Such random things I write

As my lovely friend Su puts it often - I had an "Ai carumba!" moment just twenty minutes ago taking my walk in the lovely cool night through the suburbs.

Hi people:)

I was listening to a smashing song on the radio, and it went something like, "I don't know what to do with myself *amazing instrumental* I don't know what to do with myself *amazing instrumental*" etc... of course, it made me think of my favourite topic - myself.

But before I get to myself, let me share with you what I heard in the distant night air immediately after that. I heard some crazy dog barking. But before I elucidate on said barking, I wanna say that i then turned my gaze on a beautiful house that I wish I owned.

ADHD tendencies aside, I just want to say that it made me think how wonderful this brain of ours is, that it can make connections between seemingly unrelated things. But that is not my point (it is anyone's guess how i made connections between Myself, Barking Dog and Beautiful House and no, it does not entail images of the Stafford Wives and domestic violence...)



My point is that it made me also think more deeply of this person called Me, Myself. I. I read in my awesome book that there are 3 basic senses of self. The first is the Conceptualized Self, which basically pertains to how you would describe yourself if asked to write an essay on yourself. It would go something like "I am kind, I am lovable, I am nice, I am blah". There is a sense of evaluation towards this "I".

The second is the so-called Self as a Process of Ongoing Self-Awareness. This is the self that goes "Now I am feeling this. Now I am remembering that. Now I am seeing this." This sense of self is important for healthy psychological functioning.

The third sense of self is actually quite mind-blowing to think about. It is the Observing Self. It is what I thought of when I heard the barking dog, then turned my gaze on the spotlight of the beautiful house. The Observing Self, I think, can best be illustrated by asking yourself these questions: "What is an early fond/painful memory of yours? When you relive this memory, who is that sense of self looking out from behind your eyes? And then, who was it who ate your breakfast this morning? And who is reading this blog right now?" When I saw that spotlight and heard that barking dog, I thought of that 'Self', so-called looking out from behind my eyes, out into the darkness and towards the light.

The transcendent Observing Self gives us a lot of leeway to overcome our mental pain and anguish when we experience them. You can choose to not "buy into your thought" or put another way, not "look FROM your thoughts" but rather "look AT your thoughts".

When the next painful thought comes into mind, why don't you just say "Oh thanks for the input, mind" and look AT it instead of looking and living FROM it.


I really do want to elaborate and go into detail about the observing self, but my time is limited as I've got sweet potatoes baking in the oven and my landlady does not like us to waste electricity. So get them out I must, but I think, just to succinctly drive it home that MY unwavering sense of observing self is starting to weaken due to the smells wafting from the kitchen, I will totally deviate from this topic and share a YouTube video of my favourite belly dancer with you all. In a way, there IS something of a connection there. Deepak Chopra and Demi Moore narrating to the music - hmm one's super spiritual and other's super Hollywood. There you go - mind and body. Mind Over Body.

Enjoy!!!

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buttery pineapple tarts - who has the last laugh?

Hi people!

A while ago i blogged about how my landlady was a cleaning freak and that behind my closed door in my messy room i snigger and laugh all-knowingly... hehehe. well this here is an update on my room - during my last visit home two weeks ago, she had jumped at the opportunity to enter (yes enter!) my room and take EVERYTHING apart and clean it from top to bottom, including my thousand and one knick knacks and acessories on my dresser. hah! who's having the last laugh now???

who HAS the last laugh in our lives? is it us? back to that later.

I recently acquired a penchant for eating pineapple tarts for dinner. this is because i had brought many back from my travels home and it was the season to be eating them then. which means that, ahem, my waist line has been quite on the receiving end of the buttery tarts.

let's get to the point of today's blog - weight loss, mind control, blah. i heard about a person who had been trying to lose weight for years and years, and never had any success. this got in the way of her relationship with significant others, of course. to me, the secret to weight loss lies in this: eating and liking to eat is actually a very emotional thing. there is 'emotional eating' and there is simply eating. if you think of someone being under local anesthetic, they feel no pain even when the surgeon is cutting away at their insides. all they feel is a neutral 'sensation'. with eating, the pleasure we feel from the senses/taste etc is the emotion linked to eating, much like the emotion of 'pain' linked to getting our insides cut when we are NOT on local anasthetic. wheh we detach the emotion from the actual act, much like applying anaesthetic on our eating, we realise that we can control our urge and 'greediness' to eat and only eat when we are hungry.

That, of course, is the stuff of saints. and emaciacted yogis from India who derive pleasure only from the 'higher things in life'.

I, on the other hand, choose to h0ver between sainthood and The Matrix, ie our everyday life that i have to be in to help others. which means, sometimes i binge on pineapple tarts for dinner, and sometimes i exercise mind control and do not eat dinner because i feel emotionally full :)

back to the last laugh - i guess the autopsy person will have the last laugh on me when he splits open my guts to find it filled with buttery tarts...

i am thinking of home now, so i will leave you with the tough decision we malaysians face each day about whether to exercise mind control or not. i think not.

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