I am writing this post after moving my body while being cold and uncomfortable for about forty minutes.
What was I doing?
Jogging.
Why was I doing this?
Because my modern life has made me so sedentary that I have to supplement my life with activity.
Because my modern life has me so comfortable in temperature-controlled environments that my body no longer gets the necessary practice in competing with different temperatures that I have to put myself in places where I am hot or cold.
Because I want to be healthy.
Sedentary lifestyle and all these “comforts” are making us sick. The growing catalogue of diseases and ailments in Western Society is too long to try and name them all as are the benefits from movement, breath, and so forth.
On the spiritual path, we surrender to reality.
That reality is that we need to discipline ourselves to support our healthspan and lifespan.
The Power of Discipline
The title of this blog post is a made-up word, and it’s part of me inviting you into a Jim Tolles Theory. This is different than spiritual truth. Who knows what the future holds?
However, I think there are going to be a few splits in the human species as we go through the turmoil of adjusting to the lifestyles we have created.
I, like many of you, have been scouring resources around hunter-gatherers. But the reality is that barring a truly horrific catastrophe and given the vast changes to our environments, all 8 billion of us can’t go back to hunter-gathering.
So how will we live in the modern world in a way that supports longevity and healthspan?–healthspan are the number of years we are healthy; lifespan is just how long we are alive.
We’re going to have to discipline ourselves.
Nature used to discipline us around activity, sugar, rest, and so forth.
We’ve overcome those limitations. Unfortunately, that’s lead to all kinds of “mismatch” diseases. It’s hard to become diabetic in a world where you have to move all the time and sugar is rare.
In this world, sitting and eating sugar has been made exceptionally easy. I remember during the pandemic when someone’s order of candy landed at my doorstep. It was 10 pounds of different types of candies in a bag.
UGH!
Needless to say, I didn’t eat it, and it found its way to a dumpster after sitting outside and no one claiming it.
That too was a form of discipline. I had the opportunity. I said no.
The Power of the Spiritual Path
Spiritual paths of all kinds need to help people with discipline. The virtues of the right kinds of discipline and self-limitation need to be reinforced and reinstated.
Those of us who do this will likely have less disease, longer lifespans, and longer healthspans. The coming generations who come from us will become Homo Disciplinus.
Those who don’t and who don’t have some sort of genetic resilience and cultural help probably will have more and more degraded lives full of sickness. Eventually, they will get weeded out of the species.
Natural selection is hard.
But some of this hardness is needed to be healthy.
7-Day Jim Tolles Breakfast Challenge
4 Comments
Lucky for me I’m on my feet all day as I work in a busy retail shop.
I quite enjoy it!
I once got really sick after working an office job, too much sitting around in air con – I hated it!!
Hi Jim, may I point out (humbly and respectfully) my awareness of something in this read? I was immediately drawn to the part on eating sugar, you said (made it’s way to dumpster). I’m not an environmentalist it simply struck me as “isn’t there somewhere it could have been more useful. You mentioned our preservation while creating harm to environment by not renewing a resource that simply wasn’t usable to you”. Please allow me just to say my life theme (currently anyway) is communication. This is kind of me, working on it. I feel like I was supposed to humble you a little. I’m joking totally I just felt compelled to point it out because I respect how u help people and just that one action or phrase may have turned a lot of potential seekers away. Wow this communication thing is harder than I thought it would be…but reflect, transmute and move on… thats my message.
I don’t know, everytime i think myself “i need to be healthy” everything get worse. Its like i can’t actually be “healthy”.
I’m born in family where a kid like me always be make fun of, judging for being skinny, like “you are skinny af” *unhealthy” “weak”. Those beliefs about my body.
Recently im learning about “rest” in your blog and feel blessed, i don’t need trying to be better anymore, im just doing what feel “good” for me.
I’m glad that you are learning about self-acceptance.