Body Mass Index was at least above the magic line of 25, although the only visible sign of overweight was a modest paunch or gut bulge, which I could probably have hidden with stronger stomach muscles.

Around the time of Easter, I became acutely ill. For a week or so, I could not digest food at all, it seemed, and I felt terrible. The doctor later said it was probably a virus. That is probably true but does not really tell anything more than it not being magic. For some days, I evidently produced no bile at all, but it did not last so long that I got yellow eyes like with the more famous liver infections. I gradually recovered, but discovered that from then on, I could only eat small amounts of fat at any one time, or I would get violently ill. The amount has increased slightly since 2005, but is still fairly small.

These events caused me to take an interest in physiology and health. In May, I wrote about these things extensively. I also bought a pulse watch and a pair of good jogging shoes, and started walking all over the place. Just like now, I would burn approximately 600-700 calories per day walking outdoors. (One and a half hour today, 900 calories, but that is above average.)  I expected this to be one of my usual fads, to fade away after a couple weeks. But it continued throughout the summer and fall. With the onset of winter, I was already busy moving, and got my exercise from that. There was a lot to carry over to my new apartment, which was within (a long) walking distance from the old. In the end, I did not actually move in there, but hurriedly moved to the house at Nodeland.

During my last 9 months or so in the original Chaos Node, I lost almost 15% of my body mass, all of it fat. I was hungry constantly, and in the end I would wake up in the night with hunger pangs and had to eat before going back to bed. (On the plus side, my acid reflux was gone.)

After I moved, I gradually put most of the weight back on, although not enough to be overweight again. I stabilized at a BMI of 25 or just below. I doubt I will be able to exceed that unless I become able to digest fat normally again.

And now, it seems I have resumed my practice of walking around for an hour each day.  I had almost forgotten that I used to do this in 2005 too. But then I looked for something else in my archives and found this, and remembered it clearly again. I wonder if it will be one of those 2-week fads again this time, or whether it will become part of my lifestyle again. I am not sure quite why it faded away last time. Perhaps I just did not enjoy starving all the time, even when my stomach was full. (Yes, I really felt hungry even then. It was like the brain was detached from the stomach in that regard.) Hopefully I can find a better balance this time.

In spring 2005, my digestion had not yet adapted to life without fat. In the years before, I ate small meals, but rich in fat. These days, my meals are larger but contain mostly carbohydrates. So it was in the meantime, while I could not eat fat but also could only eat small meals, that I lost all that weight. I don’t think it will happen again, for better or for worse. But then, I am not overweight either. I guess that is also beginning to be a rare thing these days.

One thing I noticed back then that I am noticing again, is that I am sleepier. And on that note, good night!

Reverse repentance

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We should reflect on what we did, but not in a bad way.

I have written before about how repentance is awesome. Of course, it is much more awesome than I could possibly tell you. That goes without saying, for great spiritual teachers over the centuries have spoken of it, people who I would not dare to compare with.

So  today I will write about reverse repentance, anti-repentance, the evil twin of repentance. Surely that is more original. And not so far off: I have actually done this myself in the past. Light send that it stays in the past. But if others can find this and become aware of it in the same way, I will be happy. For a human, it is pretty much impossible to never make moral mistakes, or “sin” as our grandfathers used to say.

(I think a short word is still a good idea, given how frequent such mistakes are; but in America especially, the word “sin” has changed meaning for many people. And there are others who think it is strictly religious word and is not relevant to them, as if one cannot make mistakes without divine intervention! What the hell. The opposite is more likely.)

Now, making mistakes is bad enough, but as I said, it cannot really be avoided when one is human. What we can avoid is 1) going out of our way to make mistakes, 2) defend them afterwards and 3) regret not making mistakes.

Yes, this is what I mean by reverse repentance: To regret not having made a wrong decision. That seems plain impossible, but it is not. There is even a Biblical reference, for those interested in that: “For sadness according to God’s mind causes repentance to salvation, which no one regrets; but the sadness of the world causes death.” (2. Corinthians 7, 10.)

The “sadness of the world” may well be read in a wider meaning, but in this sense it is thoughts like: “If I knew he was so gullible, I would have taken his stuff”, or “I was sooo close to getting into her pants, if only she had drunk a little more”, or even “Why didn’t I think of this belittling comment until after he left.” In all these cases, to varying degrees, we regret not having hurt another person in some way. Of course, in most cases we don’t self-identify as evil, but rather think that they deserved it, or it would have felt good, something like that. Few people really thrive on the joy of seeing others suffer. Usually their suffering is incidental, it is our feeling good that matters. Although in some cases yes, the two are strongly linked.

Now there is not hurting people, there is hurting people and regretting it, there is hurting people and not regretting it, and there is regretting not hurting people. This is, to put it bluntly, a sin worse than sin. It is going over an accidental good deed in our mind and erasing it, replacing it in our spiritual balance sheet, or “thought tape” or “Akashic record” if you want, with the evil we would rather have done.

Just like repentance causes the mistakes to be undone in the invisible world, in a manner of speaking (they still exist as echoes in the physical world, of course, and perhaps bad habits) – so  this “reverse repentance” actually inserts a mistake where there was none.  It may not feel like it at the time, but we will definitely learn at the end of our lives that hurting others for selfish reasons is not a good idea. There will be enough of such things, that we have done without thinking and never repented, to floor us when we go through our life review. There is no need to deliberately smear ugly graffiti on our Akashic records, or book of deeds.

