Attitudes for Ridiculous Health and Obnoxious Longevity PART TWO!

Okay y'all, here we go with PART TWO of my unabashedly non-foody post.

8) Quiet Mind. Longevity guru Peter Ragnar just quoted (on an interview I was listening to from The Best Day Ever—great site, but it is a paysite, FYI) research showing that we use up 85% of our body’s energy by our thinking! An herbalist I read about (can’t recall his name—sorry!) who is vibrant into his upper 90’s, attributed his superb health and longevity to, “A calm mind.” (NOTE: this is not the same as the not-worrying pointer, in PART ONE, below, or here, because a mind can be spinning frantically even with “positive,” enthusiastic things.) Learn the deep peace (and exponentially greater productivity) of a quiet, silent, spacious mind. Resources: The Journey of Awakening, by Ram Dass, The Renaissance of Psychology, by George Pransky

9) Mental Flexibility. As we age, our thinking tends to get smaller, more rigid, stiff, repetitious, stereotypical and predictable—our bodies follow. Break it up, regularly, always, daily, fiercely. Expose yourself to new ideas, weird people, funky angles, fresh experiences. Listen deeply and openly to people. Take the opposite side of a polarized issue you feel strongly about. Play with Rudolf Steiner’s technique of finding 12 perspectives on any given subject or idea.

Jesus said, “Except ye become as little children ye shall not enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” And Van Morrison said, “I shall never grow so old again.”

Most of all, find your way into meditation that opens you to touch the Source, the “sky of mind,” the unborn, inexhaustible source of life (see above Ram Dass link).

10) Disbelief. Stop believing in aging. Seriously. Enough with the aging, already. The new scientific field of epigenetics is showing how we AGE because we’re hypnotized to BELIEVE we must. Check out the work of Bruce Lipton. His book, The Biology of Belief or his website, which has many free podcasts of cool interviews with him.

12) Happiness, Joy and Love. Again, Bernard Jensen: “Happiness, joy and love bathe the nervous system to such an extent that it heals! It heals! It gets all the tissues well. You cannot be well unless these three things flow through you and work in your nervous system.”

13) Gratitude. An extremely health-giving disposition for humans. Usually, “I’m grateful for this or that particular THING” is hunky dory, but what you REALLY want to open yourself to is an omnidirectional, non-intellectual feeling-quality of gratitude, that you have no words for and you only notice later it was gratitude! For everything and nothing and unspeakable luscious Beingness. Here's a book on gratitude I've not read, but looks cool.

14) Magnanimous Spirit. Give, serve and help others. Unleash your own generous heart. (Be careful not to mistake this with codependency and caretaking, which is actually a compulsion [not a free choice]. In codependency, we may LOOK like we’re always helping others, but our focus is actually on ourselves getting loved and appreciated for all our saintly helpfulness. It comes from scarcity and an inability to know and express our needs directly. By contrast, true generosity and magnanimity come from being centered in our authentic feelings and giving from overflowing fullness.) I think Catherine Ponder has some fine things to say about generosity.

So cultivate these 14 ways of thinking, feeling and being, exercise smart, and eat super-clean and, Mack trucks running you over notwithstanding, you'll be tearing around doing cool stuff in this groovy world for a long, long time.