“Back in the good ol’ days”

Posted on August 31, 2012 by thepureroad

…when red frogs were 5 cents and you could get milkshakes in silver cups. How good were those days?

Change. Love it or hate it, it’s inevitable. So why do we resist it? I mean logically, resisting something that is inevitable seems futile. A waste of energy. Yet we still choose to swim upstream, knowing full well that the current will carry us back with it anyway.

Not surprisingly, I am not the first to ponder this idea of change. Good old Heraclitus, a Greek philosopher (535BC-475BC), was known for his musings on change as a fundamental element to the universe. He taught us “Nothing endures but change”, often translated to “The only constant is change”.

I put forward this: perhaps we resist change because of the simple notion of fear. (Take note I am reading Gabrielle Bernstein at the moment, so I may be slightly primed toward this concept. She wins the Guinness book of records for the number of times “fear” is mentioned in one book.) We are fearful. Fearful of change. Not change itself, but what we perceive it to bring. Change brings gain, loss, promotion, demotion, new relationships begin, old relationships end…

It seems like an awfully big gamble of positive against negative. Throw in a dash of self-doubt there and the odds seem to be out of your favour. So you think to yourself, “No thanks, I’d rather just stay where I am.” Scared things will turn out worse than they are now.

Added to this, modern society places so much value on youth that we are hideously scared of growing old. Fearful of losing value. We would rather stick needles in our face (literally) than develop (god forbid) a wrinkle.

Case in point: every Wednesday, I spend time with Bronson. Bronson is 28 years old, but if you ask him how old he is he will tell you 25. You see on his 25^th birthday he decided that was old enough and cancelled any more birthdays. Bronson is intellectually disabled, which also affects him socially. Yet he consciously has decided that growing old (i.e. change) does not serve him, purely by observation.

So where does that leave us? I have no answers for you, however one piece of advice I can pass on stems from thousands of years of yogic tradition. It is simply: to live for the moment. If you are living in the moment, then change becomes irrelevant. For change to occur, there must be a past and a future. Living in the now decreases that attachment to a particular moment in time, hence no internal battle.

Acceptance. Hmm now doesn’t that feel better?

Some of you may become annoyed and think I am asking you to become apathetic. To this, let me say no. I am giving you permission to accept what is out of your control (i.e. the prospect of change), and the motivation to CHANGE what is within your control (i.e. your MIND).

In other words: there’s no chance red frogs are going back to 5 cents, so get the fuck over it.

Jac Xx

everything becomes nothing

Posted on August 6, 2012 by thepureroad

It feels like nothing.

You check your vitals – heartbeat, check, breathing, check. Everything is in order.

Except it isn’t.

Nothing is in its place.

It feels like nothing.

You squint, looking for something familiar but nothing is.

Everything is the same, but nothing is familiar.

So you carry on as if everything is the same, pretending like you are the same.

You feel like an imposter. Inauthentic.

And it feels like…nothing.

But then you feel something.

Suddenly you see that nothing is the same, but everything is familiar,

You had it wrong all along.

And then you feel…

And you wish you hadn’t.

rhubarb + apple crumble (sugar-free, grain-free)

Posted on July 18, 2012 by thepureroad

I’ve had a few requests for healthy dessert alternatives…so here’s a little creation of mine. It tastes amaze-balls and it’s good for you!

I’ve become pretty obsessed with rhubarb in the last few months. Commonly thought of as a fruit, rhubarb is actually a vegetable related to buckwheat. It is usually paired with a sweetener as it tastes quite tart and sour on its own, so people who are used to eating sugar and have a sweet tooth may want to add more sweetener to this recipe.

Rhubarb is a good source of potassium, vitamin C, vitamin, A, dietary fibre and calcium. It has many therapeutic uses including lowering blood pressure, increasing circulation, relieving hot flashes in perimenopausal women, improving intestinal issues, detoxifying the blood and clearing skin break-outs. It is also believed to be anti-bacterial, anti-inflammatory and have anti-allergy properties.

So eat up!

What you’ll need:

12 sticks rhubarb
2 large apples
3 teaspoons cinnamon
½ teaspoon vanilla
1 cup almond meal
1 cup roughly chopped pecans
1 cup flaked coconut
2 Tablespoons coconut oil
25 g butter
Sweetener if desired (e.g. sugar, honey, stevia, etc)

What you’ll do:

Preheat oven to 180⁰C.
Cut off ends of rhubarb, wash, then cut into 10cm pieces. Wash and peel apples, then cut up into thin slices. Places apples over rhubarb in individual ramekins and sprinkle 1 teaspoon of cinnamon over mixture.
Melt coconut oil and butter in a separate pan in the oven (approximately 5 minutes). Add to this: remaining (2 teaspoons) cinnamon, vanilla, almond meal, pecans, coconut. If you would like, add preferred sweetener here. Mix well.
Sprinkle crumble mixture over apple and rhubarb so that the fruit is fully covered.
Bake in oven for 30 minutes or until crumble mixture is slightly browning.

Enjoy kids!

Jac Xx

restore to renew

Posted on July 16, 2012 by thepureroad

Ask anyone what drains their energy and mostly people will name their job, their relationship or their family.

Then ask anyone what gives them energy and most people will name their job, their relationship or their family.

We come to a checkmate. The common denominator, you! Your mind and how you view the situation.

We’ve seen in previous weeks (presence, vitality, equanimity) how we all view our lives through individual filters, built up from past experiences, that affect the reality we experience. Our reality is tainted by the background noise in our heads. Constant thinking, worrying, judging, analysing, evaluating, reminiscing, planning, projecting, etc, etc…tired yet? It’s exhausting! It’s like trying to watch your favourite show with the signal showing static noise and blurred visuals.

This week was about letting go of the static in your life. Realising what you need to let go of to restore. Be it anger or resentment towards a colleague, or jealousy towards a friend, letting all of what doesn’t serve you go. Quieting the commentator inside your head by listening to it less.

So even when you are rushing from A to B, there can be restoration if you let go of the HURRY inside your head. There can be challenge and intensity without the internal drama. There can be achievement without the anxiety.

Talking of achievement; this week also brought the challenge of a three day fruit fast. To summarise: some attempted. Some struggled. Some conquered.

For most of us, it was an eye opener to how deep our emotional attachment to food delves into our psyche. Anything to escape three full days of fruit.

“A pumpkin is a fruit isn’t it?”

More than anything, the fruit fast showed us how much drama we create in our heads, when in retrospect it may not have been such a big deal. If we just surrendered to what was in front of us, we wouldn’t have unnecessarily wasted all that energy worrying about what was to come.

This week was about finding an element of restoration in your every day life: recharging our batteries amidst the eternal to-do list.

Jac Xx