So that is the life experience I wish to share with you. Please take care, and wake up when these thoughts present themselves. Let a bell ring when even a small such thought comes up, a regret of having passed up a temptation. (Of course, sometimes temptations present themselves repeatedly and if we eventually fall in them, that is sad but not what I talk about here.)

Again, going back in time and deliberately inserting wrongness in our life beyond what happens spontaneously, is a terrible thing, and something that can happen to perfectly normal people, even those who go to church or synagogue, mosque or temple. So I wanted to share this, even if I am not a spiritual teacher. I hear so little about it, and it is so important.

May the Light forgive me if I speak of things that are too deep and mysterious for me, but I myself had to go back and undo such damage as I had inserted into my own life in that way, and there are probably still corruptions left that I will not find until my life review. I wish I can spare someone that.

“Delighting in your company”

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Delighting in your company. Sometimes it comes naturally, sometimes less so to us mortals.

I was out doing my daily walk (one hour today, 630 calories) when I listened to evergreens and the voice in my heart coming together in a peculiar confluence.

“And I have loved you for so long, delighting in your company.” -Greensleeves.

“When He prepared the heavens, I was there … and my delights were with the sons of men.” -The Wisdom, in Proverbs 8.

I have had many definitions of love through the year I have written my online journal, some of them more cynical than others. “Delighting in your company” is certainly one of the better.

And such is the nature of the love that the Divine Wisdom has for mankind, and that the Presence in my heart has for me. As it assures me, it has loved me for so long – from the very beginning –  delighting in my company. That is actually an awesome thing to feel, that effortless love. A love that feels no uncertainty, no need to be reciprocated, only – at most – to be accepted. And even if not, it remains undiminished.

The other side of the coin is of course to be like that. That is not something one can just decide and there it is. Neither is it something one can work on or strive toward in a businesslike way. At least I don’t think so. I think of it as … attuning? Aligning? Tuning in to that same frequency with which we are loved. And also memories of the past, for those who have that, but not a simple replay of circumstances. Drawing out the core, love itself.

When I say we cannot achieve this love by work, I must add that of course there are times when we need to act in a loving, compassionate way even if we don’t feel like it at the moment. If not, there are times when even a mother would throw the baby out with the bathwater. I have read about various young mothers feeling guilty because they don’t feel that super awesome love for their baby that they thought they would, and that society expects. But that feeling is intermittent – it comes and goes – and must be gathered as memorable moments who show up from time to time, to be added to what you will remember later. It is the same way with other forms of love. Sometimes you feel it, sometimes you act it, not necessarily at the same time. But it builds over time.

Well, I’m not really an expert on such things. The Presence in my heart is. Hopefully I will become more like that.

Upgrading fragile things

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There’s a lot of trouble to go through to live on Earth! If it is not upgrading computer software and maintaining their hardware, it is doing the same for the body.

I gave up on the hard disk. It would be literally months to recover its magnetic patterns, even if it did not continue to fall apart each day. So I tried installing Windows XP on the SSD, at a point when the computer would not recognize the usual C: drive. This worked quite well, but since it was from the CD of an older computer, I could only have it for 30 days. So I decided to make the jump to Windows 7 anyway, while I was at it.  I bought it from the Microsoft Store and downloaded it. I tried at first to convert to 64 bits at the same time (so I could use all 4 GB of the memory rather than just 3.25 GB), but it did not accept that.

I spent a good part of yet another day, but at least now the computer is running flawlessly and has done so for several hours. The operating system and the most commonly used programs are all on the SSD, meaning that they run a bit faster than from a hard disk. The programs I have on the SSD are that game City of Heroes, the web browser Opera, and Dragon NaturallySpeaking speech recognition.

I have also installed yWriter, the modular novel writing software that is my favorite for writing fiction. Although, truth be told, I installed it on the hard drive: It is already lightning fast and is so small that it loads before I can draw a deep breath. Impressive little  gem from Simon Haynes, himself a published author of several books. Of course, most people won’t need yWriter since they don’t write novels. Yet.

Oh, and let us not forget Irfanview, a program to view pictures and do simple changes to them. It is what I use to resize pictures for the journal, among other things. Again, there is no need to speed this up.

***

You may question the wisdom of upgrading the operating system when the hardware is well past its “best before” date, and actually falling apart. But as it happens, I think the new operating system will deal better with the ailing hardware. And of course, I am trying to do the same with my own body: Upgrade its operating system even as the hardware is gradually failing.

There is no denying that I am past my youth. I walked only for half an hour today, as my guts were unstable and hurt a bit. But today again my legs were stiff and tired, much like yesterday. Seriously, legs? You are not 80 years old. You should be able to fully recover over the course of a night from something as casual as walking for an hour, or five quarters. If I had been running, you might have some excuse for complaining. Now, none at all. Shape up already!

But be that as it may, I will seek to upgrade the operating system of my mind, to use the metaphor I used back in June 2005. Not just the content, but the way it works, the whole way of thinking and feeling and seeing the world. So that, when the hardware of my body spins down for the last time, the  backup copy in Heaven will be suitable to install in a new, improved model with as little modification as possible.  Well, that’s my aspiration. If it were to happen soon, I suspect there would be some serious adaptations to be made. But if I live, I hope that at least some of those changes can begin already here. It is not like eternity will start years from now. It has been going on for quite a while!

And so, I upgrade fragile things, maintain them as best I can, and hope.