rolling up the sleeves,

what follows is a "letter" that i'd written to paul s. regarding his recent post to the 90 day ILP log. after reading over what i'd written, i knew that i had to stop sending people these long drawn out responses to their blogs and just write in one myself. if your dog doesn't need feeding at the moment, have a glance.

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paulos,

"No life could ever fit a "module", no existence could be reduced to "you must do this" and "you ought to try that". Inside I am feeling the old soul call of the rebel, rising up to break the new chains I've volunteered for it to submit to."

well, here's the thing - there is much to be learned from the freedom actually GAINED by placing/recognizing limitations upon/within oneself. i am a firm believer in the notion of "liberation through limitation". allow me to share with you a bit of life-story:

for a long time i struggled with the notion of being "only" a chef when in fact i was interested in a myriad of other things/pursuits, some of which i felt i was proficient at and not at all incapable of. i was unhappy with food preparation being my plot in the world - to cook food and come up with recipes for people to say "wow". that's it? fucking lame. what about my love of philosophy, higher thought, ecology, sustainability, sitting practice, aesthetics, writing, la la la?

after realizing that my relationship to food is the most problematic relation in my life, and has been for years, i came to see that by providing food to others, and simply being around it constantly, might be the best thing i could do to overcome its stranglehold on my will (this realization came upon me whilst reading "the eating gorilla comes in peace" by the inimitable Da). once i really came to grips that this would be my calling in life and had accepted it as being my "life's work", the notion of karmic employment came to the fore. i was being called to develop a healthy relationship to food and then to share the unfolding of these findings/realizations with others along the way. but these offerings were no longer bound to simply cooking people food in a restaurant. this paradigm, already in serious peril since first attending culinary school, had been blown out of the water. the scraps had begun to sink and i was left to construct a better vessel for my body-mind (in both ways!)

in recognizing this, i suddenly felt a liberation unlike any i had before. i was finding myself saying Yes to most everything in my mind and to that which was being thrown at me from outside. of course this realization wavered in undulating seas of habitual pattering, decades old - and yet, to contemplate that i had a definitive purpose, if i wanted to address and engage it, in the relative realm was strangely freeing as i was then able to allow my intuition and "creative problem solver" to run wild. but only because he was given a specific task to perform. he was given a set of parameters (or limitations) within which to operate and has since been pulling me into numerous healthy, intriguing and stimulating personal relationships, virtual and meat-spaced, as well as having created for me a seemingly endless list of "to-do's" to accomplish or at least to map out {enter AQAL}. he sometimes does such a good job that i would prefer to simply make the lists themselves than to address their need for immediate manifestation. but once i threw my intention out into the world, things began to come back to me in a more than serendipitous fashion. 

now i am able to see how it is that i can incorporate/enable most of the interests previously stated - in the service of my current karmic employment. of course this is not the only karma that i have to burn! as i alluded to above, there is of course my incredible ability to procrastinate - a sense of downright laziness so lazy that it has to be connected to some kind of perverted sense of innate doubt deep within. and i'm talking Doubt with a capital D. maybe double D's, if you catch my drift. something that simply takes over the whole of conscious awareness. debilitating some days. but that, my friend , is another story. karma police are on my ass for this one, breath so hot on my neck that it could cook an egg. almost hard boiled.

i am in the PROCESS of engaging all of my talents and interests in the service of this "food thang" and there is still much work to do - but, i have limited my self and thus liberated the Self and all her minions to work through me. or, at least this is the theory... there is much work to do, and with every day that goes by, i am more and more convinced that it shall not be accomplished within one lifetime - how ignorant to think that it could be! and yet, this may have something to do with my tendency to procrastinate: if it can't be started and finished, completed to a certain set of expectations, i am often guilty of not doing anything at all.

thoughts?

come to think of it, this may be my long lost inaugural blog entry, waiting to be born/posted.

yes, i'll do it.

[ed. - and here it is)

~chef