Vital or Trivial?

After yesterday's boost in positivity, I felt pretty good all day.  Even after getting home and having to do homework with my son (ah, spring break was a nice vacation from the nightly homework), still, I felt good mentally.  I did notice myself wanting to BBMHB (binge behind my husband's back) but once I got out in the kitchen, nothing really sounded good.  I mean, we have some half-eaten bags of chips and such, but none of it felt indulgent enough to my not-super-hungry brain.   So, I waited until it was nearly bedtime and had my usual snack of cheese before snoozetime.  The only thing I can think of that would have had me in that state is the thought about cleaning things up with my diet.  I didn't eat crazy yesterday, but I was thinking about how I should be eating less carbs than I have been lately, and questioning all the dairy I've been eating.  I don't want to complicate things because then I end up just giving up, because honestly, the having to be so focused on the stuff all the time is part of what makes me obssess. 
Today is going fine with food, I had my bagel with cream cheese for breakfast, and organic, raw, unsalted pumpkin seeds for a snack, and for lunch I've gone back to cottage cheese with chives and a cucumber.  Since I rarely have a snack between lunch and dinner I haven't gone through the trouble to bring anything with me to work, but I have a few of the lower sugar Luna bars with me all the time in case I become famished to the point of wuthering away!  Dinner this week is a nice salad with raspberries, blueberries, slivered almonds and cottage cheese on top.  It is so good, and makes it feel like summer. 
My reading of the Dhammapada continues.  I feel like the message for yesterday and today is really though-provoking:
      "The deluded, imagining trivial things to be vital to life, follow their vain fancies and never attain the highest knowledge.
     But the wise, knowing what is trivial and what is vital, set their thoughts on the supreme goal and attain the highest knowledge."


Of course, there is a calmness in Buddhist lessons, making me stop to think about the useless things I surround myself with.  Things, material items, food/calories I don't need, I even talk too much and use words more words than are needed sometimes, I spew too much emotion when in a few minutes or hours, things will change and I discover that the emotional discharge wasn't needed.  Don't get me wrong, I'm not ready to get rid of all my possessions, shave my head, don a robe and go begging for my daily meal.  I do think there is a point in the message, but balance is always needed too. 
Maybe that was a key to my recent success with being on-track, I was easily aware of when an extra indulgent treat was vital, or when it was just my brain being a brat.  Then I just stopped paying attention to it and let the brat take over.  I wasn't being the wise one from the lines above, I was the deluded.  Granted, it was only a few days worth of chaos, not entire weeks or months, but it is really easy to let myself get sucked into the rut of eating without thinking.  And once I'm there, it's hard to get out. 
So, that is my lesson to focus on today.  Maybe for today, I will keep this short and simple and save the rest of the words for quiet meditation later.  My guess is that they aren't important enough to remember that long anyway so I'll let them evaporate into the universe.  Feels good to be back in the state of thinking about what I'm doing.

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