There’s Not Enough (participants, time, money, love)!

I’m offering the three day Eating Peace retreat this coming Friday, Saturday and Sunday. This is a time to completely unplug from your usual ways with food and eating.

This morning I noticed a funny thought float through.

There aren’t enough people enrolled.

Not Enough.

The Not Enoughs are back, alive and well. The belief in Not Enough of something…..anything.

It’s such a common human idea.

Not enough money, not enough time, not enough love, not enough pleasure, not enough peace, not enough accomplishment.

You might have noticed this thought, even if you’ve never eaten a bite of anything compulsively.

As I sat in meditation on this upcoming retreat, something I always do before I’m about to teach, I felt the sweetness of looking forward to whoever shows up, and feeling the joy and inspiration of investigating thought….and eating very slowly together.

Yes, we practice mindful eating at the retreat.

And people attend this retreat who don’t even have intense “eating” issues, it’s so amazing to slow down in this basic human experience called eating.

In the retreat, I stay with everyone every step of the way, including when you’re eating midday and in the evening. Every bite is eaten together.

Something almost none of us do on a daily basis.

Something I never even imagined I would one day do in a retreat, where I’m the facilitator!!!

Sometimes, when people take this Eating Peace retreat, people report a life-changing HALT, almost like the brakes were put on, around the wild eating cycle of constant compulsive thinking and behavior with food.

Wild cycles of compulsive eating…..

…..that’s certainly what it used to be like for me, thirty years ago.

If someone had offered a live workshop on eating peace at the time, I would have thrown myself into it as soon as possible. I had nothing like that available to me. What was available was therapy (I am grateful and deeply appreciative to all the therapists who worked with me). I also found a group called Beyond Dieting that met weekly about freedom from compulsive thinking about food. There were books to read. There were 12 Step Meetings.

But nothing just for crazed eaters like me that would help stop the insanity for a whole day or more.

I had to go to an inpatient hospital program for that. And I did.

But not before a LOT of suffering.

When I was about 25, I moved. Again.

I had lived in dorm rooms, apartments, house-shares and lots of temporary type housing (interspersed by staying at my parent’s home) since I was 18.

But that year when I was 25 after finally graduating from college, I actually moved a long distance away, going from Washington to Colorado.

I’ll never forget the silent drive for 3 days, camping in my own tent by myself, and feeling the combined fear and excitement of being on the road and entirely free and uncertain.

It’s a wild, strange feeling.

I remember driving through Wyoming and seeing the mountains rise up in sharp, dramatic peaks. I was on small backroads for a certain length of time and I pulled my little car over and stopped and got out and stood in the wind.

A herd of antelope moved off in the distance between me, and the mountains. The wind blew loudly. It was completely silent. Not one other car in sight. Brown grass blowing chaotically like water all around.

I was on my way to Denver. I was on my way into a new life chapter.

For awhile, when I arrived, I had an excited momentum of newness surrounding me. I knew what to do each day.

Project: Get A Job. Get A Place To Live.

Basics like that can keep you very busy and concentrated.

No time for the haunting sense of failure or need to overeat or binge-eat, or smoke or drink (which were low-level things I used occasionally also at the time).

The horrible behavior had been binge-eating. I hated it and fought with it and really did not want to experience it ever again. I had seen therapists for it and learned a lot.

That was OVER now!

But after about six months of things settling down, having a basic job at the University of Denver and my own room in a beautiful Victorian house-share with 4 other people….

….one day my visitor appeared again.

The mean, bored, critical one who was also quite frightened and felt like a victim with a chip on her shoulder and wanted to eat.

She was a part of me. And she was back.

Uh-oh.

I thought I had obliterated her from the face of the earth. And locked the door and thrown away the key.

But here she was returning after my “geographical cure” of moving to a brand new city, starting to make new friends, take new classes, be a new person.

Dang it.

She was kind of angry (wouldn’t you be?) that I had ignored her and put her on hold for so long.

I found myself opening the cupboards of the kitchen in this beautiful house I lived in on Elizabeth Street, and seeing what my roommates had for food.

I stared at their boxes of cereal, or loaves of bread, or chunks of cheese on other peoples’ designated shelves in the refrigerator.

I shaved off a tiny slice, trying to make it so it wasn’t noticed, of banana bread from someone’s package.

My mind started to kick in…..

…..if I just eat a little bite from everyone’s food, they won’t notice.

I did that.

And guess what?

It wasn’t enough.

I wanted more.

I got into my car, in snow 8 inches deep on the ground in my first Denver winter, and started to drive.

I call this, now, the Searching Trance.

