What I've learned since moving to D.C. (some of which should be obvious): 0107

5301.  Rather than fantasizing or entertaining inward sexual imagery of any kind, remain totally present, aware of your own body, breath and mind, and especially attentive to your partner.  Break the masturbatory habit of inward fantasy by consciously practicing sex as a relational play of love with your partner;

5302.  Keep your body and breath relaxed and full.  Especially keep the front of your body relaxed, so that your belly is vast and your heart is soft and wide.  This will help prevent too much tension from accumulating in any one area;

5303.  Learn to feel into and then through your partner, so that your attention is directed beyond your own sensations and even beyond your partner’s sensations.  Practice feeling outward, without limit, as if you were feeling to infinity.  Whatever you are feeling, feel it fully and then feel through and beyond it so that sex becomes a constant feeling through and beyond every sensation rather than focusing on any particular sensation;

5304.  Throughout the day and during the sexual session, practice breathing so that your inhalation moves energy down the front of your body and the exhalation moves energy up your spine.  Excessive, chronic thinking or addiction to ejaculation is often a sign that your energy is blocked and you are not yet breathing fully in this circle throughout the day;

5305.  During sex, occasionally practice the upward contraction of the floor of your pelvis while breathing sexual energy up your spine so it fills your whole body.  Especially as you begin to approach orgasm, you can combine the upward contraction of your pelvic floor with breathing up the spine in order to shoot your orgasm up into your brain and even out through the top of your head rather than down and out your genitals.  This upward orgasm will then feel like it is gently seeping down through every cell of your body saturating you with thick open light;

5306.  Although you and your woman are equal beings, you are very different creatures.  If she has a feminine sexual essence, her core will be fulfilled when love is flowing.  For example, she can experience difficulties in her career, but if full love is flowing in her life with her children, friends and with you then her core will be fulfilled;

5307.  If you have a masculine sexual essence, then your woman and children can be loving you all day and night, but if your career or mission is obstructed, you will not feel at ease.  You won’t even want to share much intimate time with your woman until you have your career or mission back on track;

5308.  Your woman’s core is fulfilled by love.  Your core is released from stress by aligning your life with your mission.  To you, intimacy is something to be enjoyed in addition to your purpose.  To your woman, intimacy is at the core of her life and the tone of your intimacy colors everything else she does;

5309.  When your intimacy is going great, your woman’s life is filled with the color of love.  She feels good at work, at home, in bed.  When the intimacy is not going so great, when your woman feels unloved, rejected, hurt or abandoned by you then her day will be colored by hurt.  At work, at home and in the bed, the pain of “unlove” will color her disposition;

5310.  When your intimacy is going bad, you can’t wait to leave the house and go to work; there, you can be in your element, aligned with your purpose and happy.  For you, the intimacy is just one aspect of your life.  When you are absorbed in your mission, you often forget entirely about your intimacy.  For your woman, the intimacy is at the core of her life and colors everything else she does.  This is the primary asymmetry in intimacy;

5311.  If your woman has rejected her own feminine core, then she will struggle against her inherent heart-connection with you.  She will try to identify with her masculine side, attempting to de-prioritize you and your relationship.  She will think that she must “live her own life” and put more energy into her own career, for instance.  While it is obviously healthy for every man and woman to learn to become whole and independent, it is self-destructive for your woman to try to lessen the import of your relationship in her life.  If she has a feminine sexual essence, the desire for the flow of love is at her core, no matter how dedicated she is to her career or other activities;

5312.  The desire for intimate loving is as central to your woman’s life as the mission toward freedom – financial, psychological and spiritual – is to yours.  Think of how many hours a day you dedicate to your mission and compare that with how many hours a day you spend serving your woman’s deep desire for the magnification of love.  If you want her to honor and support you in your quest for freedom, you must honor and support her in her love of loving;

5313.  If you have a masculine essence and your woman has a feminine essence, you will never be as concerned, distraught or elated about your intimacy as your woman is.  Don’t fake it.  Don’t try to act concerned for the sake of your woman.  She can feel where you are really at.  Instead, be authentic to your core desires and dedicate your life, with utter impeccability, to your highest goals;

5314.  When your life is truly aligned with your highest purpose, you will become more present, more loving and more humorous.  Your woman will then be the first recipient of your magnified presence, love and humor.  If your intimacy is not constantly growing in this way, your life is not aligned with your highest purpose;

