I'm a firm believer in living naturally. Not unnaturally naturally. Just naturally naturally.
Meaning, do what is natural. But don't make a fetish out of this, don't strive to do it, because trying too hard to be natural leads to artificiality.
When it comes to drinking and eating, here's some good advice:
Drink when thirsty. Eat when hungry.
This sounds very Zen. And it is. But it also makes a lot of scientific sense. For example, check out "Just drink water when you're thirsty like a normal person, study finds."
After much deliberation, a 17-member expert panel representing four countries and nine specialties, including sports medicine, body fluid homeostasis and exercise physiology, have come to the research-based consensus that people should really just, well, drink water when they’re thirsty, you know?
...Yep, after countless blog posts and huge amount of research, the truth is you should really just use your “innate thirst mechanism to guide fluid consumption.” As in, you should just take a sip of water when you want to take a sip of water, rather than loading up on ridiculous amounts of H20 before you go through a limits-testing workout.
Likewise, "Eating when you're hungry versus eating on schedule" says:
Retrain yourself to recognize feelings of hunger and respect them. Eat when you feel them and stop when they stop. Don’t eat when you’re not hungry. This approach starts with eating breakfast, planning snacks, or eating only part of your lunch and saving the rest for a snack later on in the afternoon. Eat regular meals but don’t eat by the clock.
We should trust our natural inclinations. Us humans have been around in our Homo sapiens form for about 250,000 years. For almost all of that time people weren't telling other people how to drink fluids and how to eat food. They just did what came naturally.
Of course, in prehistoric times there were moments when the right thing to do was gorge oneself when scarce food became available, and drink excessively when rarely-found water was discovered.
In these modern times, most of us have a steady supply of food and water. So we can actually live more naturally than our ancestors, since it is easier for us to follow the adage: Drink when thirsty. Eat when hungry.
This works for me.
Rather than carry a gigantic water bottle around when I work out at an athletic club (as I see many other people doing for no good reason), I take a couple of sips of water from a drinking fountain when I feel thirsty. And I've found that I'm able to keep my weight where I want it to be if I pay attention to whether I'm really hungry, or if I just have the idea of wanting to eat something (out of boredom, habit, or some other non-hunger reason).
Now, thirst and hunger arise from physiological needs. We need water and food to survive. Too little isn't good for us; too much isn't good for us. Following our natural desire to drink and eat usually works out well for us.
What about the drive to "gorge" on God, though? Where does this come from?
Obviously a desire to pursue divinity isn't natural in the way seeking food and water is. Lots of people live a deeply fulfilling life without paying any attention to God or some other supernatural entity. There are no discernible ill effects from failing to fill one's mind with thoughts and emotions concerning God.
Further, there are no evident outward signs of God or any other transcendent divinity, in contrast to the obviousness of water and food. How does someone assuage their thirst or hunger for God when there is no demonstrable observable evidence of the entity being sought for?
Short answer: this is impossible. God doesn't exist in any objective fashion. God is only as real as the mental beliefs people have about this hypothesized divinity.
So I don't see how it is possible to have a natural desire for God.
I can drink when thirsty. I can eat when hungry. However, there is no corresponding natural impulse to embrace God, because God only exists as a concept in human minds. There is no way to assuage a desire for a concept as there is for fulfilling a desire to drink or eat.
Water and food are real. God isn't.
Again, only the idea of God possesses a limited subjective reality. Thus religious believers are in much the same position as someone who drinks and eats not because they have a natural need to do this, but because they have an artificial idea that it's the right thing to do.
Understand: there's nothing wrong with ideas. Ideas are wonderful things. So are beliefs, one form ideas come in. We just shouldn't mistake mental creations that exist nowhere outside of the human mind for an objectively real entity.
Like water and food.
This is why some people spend a lifetime seeking God, and never succeed in their quest. They are pursuing an impossible dream: to quench a thirst for divinity when the object of their desire doesn't exist.
