When Eating Pizza Is Healthier than Getting Up at 4:30 AM

When healthy habits don’t contribute to your wellbeing

This is a tale of how living by someone else’s rules doesn’t work. And when eating pizza does allow for inner expansion. I have been going to India every 3–4 years for the last 23 years. In total spending 7 years living in India. Ninety percent of the time I was living in ashrams, studying Advaita Vedanta (Indian philosophy) and Sanskrit (Indian language.) When living in ashrams, you have to live by someone else rules.

There is a set schedule you must follow. That is non-negotiable. Every minute of the day is predetermined. From 4:15 am wake up to lights out at 9 pm.

While it is a positive as you don’t have to think about what to do, it’s restrictive, as you cannot express yourself freely. The schedule doesn’t allow for creativity and spontaneity.

Living by another’s philosophy doesn’t allow freedom to express your inner essence.

When living in the ashrams, you rarely leave the ashram. It’s also not allowed. Your external environment remains static. The rule of not leaving helped me control the external world. If the outside world doesn’t change, then it’s less likely to trigger a repressed emotion.

The ashram life cuts out the external distractions to study. No sex. No tv.

This allows you to focus your time and energy on study and meditation.

But you cannot have views that are opposed to the Guru. If you do, you are quickly ostracized. And in some circumstances, you are escorted from the ashram. I saw an Indian man in his 20s who was escorted off the ashram and walked to the local train stations when he was found to be handing out another guru’s books.

In ashrams that follow the path of knowledge (this is a scriptural study), emotions are dismissed to focus on developing the intellect and gaining “knowledge.”

When home life is ashram life

When back in Australia, I would, to a degree, still follow ashram rules.

But after years of spiritual bypassing, several years ago, I gave up the ashram rules.

To give up something that is unhealthy can be difficult. Because it provides you with some level of security. And security equals comfort.

More recently, it’s been giving up years of being an organic eating vegan. This gave way to the pleasure of pizzas and chocolate. Giving up self-inflicting rules allowed for emotions bubbling up to the surface. After not crying for 20 years, tears came up, along with anger and sadness. But more importantly, joy and happiness shine through from the inside. It’s a hard one to decide what rules and habits help and what hinder. What’s appropriate for your well-being changes, it depends on what is appropriate at the moment.

Make your own rules that allow you to expand. For me, eating more cheesy pizza and fewer 4:30 am starts has allowed me to be more relaxed and creative.

Living from a place of relaxing in the present moment has allowed for the release of pressure that comes from not wanting to do things I don’t want to do.

Doing the things I want to do makes me happy. Not the type of happy with a goofy grin, but it lets out an inner contentment.

When you get what you want, you are happy. A side benefit is the judgment of others decreases significantly. While you don’t automatically become bulletproof to being influenced by the actions of others, their actions affect you a lot less.

Live your life on your terms. Only you know your own Truth.

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