5315.  If your woman devotes herself to her true heart desires, you will feel it.  Her energy, radiance, wisdom and power to create heaven on earth will feed you constantly, even when it is not directed toward you.  You will be inspired by her magic, enchanted by her sexuality, awed by her knowingness and enlivened by the life that flows so lovingly through her body.  However, if she has chosen to deny her heart desire and adopt more masculine goals of purpose and mission as her core needs, both of you will suffer.  Her radiance will diminish, her guardedness will increase and neither of your hearts will feel relaxed in the intimacy;

5316.  Your woman could be a corporate executive and you could be a househusband.  That’s fine as long as you are living your highest purpose and her life is devoted to love.  Honor this primary asymmetry in yourself and in your woman.  Only when you are willing to support each other’s core desires will the intimacy give each of you what you want and then perhaps bring you beyond even that into the utter joy of being of which your relationship is only a hope;

5317.  In a review of studies where people consumed a mixture of omega-3 and omega-6 fats, there was a 27 percent reduction in heart attacks and death;

5318.  If studies increased only omega-6 fats, there was a 13 percent increase in heart attacks;

5319.  Randomized trials that used omega-6 fats alone (without any omega-3 fats) while reducing saturated and trans fats also showed an increased risk of death’

5320.  Many of the current recommendations from studies to consume omega-6 fats omitted a number of important studies and don’t distinguish between studies in which people only consumed omega-6 fats from those in which people consumed a combination of omega-3 and omega-6 fats;

5321.  Omega-6 fats easily oxidize or go rancid, which makes any cholesterol you do have much more likely to cause heart disease.  Even if your cholesterol is low, if it is oxidized or rancid, it is much more likely to cause heart attacks.  These fats are called OXLAMs or oxidized linoleic acid metabolites; think of them as rancid fats.  They are what make up the cholesterol plaques in your arteries;

5322.  There’s a public library in the Watergate (complex);

5323.  Never order a soda at Kingbird (in the Watergate Hotel in D.C).  It’s $6.00 for a dinky, 8 oz. bottle of Coke;

5324.  There are masculine and feminine gifts in intimacy and each gift comes with its own responsibility.  The direction of growth of a relationship is primarily the man’s responsibility.  The energy of an intimacy – pleasure, sexual flow and vitality – is primarily the woman’s responsibility.  A simplified way of saying this is that the man is responsible for the woman’s depth of love or openness of mood and the woman is responsible for the man’s “erection” or energy in the body;

5325.  Once you have grown into independent adulthood, you no longer need somebody to take care of you.  You can be responsible for yourself.  In particular, you realize that you are responsible for your own happiness.  Nobody can live your life for you.  You must create your own health, success and happiness;

5326.  Beyond self-responsibility lies the responsibility to give your gift.  It is important to grow beyond dependence on your intimate partner for your own happiness.  But it’s equally important to grow beyond simple independence and autonomy.  The next stage of intimacy after personal independence has been attained is the mutual flow of gifting or serving each other in love;

5327.  Your masculine gift is to know where you are, where you want to be and what you need to do to get there.  If you don’t know one of these then you need to discover it by any means necessary.  This vision is, essentially, the basic gift you have to offer your woman as well as the world.  If you have no higher vision than the day-to-day grind of housework, job, childcare, TV and vacations, you are failing your birthright.  Your woman will feel cheated and ungifted by you as will the world.  And they will both give you less of their gifts in return;

5328.  If your woman is always stressed out, you need to know what she could do with her life, in very practical terms, so she can relax.  If your woman feels unfulfilled most of the time, you need to know what she is missing;

5329.  Your main gift in intimacy is to guide her, moment by moment, out of her moods and into the openness of loving.  And then, day by day, to guide her life into greater degrees of divine love, even beyond the relationship, so that her life becomes primarily communion, gifting and celebration;

5330.  Like a musician practicing his art, you must practice, daily, the art of feeling through your fear, feeling to your edge and then living just beyond your edge neither slinking into private consolation nor pushing so hard you disconnect from your source.  The source that is your deepest truth must become more and more the impulse of your life.  Over time, all of your activities must become aligned to this source and so must your relationship;