Having attempted this quest myself for about thirty-five years, I understand how enticing the goal of God-realization can seem. However, I'm grateful that I came to realize how false and unnatural that goal was.
Drinking when thirsty and eating when hungry make a lot more sense to me now. I can actually do these things. Not just in my own mind, as is the case with every person's attempt to find God. But in really real reality.
This is why some people spend a lifetime seeking God, and never succeed in their quest. They are pursuing an impossible dream: to quench a thirst for divinity when the object of their desire doesn't exist.
Some might argue that the "object of desire" does exist... just not as a material "other" in the realm of duality. And the quest isn't futile but we look in all the wrong places. They're an infinite number of dead ends. Religious rites, holy shrines, magic beads, psychedelic drugs, various charlatans, even our intellect.... all promise to slake your thirst. Some day... just keep on imbibing.
But I think the mystic would counter that the answers are embedded in consciousness itself. Inside, not outside. Here and now. "God" is nothing other than consciousness itself. The exploration of consciousness will dissolve the notion of a separate being who comes out of the clouds to punish, or reward, or "take you home". You are home already but keep looking out the window... hoping it'll materialize out "there".
Posted by: Dungeness | May 27, 2017 at 12:14 AM
"Not just in my own mind.......... But in really real reality."
Hey? There is a "really real reality" outside of your "own mind"? How do you know this?
Ah well, guess we all gotta have our beliefs......
Posted by: manjit | May 27, 2017 at 06:17 AM
Brian, you absolutely crack me up! Thanks for the provocative article. Hunger and thirst to the physical organism is "all-powerful". If allowed to intensify there is nothing which the organism will not do to assuage these urges...nothing. But these are natural sensations pertaining to the physical form and its survival for a few years. Is there such a thing as hunger and thirst for the emotions...for the mind...for the soul? We certainly can temporarily satisfy the hungry mind with an inexhaustible buffet of victuals such as books, movies, social interaction, reading Hines' articles, etc. We can satisfy the emotional pain of loneliness with friends, family, pets, Facebook, etc. But is there such a thing as the soul (surat) and does that entity "feel" hunger or thirst? I humbly submit that It does exist and It has needs that eventually emerge which cannot be satisfied by any sensory or intellectual "food". This hunger, known as spiritual homesickness and longing, has been acknowledged by thousands of revered poems, prose and spiritual discourses over the centuries. I humbly submit that soul's hunger is a "need", as valid and as poignant as any physical, emotional or mental desire. Experientialy, I can verify a deeper need and longing which only my spiritual practice can adequately satisfy. Of course, none of this woo woo can be proven empirically!
Posted by: al | May 27, 2017 at 08:29 AM
As an average human being I have during my life had a number of experiences that my western culture would describe as spiritual, but not being satisfied by such statements I looked elsewhere for explanations. My feeling was that it was somehow related to brain activity. I could see logically how my 'self', with its decades of conditioning my proclivity was very able to assign meaning and explanations that were more than likely untrue. I found the findings of the brain sciences to be more digestible - if not a little clinical and dismissive of my humanity.
One scientist though – K. Nelson, a professor of neurology at the university of Kentucky has made a lifelong study of what people describe as 'spiritual experiences' and for me, puts it in perspective. In his book 'The God Impulse' he describes in his prologue his research into “ . . . near death experiences, out of body experiences, feelings of rapture or nirvana, mystical oneness and visions of saints or the dead.”
And he shows how “ . . . activity in the primitive brainstem, working in tandem with the limbic system, the most ancient area of our recently evolved cerebral cortex, leads to a variety of spiritual experiences.”
He describes these experiences as not being real but, “On the other hand, my work also irks some die-hard atheists, because it inextricably links spirituality with what it means to be human and makes it an integral part of all of us, whether our reasoning brain likes it or not.”
He ends his prologue, “In the end, understanding the neurological foundation of spirituality is necessary for a contemporary understanding of what it means to be human.”