I would turn into a fast food restaurant, order something that sounded normal, pay for it through the cold roll down window, and start to eat it the minute I drove away.

Driving and eating and looking for the next place to buy something to eat.

My mind would spin with what sounded good and what I wasn’t allowed and where I could find it.

Is it here? Is it there? Is it around that corner?

Quick, quick, quick, quick.

The adrenaline was pumping and there was a sense of almost being about to get caught, and sneaking everything I wasn’t allowed to eat (to think).

My mind was on an escape mission.

I ate and ate from one end of town to the other, and headed back to my home.

Inside, thankfully, only one of my housemates was home and I managed to smile a big fake smile, say hello, and speed past them to head upstairs to my room. And the bathroom where I would turn on the shower so nobody could hear me, and make myself throw up food I had just eaten.

Then….I could rest.

That’s the thing about that cycle….I could finally rest and I would sleep very deeply almost like I got knocked over the head.

Nowadays I look back at that suffering and realize if only I could have discovered a way to stop, lie down, and relax….

….I could have gotten there without the food.

But I didn’t know how.

I so badly wanted to rest my MIND and my thinking, and it never worked to lock it up or try to control the thoughts by suppressing them and pushing them away or down or out of sight.

Eventually, still in Denver, I checked myself in to the hospital treatment program for addiction and eating disorders and lived there for an entire month.

Fortunately for me, my health insurance through my job at the university paid almost in full for the entire program, although it was crazy expensive.

It was a huge help for me to live my life daily without the binge-eating, and not as a geographical cure…..

…..instead I was surrounded by people who knew how I suffered.

Every hour of every day was filled with exercises, groups, activities, relaxation, therapy, conversations and intense sharing of the deep darkness I held in my heart about life.

I had to face the most sad and frustrating events from my past, and look at ways to handle my thoughts without needing or using eating or any other substances to “help” me get through life.

Now, the honest truth is…..

…..I engaged in every single addictive behavior again after a certain period of time back in “regular” life on the street after my inpatient experience.

But that was when I got really scared again and didn’t know how to be with my own feelings and thoughts.

I had no way to inquire at the time.

I just “believed” and went with it. I thought what I was thinking was true.

However, that immersion into time without binge-eating or using anything, ever, to escape gave me some solid ground to walk on.

I knew I was going to be OK.

I knew I could return to practicing the belief in “enough”.

I got myself into a group, I went to meetings, I found ways to get support and not panic with the deep belief in Not Enough.

Who would you be without your thought in Not Enough of something?

Are you sure you need it?

Are you sure it’s not possible for you to get what you need?

Are you sure you can’t handle this moment easily, without that thing you believe is missing or that you don’t have enough of?

Whether it’s money, time, love, safety or success…..

…..what if you turned the thought around, after you contemplate being without it altogether?

I DO have Enough.

That thing I don’t have enough of?

What if it needs more of ME?

More of my kindness, acceptance, attention, willingness to hang out with it.

That mean nasty one who used to come visit and want to binge-eat?

I notice she still shows up sometimes, although she never cares about eating and hasn’t binged in several decades…..

…..because she doesn’t need to scream that loudly anymore.

She’s softer. She’s not so dark and dreary.

She’s more easily amused, and her mind changes much more quickly.

I let her sit at the table with me for as long as she wants, and she can tell me all about what I’m missing and what she believes isn’t present enough in my life.

I give myself a lot of her……

……because she is me.

Because the ultimate turnaround is:

I need more of myself, in this situation.

I need to attend to me, love me, enjoy me, notice me, care for me, be in love with me, dance with me, eat with me, hug me, feel the enoughness of being alive even as life changes and moves every day.

When I feel this way, I love everyone and everything I come into contact with….

….whether it’s a small workshop full of inquirers, or a big one with 100 participants in it.

I’ve had both, and it’s a marvel either way.

This retreat has room, apparently, for more.

And it is perfectly enough as is.

Can you find it, in your life?

In my world, I can trust that exactly the people who show up are the ones who are supposed to be here, and no more or no less.

If you think you’re possibly supposed to be with me this weekend, hit reply, or join now, or call me 206-650-1230. To register, click HERE.

And meanwhile, no matter who or where you are….

….question your belief that you don’t have enough of something.

It doesn’t mean you SHOULD go without. You don’t know what will happen, with inquiry. It’s just an adventure in exploring beliefs.

You might be amazed at what you find.

“The way out of suffering is to be engaged in the process of ending suffering. The process is the outcome. In Life, the transformation occurs in the process.” ~ Cheri Huber in I Don’t Want To I Don’t Feel Like It