What am i trying to achieve? Bare with me as i translate feeling into word.. Being a member of both the outer-world (everything external to my body - landscape) and a member of an inner-world (a kind of mindscape) i feel at the mercy of strong habit/behavior patterns accumulated growing up.
I'm learning to become familiar with the space in which i can have at least some say,choice, negotiation to go through with the action/deed or not. So it doesnt stay on a purely mechanistic knee-jerk action/reaction response level with a part of me that is observing it happening in a horrified manner.
In other words..i want to learn more about the things that drive me away from, or better yet, to preserve, the state that i feel after a wonderful hatha yoga class, walking through the woods, or just maintaining a present moment awareness..like right NOW.
im currently using the yogic science model to do just this...
so.. The Four Fountains (some people/traditions/martial arts call them animal energies, some call them reptilian functionality etc..) food, sleep, sex, self-preservation regulating them (not inhibiting or shunning but balancing) can allow - anyone - to access, allegedly, the source of that which animates us.
'we are fishing for minnow off the backs of whales'
you dont have to become a monastic.. you just need to get good at time management and that is what i am struggling with