From: tmwg@inxservices.com
Newsgroups: alt.consciousness.4th-way
Subject: Dissatisfaction
Date: Tue, 01 Apr 1997 21:05:07 -0800

>
> > Man is meant to feel dissatisfied.
>
> I don't like that! :D

    I had completely forgotten about that particular experience. Now that it is brought to mind, I remember that there was a time when I could tell what phase the moon was in without even looking out the window or going outside a building, simply by observing the inner state of dissatisfaction. As the moon changed phases, so did the dissatisfaction (generally the subject and the particular sense that was hungry, which is all that dissatisfaction means), until POOF! it all just disappeared and acted in a generally disorganized fashion for another few weeks. Yuck!
    I did occassionally give in to the urge to satisify those sensory hungers during the lunar phases. Often I was just too stubborn, and would wait it out, having observed from experience that it would end by itself, without any kind of eating, as the outside influence changed.
    Inner directed is much more interesting to this one. Those outer directed hungers just come and go, not even as satisfying as eating a meal, which also comes and goes, but satisfies a necessary physical and biological requirement -- because they never satisfy but for a short moment and even then only sometimes, not even every time.
    It requires considerable observation to see the source of dissatisfaction. Sometimes it takes some effort to determine even which sense is hungry in the general clamor of the senses. I'd quite forgotten how useful that is to see, and how much observation it requires. The dissatisfactions that come from within require a real meal to end the hunger pangs, even if only for a moment -- they're not easily gratified by imaginary or non-nutritional food. Sometimes, finding the meal that will satisfy the hunger is quite an interesting journey in itself.
    By the way, Bill, I did notice the irony. It just seemed such an incredible useful subject to comment on that I chose to ignore it. Wasn't anything personal, just grabbed the opportunity to look at a subject that I personally found very interesting to consider at a certain point in the journey. Looking back, I now see that understanding something about eating was part of what Sven just mentioned: it was one aspect of what eventually ended the lunar influence for this one, and allowed a more subtle but much more illuminating influence to enter instead.
    The subject of dissatisfaction/hunger and eating was at one time something of considerable interest and investigation. As long as one is only hungry for food that satisfies the obvious and very unsubtle and demanding physical senses, it is difficult to be aware of more subtle hungers that can be just as demanding to the attention given the opportunity. Someone not aware of being hungry is neither interested in obtaining nor in eating food that would satisfy a seemingly non-existent hunger. One only need look around to see that most are so caught up in the feeding of these very attention-demanding physical hungers that they never even notice other more subtle hungers. Most simply eat for distraction, not nutrition: lots of taste, little or no calories for energy or food value for the building of tissues. Many seem to operate on the theory that if they satisfy these hungers, the more subtle hungers will become obvious when the others are out of the way. Yet it doesn't seem to work that way. Satisfy one, another is hungry. By the time the next one is satisfied, the first is hungry again.
    Fasting seems to be a better way to find out what one is truly hungry for. Fast for a time from the satisfaction of the obvious, physical/sexual/emotional/intellectual hungers, and other more subtle hungers intrude once one has become somewhat used to being hungry for the other more obvious ones.
    To get any value from food, one must first be hungry. Then one must obtain food, eat, and digest it. On the physical this is obvious; it's just as true on other levels. I've met a lot of people over the years who have eaten so much that they have one hell of a bad case of indigestion. Even having found proper food, it does them no good until it is digested and incorporated into the body. So even in these more subtle hungers, most eat solely for taste and distraction. They rush from meal to meal, never pausing to allow themselves to digest what they have eaten. Kind of a spiritual eating disorder ;)
    To see nutrition as just another aspect of the biological part of being a human being is a pretty freeing thing. Eat for nutrition, whether the hunger is for meat or vegetables or attention or approval. That's all just part of being in a body. If you want to hang out in meat for a while, you get to take care of the meat ;) Eat for taste occassionally, as a treat. But just eating for taste results in malnutrition, physically and sexually and emotionally and intellectually and spiritually. Look at how much effort is put into making food that is necessary for the body's well-being taste good, just so that people will eat it!
    Many who offer other kinds of food come up against the expectation of the diners that they make the food appetizing to the taste, a lot. Some do such a good job of sugar-coating it that very little of the actual food remains under the sugar coating, kind of like breakfast cereal for kids. People tend to like these chefs. Some don't bother at all. And there's probably everything in between, just as with other types of chefs.
    To see that biological requirements have little to do