I can walk, I can walk!
Isn’t it funny to become excited about returning to your previously “normal” experience (in my case, having the use of my right leg as a regular working leg)?
The most intense part of the ordeal is over, apparently, in my journey to healing.
Although, I can probably testify that my right leg and hamstring will never be the same again. There’s a big scar, and permanent titanium pins embedded in my right pelvic bone.
But this body, and all its functions…what an incredible entity for receiving our judgments.
Often the mind runs rampant with its opinion about what should or should not be happening:
It should go faster, stop hurting, be smaller, grow taller, return to normal, heal, be younger, have no wrinkles, feel juicier, feel stronger, be softer, flatter, smoother, lighter, heavier.
It’s sort of an incessant commentary.
In the Eating Peace group, we’re looking at the body, and zoning in on judgments about what is ugly or repulsive.
Too fat.
But what does that actually mean? In the past, I knew something was off about the whole fat/thin, old/young, abled/disabled assessments…but it seemed the only way to oppose all that was to think about something else, or apply affirmations.
Until I found The Work I didn’t even know how to examine this torturous belief-system in detail.
Is it true that your body is too fat, or that part of the body?
Is it true that any part you’re fighting with should be different than it is?
Well, duh. Of course it should different…look at that extra roll around the middle! Yuck!
Are you sure it shouldn’t be the way it is? Are you sure it’s too fat?
Even if you still say “yes”….because it seems like a dumb question…see if you can actually ask and answer.
Because when I stopped to answer, I couldn’t know for sure, not absolutely, that the part of my body I was looking at was ugly.
Scar tissue, atrophied thigh, sagging skin.
Ugly? Even if I were from another planet and had no reference for this belief system?
No.
Who would I be without the thought that something’s wrong here with the body?
Some people think at this point that they’d go off their rocker, become wildly obese, never work out again, stuff themselves silly every day, stop all physical movement, if they didn’t have the idea that something was wrong.
Can you be sure of that? Are you sure you have to hate it and think it’s ugly to get motivated?
Turning the thoughts around: this body should be exactly as it is, in exactly this state at this time.
How could that be truer? How could I be soft, gentle, kind and accepting with this body, here, now?
Which way would feel better….saying “this body sucks” or “this body rocks the house”?
Which way do you think you’d lose weight, feel less pain, relax with the illness you have, recover from an injury?
“Relying on thought has been our escape route. The only instruction we need to follow from the mind is ‘rest in presence’. This one instruction changes everything.” ~ Scott Kiloby
Dropping all ideas about right and wrong with the body, what is or is not true, what I deem ugly or unacceptable, I feel freer, full of wonder. Curious, present.
What if the next time you feel overwhelmed with self-criticism about your body, or despair, or you feel craving and hunger, or a pull towards a substance that doesn’t end up well….you just sat there.
And did nothing.
What if the easiest way really is….the easiest way.
Love, Grace