5331.  Because you probably tend to become lost in your thoughts, in your goals and in your projects, one of the main gifts your woman can offer you is getting you into your body, into the present, into love, which connects you to your source.  Through her touch, her loving and her attractiveness, she can also give you energy so that your whole body becomes like an erection, full and alive and ready to penetrate the world into love.  If you have a masculine sexual essence, her special gift to you is to bring you back into your body with the attractive force of her feminine energy;

5332.  Direction in life is a masculine priority even in intimate relationship.  A less spiritually mature man may say to his woman, “My way or the highway!”  A man in the process of growing will often soften his direction and seek a compromise with his woman, playing Mr. Nice Guy.  But a superior man will not settle for less than the fullest incarnation of love of which he and his woman are capable.  With compassion, he slices through all bullshit and demands authenticity and humor.  It’s as if he were saying to his woman, “The divine way or the highway!”  It’s the same masculine insistence on direction that a weaker man will demand.  But rather than wanting his woman to follow his personal direction, a superior man wants her to move in the direction that most serves her growth in love and happiness;

5333.  If you don’t know your own direction in life, you certainly will stand on shaky ground offering your woman direction.  The first step is to align your own life so that, at least in this present moment, you are living at your edge, fully aligned with your sense of purpose.  If you are not absolutely certain that, in this moment, you are living exactly the life you need to then your woman will feel your lack of clarity and she will fight any kind of guidance you offer her;

5334.  If you don’t cut through and take direction, your woman will.  Masculine and feminine energies in intimacy are governed by the law of conservation.  The less masculine direction you are living in truth, the more masculine direction your woman will take on.  If you are working hard, but actually not living your true gift then your woman will resent your lack of deep direction.  She will begin to take on the masculine herself, trying to cut through your lolling, so that you feel the urgency, connect to your depth and really give your gift;

5335.  At your core, you are masculine, her masculine attempt to cut through your lolling will depolarize you.  You will bash heads with her, like two rams, since both of you are in your masculine.  And if you move into your feminine, things may get worse.  A deep habit may develop wherein no matter how strong you are in the business world, you become “pussy whipped” in your relationship.  Your woman gets sharp and masculine, you become falsely receptive and agreeable and, meanwhile, both of you feel like vomiting;

5336.  If your woman is chronically sharp with you, it is most likely a sign that, regardless of how successful you are outside of your intimacy, you are not aligning both of your lives with the highest truth.  You are not cutting through the underbrush of your duties and your woman’s moods to reveal the fertile source of your lives.  And so your woman must wield her own sword.  By the law of conservation of masculine and feminine energy, whatever masculine gifts you aren’t offering, your woman will naturally try to offer.  But since, in truth, your core is masculine, her masculine offerings will most likely turn you off, eventually even repulsing you;

5337.  A man rediscovers and fine tunes his purpose in solitude, in challenging situations and in the company of other men who won’t settle for his bullshit.  But women strengthen their feminine radiance best in the company of other women in mutual celebration and play.  A man must arrange for both forms of restoration: his own solitude and men’s gatherings and his woman’s time with other women;

5338.  If you spend too much time with your woman, you will rub off on each other in the worst way.  In order to get along together, she will begin to adopt your masculine patterns of speech, denying her feminine desire to flow in play and pleasure without having to make masculine-style sense or fulfill a purpose.  You will begin to adopt her feminine patterns of touch and affection, denying your desire to get down to it, with your mission or your woman.  Instead, you will find yourself pecking your woman on the cheek or giving her hugs and pats of lovey-dovey reassurance.  In short, the goddess and the warrior will become neutralized householders sharing only the mildest play of sexual polarity;

5339.  In order to enliven her feminine core, your woman should spend time every day in absolute abandon and celebration.  During these times of dancing, singing, laughter and sheer delight, her body and mind should be totally released of any obligation to be masculine – directed, controlled, structured or goal-oriented.  These occasions are most rejuvenating when she is with other women, magnifying and rejoicing in each other’s’ feminine radiance and flow.  If your woman lacks this frequent feminine rejuvenation, she will develop symptoms of depressed feminine energy: disease (especially in her more feminine parts), lack of life energy, low sexual desire and enjoyment and a blue, downhearted, despondent disposition;

5340.  Much of the modern men’s movement has concentrated on men reclaiming their inner feminine energy.  If you want to revitalize your own feminine energy, then you can do pretty much the same as women do to revitalize their feminine energy.  You can go out into the woods and sing and dance and laugh with your friends.  For men who have become rigidly stuck in their masculine direction, without allowing the flow of joy and sharing in their lives, this is good medicine;