Perhaps such an understanding would help to take the conflict out of the various and separative 'spiritual' approaches.
Posted by: Turan | May 29, 2017 at 05:25 AM
Hi Brian!
You wrote:
"This is why some people spend a lifetime seeking God, and never succeed in their quest. They are pursuing an impossible dream: to quench a thirst for divinity when the object of their desire doesn't exist. "
The beauty of the vase is the empty space it surrounds. It is shaped by that very space. Just as the hub of a wheel, without any substance at all, is the center of all that action, which revolves with absolute respect, around it. You might say the wheel worships that empty hub.
But you could also say this is what makes the entire creation function.
Your point actually justifies the worship of something undefineable. Just like the pursuit of any ideal, any objective, any greater vision. At a distance, it's always out of focus. That doesn't make it purely imaginary. It makes imagination a very distorted lens, that is actually taking in real light.
If thirst were so natural, why invent so many drinks?
As you write, we are not connected in a healthy way with our own thirst.
One could argue that all these soft drinks are proof that water isn't really adequate, and doesn't really do anything....One could interview many people hooked on Cola, beer and wine, and use their tens of thousands of testimonies as proof that water is really nothing and has no utility at all for them. "Water might be fine for someone else, but it just doesn't do it for me....I find it empty and useless...so why drink it?"
It takes a real scientist to rise above that limited thinking, from limited experience, from addiction, from so much conditioning that has taken that person away from their own natural state.
But a few quiet moments can connect us with lots of things within us.
And the quieter we are, the more we witness.
That is very natural.
And what you witness is Divine, because it is part of You...not replaceable.
God is not some distant thing. As Sawan Singh wrote, that's a wrong concept.
"God" by any definition is an artificial concept. The definition itself is a label.
Our best attempt to mentally model and define.
The experience of something transcendent is something else. We didn't create it. It creates us.
If you cling to a concept of God, you can never own that, never reach that.
But if you understand what is inside you better, starting with your own subconscious mind, and then ..?
We'll that's very healthy. Doesn't require definitions.
Striving for "God" is very healthy if it leads one to sit still and consider who and what they really are. Then we do much less harm, and we might find peace, and even ecstatic joy.
Now water has a real taste to us. A taste that no laced and drugged drink, no market-driven addictions, and no human-constructed philosophy or religion, can compete with.
When you see the constellations, when you see the sky, all questions are erased in that moment.
And then you just want to keep sitting and to see it again, to see more, and to feel that joy.
I wouldn't call it anything but experience. But like water, it is the experience we were meant for.
Posted by: Spence Tepper | June 05, 2017 at 10:17 AM
In a meaningless and purposeless Universe-the human mind is a fantastic vehicle of "rationality"-like-Why not ten GODS instead of just ONE-EH????(I am Canadian-and proud of it!-I saw a real wolf to-day-;^)).....v152
Posted by: Josephine Later | December 31, 2017 at 06:18 PM
Hey Brian, You have taken the center road to understanding and have seen the logic in not eating and drinking to excess,
there could also be an understanding that thirst for God could be excessive,
if there was a belief in duality where the material half of ourselves that is driven by the senses wishes to overindulge in food and or drink among other vices and extravagances needs to be recognized and controlled,
this is where fasting would come in, a denial of basic sustenance for a short period can weaken the materialistic side and give more power to the spiritual side,
this does not have to end with food and drink, all of the vices and liberties taken as our senses deem necessary can be controlled with a greater spiritual outcome,
it has taken me over 45 years to recognize this fact and I also have searched for things that are not obviously apparent,
as you mention about eating and drinking, keeping a balance is a good healthy practice,
but realizing that it will not kill you to not eat for a couple of days or not watch television or smoke or do any of the excessive things that you may enjoy can give you greater control of your life and allow for enhanced spiritual experiences especially during meditation.
Posted by: Lance | July 27, 2020 at 03:43 PM