Good Wednesday To You!
I had a busy, productive day yesterday.
For those of you who subscribe to Q&A with Paul or enjoy my Monthly Messages at www.chekconnect.com, we just finished putting up two new editions of each.
I got behind with all the events – teaching in Toronto in August, and then I had to prepare for and deliver at the recent CHEK Conference.
I just watched David Getoff’s presentation on water and it was very informative!
Keep an eye out for notices later in November when the individual sessions will be available for sale through the C.H.E.K Institute.
Yesterday, I had a great deadlift workout. The gym was empty and peaceful, which I love.
My workout consisted of deadlifting 315 x 6 for five sets coupled with single arm cross-lateral barbell rows (I created that exercise).
I then performed a single arm row with the Olympic bar I’m deadlifting with using the same weight that’s on the bar. I stand at one end of the barbell with the weights just touching my shin on the side that’s inside the weights and reach across with the same arm, grabbing the shaft the weights are loaded on and row it up and across my leg on the same side as the pulling arm.
This is a very challenging lift; the size of the Olympic bar makes gripping it very challenging, not to mention doing a single arm row with three or more plates on the bar!
As I’ve aged, I’ve really found that heavy lifting is essential to keep my androgens up. I’ve also found that getting the right amount of animal flesh proteins in my diet is essential to maintaining muscle mass, recovery, and manufacturing androgens.
When I was a strict vegetarian for a year, no matter how hard I trained, I couldn’t maintain muscle mass, nor could I recover nearly as fast from training as I could with the inclusion of eggs and fish, which I did for six months following the year of pure vegetarianism.
Once I started including my general rotation, which includes lamb, chicken, ostrich, goat, venison, fish, organ meats and others (but not pork or beef – I’m allergic to beef and pork gives me all sorts of uncomfortable symptoms), it was as though someone flipped a magic switch and I could heal faster and get optimal muscle responses.
I was recently able to get sets of deadlifts off a step box (MUCH HARDER!) with 405 at a bodyweight of only about 168 pounds!
That’s pretty cool for me because I was only able to get that kind of performance in the past before my (severe) neck injury while eating meat and weighing 189 pounds.
I feel that the deep cleaning and healing I gained from my vegetarian period has allowed me to make better and faster gains now, with less training!
Another factor I’ve found to play a big part in keeping lean and strong as I’ve aged, particularly past about age 45 for me, is that I can’t train as often as I did prior to that age.
If I do a heavy training session of any type, I generally need about 5 days rest before another attempt; trying sooner results in perpetuation of post-workout soreness and results in weakening of my body.
There is no better workshop than our own body-mind. All we need to do is pay close attention and be willing to follow inner-guidance.
This requires that one be willing to face the typical fears generated by the ego-shadow. Such as, if I do that, I’ll get skinny, or I’ll miss out on such and such!
Being brave enough to explore yourself pays huge returns for those that do it. Not being brave enough to challenge your ego-shadow simply leaves you in the experience of Groundhog day!
I MUST LAUNCH MY BOAT!
Today I thought I’d share a poem by Rabindranath Tagore from the book titled, Gitangali, with an introduction by W.B. Yeats (p. 37)
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I must launch out my boat. The languid hours pass by on the share—Alas for me!
The spring has done its flowering and taken leave. And now with the burden of faded futile flowers I wait and linger.
The waves have become clamorous, and upon the bank in the shady lane the yellow leaves flutter and fall.
What emptiness do you gaze upon! Do you not feel a thrill passing through the air with the notes of the far away song floating from the other shore?
COMMENTARY
I drew the picture above a couple years ago while meditating on my own bodily death; the end of this lifetime.
I had a very strong vision of me in a boat, crossing the river of relative space-time (this life as we know it) to the other shore of timelessness (vertical time where past, present and future are One).
As my boat moved closer and closer, I could feel my head (memories) holding me back.
As strong as I am, I found that I couldn’t get my head off; it felt as if it were like clothes I’d been wearing through many airports. I had a strong urge to get off so I could shower and freshen up and put some clean clothes on . . . and forget about the travel stress and all the hoopla of the many related events!
My experience of my own life is that once one accomplishes a certain amount (which is unique to each individual), we realize that no amount of accomplishing seems to lessen the burden of challenges with other people (egos).
We may be wiser, we may be more efficient and productive.
But, I find myself often longing to be in the worlds I visit in my astral travel (remote viewing) practices.
I often feel like I’ve sat under the Christmas tree for 50 years opening presents; some are exciting, some are gifts given by others just to meet the social expectations of giving a gift for fear that they will be somehow less, or thought negatively of if they don’t give a gift.
I find that even the most amazing of gifts often end up collecting dust.
Others look at such gifts with, “Wow”, like I first did.
But those gifts don’t seem to last like some others. I can’t take that “thing” off the shelf, it’s just more baggage to carry.
What I can take with me, and do, are:
- The intimate moments where I shared love with someone.
- The moments where I felt completely safe to totally be myself.
- The realizations I’ve gained as to how what seemed very painful, even like torture at times in my life, turned out to be the Divine Force of redirection, without which, I’d be someone else today. The hindsight that creates 20/20 vision is only useful if we convert it into the awareness of foresight.
- The deep sense of connection to my Soul, which has taught me what God really is.
Though there is a deep urge to explore the other side, my remote viewing via astral/mental travel has shown me that regardless of what dimension of space/time reality we are in, as long as there is a subject~object (self and other) relationship, the very same challenges emerge there as we all face here.
We can’t experience any “heaven” until we create it within ourselves; and it’s never heaven if we create it only as a means of escaping it’s relative opposite – (our impressions of) hell.
Through the years of my spiritual practices and shamanic explorations, I’ve come to realize that there is no better place to be than in the bliss of silence – NO-THING.
There, I have everything without having to carry, hold or remember anything.
There I’ve lived, yet never lived.
There I know I’m at the source of all I once loved and remembered, yet I know them without knowing them yet.
There I’m One with THE MYSTERY.
I’ll see you there!
Love and chi,
Paul Chek