5341.  For men who have lost their sense of purpose, who don’t know what their life is about or who have trouble aligning their life with their truth, singing and dancing aren’t the remedy.  The cure for lack of purpose is to be challenged to live at your edge, since you have lost the capacity to live there by yourself;

5342.  The two ways to bring you right to your masculine edge of power are austerity and challenge;

5343.  Austerity means to eliminate the comforts and cushions in your life that you have learned to snuggle into and lose wakefulness.  Take away anything that dulls your edge.  No newspapers or magazines.  No TV.  No candy, cookies or sweets.  No sex.  No cuddling.  No reading of anything at all while you eat or sit on the toilet.  Reduce working time to a necessary minimum.  No movies.  No conversation that isn’t about truth, love or the divine;

5344.  If you take on these disciplines for a few weeks as well as any other disciplines that may particularly cut through your unique habits of dullness then your life will be stripped of routine distraction.  All that will be left is the edge you have been avoiding by means of your daily routine.  You will have to face the basic discomfort and dissatisfaction that is the hidden texture of your life.  You will be alive with the challenge of living your truth rather than hiding from it;

5345.  Unadorned suffering is the bedmate of masculine growth.  Only by staying intimate with your personal suffering can you feel through it to its source.  By putting all your attention into work, TV, sex and reading, your suffering remains unpenetrated and the source remains hidden.  Your life becomes structured entirely by your favorite means of sidestepping the suffering you rarely allow yourself to feel.  And when you do touch the surface of your suffering, perhaps in the form of boredom, you quickly pick up a magazine or the remote control;

5346.  The other means, besides austerity, for rediscovering your masculine core is through challenge.  The more superficial forms of challenge include activities like mountain climbing, ropes courses, competitive sports and boot camp.  These forms of physical challenge instantly enliven the masculine sense of purpose and direction, in men and women;

5347.  Deeper forms of challenge involve directly giving your gift in ways that have been blocked by your fear.  If you have always been afraid of public speaking, you can take on the challenge of speaking in public once a week for three months.  If you fail and miss an appointment one week, the following week you must give three talks.  If you have always wanted to write a novel, but could never finish one, you tell your friends that you are going to complete one chapter a week (or a month) for the next year.  Every time you don’t complete your weekly goal, you owe your friends $100.00.  If you don’t complete your yearly goal, you owe them $10,000.00;

5348.  There must be a consequence for freezing in the face of fear.  There are obvious consequences for freezing in the face of fear when mountain climbing or playing competitive sports.  You must instill consequences throughout the rest of your life, unless you want to cling to the safety net of superficial pleasures;

5349.  Spend time every day in solitude with no distractions.  Just sit, for ten minutes.  No fidgeting, no channel surfing, no magazine thumbing.  Just be, exactly as you are, not trying to change anything.  Stay with your suffering until you fall through it and intuit the source of your life;

5350.  Just as your woman must regularly spend time with only women, you must regularly spend time with only men.  At least once a week, get together with your men friends to serve one another.  Cut through the bullshit and talk with each other straight.  If you feel your friend is wasting his life, tell him so, because you love him.  Welcome such criticism from your friends.  Suggest challenges for each other to take on, in order to bring each other through the fears which limit your surrender in gifting.  Always agree on consequences for not persisting in the challenge.  For instance, if you agree to ravish your wife for three hours every other day for a week, then also agree to mow your friend’s yard if you miss a day of ravishment;

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5251.  It is not time that kills delight, but familiarity, neutralization and lack of purpose.  Another man might find your woman to be quite a turn on even though she seems old-shoe to you.  It may not be your woman who has worn out, but your capacity for desire.  You may feel like having as little to do with her as possible.  But your lack of desire is only that: a lack of desire.  You have spent so much time with your woman that you have “rubbed off” on each other, like two magnets that have demagnetized each other.  Familiarity breeds depolarization and depolarization breeds contempt among lovers;

5252.  Every moment you treat your woman as simply a childcare helper or a buddy, you are neutralizing the same sexual differences that would secretly attract you to your female babysitter or business acquaintance.  Over time, you actually begin to behave more sexually neutral with your woman than you do with other women you meet throughout the day;

