The Three Centers: Belly Brain

I remember going to Steve Muhammad’s hotel room during one of his visits to Los Angeles. We talked, me standing, him sitting on the edge of his bed. As he spoke, he was looking at a bottle of water sitting next to the television set. After a while I asked him: “are you thirsty?”

“Yes,” he said, calmly looking at that bottle.

I wondered if perhaps his back was hurting, and he couldn’t stand up easily.

“Would you like some water?”

“Yes.”

“Can I get it for you?”

The tiniest of smiles. “No.”

I was getting frustrated. What the @#$$ was going on? I asked him.

“I’m developing my will power,” he said. He was STUDYING the very urge to drink. By resisting it, the “life drive” stuff was coming up, the useful demons that say “drink or die!”

Eventually he took that drink. But not before he’d learned something that I didn’t understand. THE DEMONS IN YOUR HEAD WILL LIE TO YOU. They will say “you’ll die if you don’t eat, drink, whatever.”

I remember when I used to run five miles a day. Every time, at about the 1.5 mile level, my body started saying “you’re killing me!” at first I would stop. Then I figured that if I was gonna die running, I’d probably die later that day anyway. Might as well die being who I wanted to be. So the next time, when those voices came up, I told them to get screwed. And somewhere about the 2.5 mile mark — they shut up…