Depletion (pointless), avoiding

A quiet treatment this week, at the acupuncturist's. Many points with lovely poetic names, like "Spirit Burial Ground" and "Utmost Source." I also got "Great Mound," on first blush not so poetic, but it's about high ground upon which to stand and thus gain greater vision.

"Utmost Source," I get a lot. One of its uses is to reconnect you with the divine, with the "utmost source." Apparently, I get disconnected from the divine a lot, because I get this point a lot. Which is something I've been feeling myself, a lot, and something I tell the acupuncturist a lot (which may be why I get that point a lot).

But something else interesting I've observed recently: Time was when I needed the TV as an anodyne. For some reason, in particular I found Mythbusters especially comforting. But now, I'm noticing that watching the TV doesn't make me feel better, it makes me feel worse. Not the subject matter, simply the activity of watching the TV makes me feel worse. Same for the Internet; time was I enjoyed browsing and surfing and wandering around the information superhighway, but now I'm finding that when I reach for the "heroin vibes" that I used to get out of the Internet, it doesn't take long but I start feeling depleted: intellectually, spiritually, and energetically.

So I think I need to embark on an electronic fast. "Looking things up" on the Internet, yes; "surfing," no. "Watching something good on TV that makes me feel good:" yes; "watching not-very-good TV to feel less bad," especially fifth-time-repeated reruns: no. And in particular, no surfing news sites. The dueling "arguments" in today's political "dialog" are neither argumentative (in the legal/logical sense) nor "dialog" (in any sense), and given that MS is all about "againstness," I really need to be immersing myself in imagery of reconciliation, not shouting matches and ego-puffery. I've never been much interested in watching that happen live, but I need to even avoid reading the reporting of such. (An aside: Japanese will call people like that a pufferfish: big and spiky and scary looking on the outside, but inside... empty.)

If I'm too tired to [fill in the blank], I need to lie down and rest, not sort-of-engage my brain and pizzle out what little energy remains. If I don't feel like doing anything but sitting, I need to sit outside in fresh air (temperature permitting), or at least sit facing the sunlight rather than facing the interior of the house.

A great idea, on paper. Let's see how well I can execute it. I've already started to ease my way out of my electronic-addiction habits, and I think it's already working. We'll see how far I can take it.