5253.  When your woman is looking withdrawn, dark or downright ugly, assume she is a goddess and needs your divine invasion of her heart and body.  Notice your incipient feeling of disgust for her dark mood and take utter responsibility for her transformation.  You know how fully committed you could be to, say, finishing a project at work.  Treat her mood with the some ferocity of intent.  Her mood is your challenge;

5254.  A superior man knows that when things get dreary, it is his own doing.  He knows that he is only truly happy when giving his gift, fully and to the last drop.  He knows that depolarization is a sign that he has ceased giving fully of himself and so the world and his woman have ceased responding in fullness;

5255.  A sunchoke is like a potato, but sweeter;

5256.  Sometimes you must move on, to another job or another woman.  That’s fine, if it is a true movement of growth: clear, empowering and an aspect of the ongoing giving of your gift.  But, more often than not, your first impulse to move on comes when you have ceased invading the moment with your fullest capacity to give and instead are droning along, coping rather than creating;

5257.  It only takes a moment of meeting a real challenge to bring a man back to full purpose, an emergency or a threat that demands his best.  And it only takes a moment of praise and deep appreciation to re-evoke a woman’s radiance.  It can happen to your woman at the grocery store or at the spa, when a man signals his appreciation, or it can happen at the kitchen table with you;

5258.  A good woman is a source of inspiration and attraction into the world for a man.  He must never forget, however, that neither the world nor his woman is the purpose of his existence;

5259.  In your worship of women, never forget that they die.  In your enjoyment of pleasure and delight, never forget that your sensations and feelings are fleeting and never absolutely enough.  Women can attract you, heal you and inspire your gifts, but they will never satisfy you absolutely.  Never;

5260.  The play of your body wanting her body is the most obvious hoax of fulfillment.  If you have ever gotten the woman you’ve wanted, you know that it’s never as good as you hoped for, at least not for very long.  And yet you continue to be attracted, over and over and over, to the same woman or to different women.  You are deceived by the mirage of your own desire.  You are deluded by your own excitement.  Women are not to blame.  They are to be cherished;

5261.  Women are the epitome of appearance, all appearance, everything around you, potential and actual.  And like women, all appearance seems to promise you something you want.  You want success from your job.  You want love from your woman.  You want pleasure from your body.  You want obedience from your dog.  When you don’t get what you want – when you lose money, your woman hates you, your body is in pain and your dog bites you – you are unhappy.  When you do get what you want, you are less unhappy;

5262.  Your ultimate desire is for the union of consciousness with its own luminosity, wherein all appearance is recognized as your deep, blissful nature and there is only one.  Your desire for union with a woman is a stepped-down version of this ultimate spiritual need;

5263.  You can use your desire as a doorway to spiritual oneness.  Magnify your desiring to the brink of madness.  Sustain it with full breath, relaxed body and open heart.  Embrace your woman, if you have one, and give her what you want from her.  Give it all to her.  Give it away to her.  Give her so much of what you want from her that you can’t tell who is who, the chaser has become the tail and all motion stops in the intensity of self-release.  There is only one;

5264.  In a moment of attraction, let your desire feel to her, but don’t stop there.  Feel through her.  Do this constantly.  Feel through her body when you are having sex with her.  Feel through her anger when she is raging at you.  Feel through her darkness when she seems ugly.  Feel through her beauty when she most attracts you.  By feeling through all of her forms, the superior man is not distracted or obsessed.  Rather, his attention feels through the mirage of other and he is released of need in the revelation of oneness;

5265.  Ejaculation, for the most part, actually depletes and weakens you.  It feels great for a few moments, but the price you pay for the genital sneeze of ejaculation is a much higher level of mediocrity in your daily life.  You will find that you just don’t have the extra gusto necessary to live your life with utter impeccability.  Excess ejaculations pave the road to living a good life, but not a great life;

5266.  Most women can experience many orgasms and deeper and deeper orgasms.  And more importantly, most women have a natural connection between their genitals and their heart.  When you ejaculate and lose your erection, you are probably depriving your woman of her fullest capacity of heart reception and expression, which is evoked by relaxed, loving, watery hours of your fearless and unstressful genital penetration.  It is not simply your genital penetration that touches her deeply, though.  The main penetration she feels is your yielding into her, through her, in love.  It is the fullness of your presence, the actual invasion of her body by your consciousness that most ravishes her;

5267.  Just as your woman tests you emotionally, so she will test you sexually.  Even when you are trying not to ejaculate, she may energetically begin to “pull” the ejaculation from you.  As always, her deepest pleasure is in feeling your fullness, your strength and your love, even while she is testing you.  When you don’t ejaculate, but demonstrate that the fullness of loving is more important to you than the quick thrill of genital release then she can truly trust you.  But she will continue to test your capacity for loving even once you’ve demonstrated your capacity to bypass ejaculation for the sake of a much more profound bliss;

5268.  The bottom line is this: If ejaculation is not completely a matter of conscious choice for you, your woman knows she controls you sexually.  And as long as she knows she’s in charge, she won’t trust you enough to relax fully in the force of your loving.  She will always keep her heart somewhat protected.  Rather than surrender so deeply in your embrace that she is splayed into divine brightness, she will go for whatever moist pleasures she can get before you lose interest;

5269.  The front of your body, especially your belly, is the place where your energy meets the energy of the world.  When the front of your body is open and relaxed, your power flows freely and your presence fills the room.  You’ve probably been with people who seem to occupy more space in the room than most people.  They seem to command attention even though they are not doing anything obvious to attract it.  The front of their body is so open that their energy flows freely through the room, magnifying their presence;

5270.  If the front of your body has accumulated tension, throughout the day and throughout the years, you will hardly be able to sit up straight.  Your belly and chest will be tight.  Your thoughts will center on yourself.  Your energy will remain constricted in your head and your awareness limited to self-concern.  Your powerful presence won’t fill the room at all.  You might not even be noticed;

5271.  Right now, notice your breath.  Are you inhaling so deeply you feel your genitals bulging slightly?  Is your belly rising and falling with your inhale and exhale like a mighty bellows?  Your belly and lower abdomen are special places of power.  If your breath does not reach these areas, you can’t recharge your batteries.  You will feel weak and unsure of yourself.  Your effect in the world will be minimal, less than your full potential;

5272.  The kinds of saturated fats circulating in the blood that are associated with heart disease are even-chain palmitic and stearic acid.  Most palmitic and stearic acids in the body are produced in your liver when you eat carbohydrates.  They don’t come from eating fat;

5273.  Carbs and alcohol (a form of sugar), not saturated fat, trigger high blood levels of stearic and palmitic acid;

5274.  Alcohol doesn’t trigger much insulin secretion and small amounts may be protective against heart disease;

5275.  Saturated fats (palmitic acid and stearic acid) in your blood that cause heart attacks come from eating sugar and carbs, not fat;

5276.  Saturated fats (margaric acid) that come from dairy and butter show a reduced risk of heart disease;

5277.  Omega-6 fats from vegetable oils show no benefit and may increase risk of heart attacks;

5278.  Omega-6 fats from poultry, eggs and beef (arachidonic acid) seem to be protective against heart disease;

5279.  Omega-3 fats from fish are the most protective against heart disease;

5280.  A study published in Lipids in 2010 compared the effects of a very low-carb, high-fat diet with either high amounts of omega-6 or high amounts of saturated fats.  The researchers examined blood levels of fats, cholesterol and inflammation before and after different dietary changes.  They controlled diets by providing all of the food.  When they then measured blood levels of important markers of cardiovascular health (including blood levels of saturated fat, cholesterol and inflammation markers), they found that more than doubling the dietary intake of saturated fat had no impact.  The group that ate more dietary saturated fat in the absence of sugar or refined carbs had lower levels of inflammation across the board;

5281.  Saturated fats cause inflammation only in the context of two things: low levels of omega-3 fats and high levels of carbohydrates.  Take out the high-carb foods and add omega-3 rich foods or supplements and saturated fat is not a problem;

5282.  Many studies confirm that blood levels of saturated fat (palmitic, stearic and palmitoleic acid) are significantly correlated with the development of type 2 diabetes and heart disease.  But these fats in the blood are not coming from the fat you eat.  They are produced by the liver in response to the carbs in your diet;

5283.  Your total cholesterol should be under 200 mg/dl;

5284.  Your triglycerides should be under 100;

5285.  Your HDL should be over 60 mg/dl;

5286.  Your LDL should ideally be under 80 mg/dl (although this matters less than the LDL particle number and size);

5287.  Your ratio of total cholesterol to HDL should be less than 3:1;

5288.  Your ratio of triglycerides to HDL should be no greater than 1:1 or 2:1.  If elevated, this ratio can indicate insulin resistance;

5289.  The (rosemary,) French fries at The Liberty Tavern (TheLibertyTavern.com) in Clarendon are tasty;

5290.  Saturated fat actually improves your overall cholesterol profile in the face of a low-carb diet by lowering triglycerides, raising HDL and decreasing the small, dangerous LDL particles;

5291.  Cholesterol is a fatty substance produced by the liver that is necessary for thousands of bodily functions.  The body uses it to help build your cell membranes and to cover your nerve sheathes as well as much of your brain.  It’s a key building block for hormone production; without it you would not be able to maintain adequate levels of testosterone, estrogen, progesterone and cortisol.  Even more important, without it, you would die;

5292.  People with the lowest cholesterol as they age are at the highest risk of death;

5293.  Under certain circumstances, higher cholesterol can actually help to increase life span;

5294.  Attraction in women is the feeling of being desired by a powerful man who she can trust.  Power can be expressed many ways.  It does not just mean money or status.  It can be intelligence, humor, confidence or just the ability to get things done.  Expressing a bit of power, whether it is in the way you dress, the way you carry yourself or the way you talk, is the first step to generating attraction;

5295.  One of the big things guys often do not understand is women do not really desire men.  Instead, women desire to be desired;

5296.  True confidence and self-esteem are about not judging yourself at all.  Confidence is a state of non-worry of being present and occupied with the world as it is and not as it ought to be or as we judge it to be.  True self-esteem is the state of accepting oneself for good and for bad;

5297.  Inhale deeply, through your nose, and breathe through whatever tensions you notice in your body.  Inhale deeply into your lower belly.  Then exhale.  On your next inhalation, breathe into your lower and upper belly.  Then exhale.  On your next inhalation, fill your entire belly then your solar plexus and lower chest.  Then exhale.  Then inhale and fill your belly, solar plexus and your entire chest in that order.  For several breaths, inhale fully in this way, filling your lower belly all the way down to your genitals then the rest of your belly, solar plexus and finally your chest.  Then exhale fully, slowly and smoothly.  Throughout the day, practice this kind of breathing in random moments.  Pay special attention to any part of your body that seems particularly tense or closed.  For instance, if the area around your navel seems tight, then inhale into that area.  Literally inhale right into that area and open it with the force of your inhaled breath.  Like filling a balloon, you can stretch open the entire front of your body with your inhale.  In this way, you counter the effects of accumulated fear and anxiety stored in your body, which diminish your presence and force in the world.  Throughout the day, as soon as you feel tension in the front of your body, inhale into that area and open it;

5298.  Consciously contract the muscles of the floor of your pelvis.  This area includes your genitals, anus and perineum, which is the space between your anus and genitals.  This exercise of contracting your pelvic floor feels a lot like you are trying to stop yourself from going to the bathroom.  In addition to contracting the floor of your pelvis, practice pulling it upward into your body and toward your spine.  This upward pull will actually lift your scrotum slightly up toward your body.  As a single movement, practice contracting and pulling upward the entire floor of your pelvis, including the anus, perineum and genitals.  You can practice this in sets of 15 or 20 contractions, holding them as long as you can.  Do several sets like this, three or four times a day;

5299.  While you are having sex, but before you are close to ejaculating, practice contracting your pelvic floor.  While you contract it and pull upward, breathe the energy up your spine.  You will have to experiment to determine whether to inhale or to exhale the energy up your spine, although most people find that exhaling up the spine works best.  If you combine the upward contraction of your pelvic floor with breathing up your spine, you should lose just a little bit of your erection as well as the need to ejaculate.  As you continue making love, repeat this exercise as often as you need to in order to maintain relaxation and openness;

5300.  While practicing this technique, you may notice that you occasionally come very close to having an orgasm.  At this point, stop moving, apply the upward contraction of your pelvic floor and breathe the orgasm energy up your spine.  In addition to the upward contraction of your pelvic floor while breathing up the spine, some men find it helpful to clench their fists and teeth while looking upward with their eyes, especially when the urge toward ejaculation is particularly strong.  With practice, all the muscular action becomes very subtle and gentle until the entire exercise is done primarily through your breath, feeling and intention;