“Oh Grace….I feel so horrible today, my eyes are bloodshot, I look in the mirror and feel worried about aging, and I feel fat. I know it’s so stupid.”
One of my dearest friends, who is an amazing, loving woman, also in her fifties like me and in unbelievable physical condition (a former professional athlete) left this message on my voicemail.
She’s going through a super rough transition with her long-term partner and needs a job.
I felt touched that she could say this out loud, actually admitting these kinds of troubled self-criticisms.
Because often what happens with our inner world, is we are so tormented and in turmoil by our emotional life, and feeling scared, that we’ll begin to turn on ourselves just to let off the fire of energy somehow.
Kind of like the way a bottle of fizzy water all shaken up explodes when you pop the cap off.
All over yourself.
I remember someone sharing a story once.
A dog had been hit by a car and was dying.
The owner ran into the street, heart racing and tears choking, and the dog, lying with a broken body, bit his beloved owner.
It’s a sort of strange, natural reaction sometimes to lunge out and hurt the one you love most–even if it’s YOU.
My dear friend doesn’t have any issues with food….her compulsive patterns used to show up in other ways around drugs and alcohol and smoking and she’s been sober and clean of all that for many years now.
But even those of us who don’t go to extremes with any substances, or with food, can have a stream of thinking and feeling where anger, confusion, fear and upset are directed like knives or sharp slaps towards ourselves.
What I like to remember is, it’s energy wanting to move somewhere.
It’s the reaction to stressful thinking. We feel bad. We feel desperate, or so worried.
Good time to remember to do this one part of inquiry, if it’s hard to remember to do it all (and I encourage you to call the Help Line or get someone to facilitate you if you can)….
….and this one part of self inquiry IS….
….notice the worst thought that you’re thinking.
Just that one.
I know you may have a whole pile of them. They seem to multiply fast and have babies and one piece of criticism turns into being critical of so much more.
But find ONE difficult thought, a basic core repetitive idea running through your mind.
My friend’s was “I can’t do this.”
I’ve had the same thought.
So deflating, depressing, sad, despairing.
But what you can do once you see and feel the thought permeating you, is to question.
We’re not trying to fix it, or destroy it, or even change it.
Only to see what the truth really is.
Is it true you can’t do what appears to be required?
Are you sure?
Write down your answers, get the journal out.
How do you react when you have this thought running through your head, that you can’t…..
I personally want to cry.
I might snap at others, or make general statements about life or the world and how dumb this all is, or those other people, or the state of affairs in politics.
Nice big general grand statements of YUCK.
But who would you be without your belief, if you couldn’t have this thought running in your mind?
If suddenly, you weren’t ABLE to think “I can’t”.
This is a powerful practice.
Sometimes it takes awhile to imagine. I like noticing that the tree doesn’t think it can’t, the table I’m sitting at while writing doesn’t think it can’t, this laptop doesn’t think it can’t, and this morning I myself didn’t think I can’t get up to go to the bathroom–I just did it.
So I know what it’s like to NOT have the thought that I can’t.
Now apply that same feeling to this situation, where you think you can’t.
What would it be like?
What would you sit like, walk like, breathe like, talk like?
This isn’t about forcing yourself to do anything, either, it’s really just noticing what it would be like to not have the belief “I can’t” in this moment in time.
THEN….turn the thought around to the opposite, just to try on every angle, every possibility. It’s opening up your view and your perspective to include ALL things in duality….can and can’t.
I can.
How could this be just as true, or truer?
Turned around again: My thinking can’t.
Yes, my thinking can’t get me a job, bring me peace, allow me to relax, get me more money. Movement, action, motion is what will bring me any of this.
But I can question my stressful thinking, and open up to the exciting turnarounds, and the bigger space of thinking something like “I can” and finding examples of how this can actually be true then brings new movement, new action, new motion, new ways of being.
Think – Feel – Act – Have.
The process of creation.
So let’s begin by looking at what we think clearly.
At least when I look, I see what is NOT true, and it becomes so much easier to see what is.
TA: I can eat normally, I can feel peaceful today, I can find a new job, I can spend time with people, I can take care of myself, I can feel beautiful, I can love my body, I can move away from things I don’t really want (food, boyfriend, substances, activities), I can say no, I can say yes, I can move slowly, I can live, I can be a human being in all my imperfect glory, I can speak up, I can stay quiet, I can do what seems right in this moment, and do something else tomorrow.
If you’d like to do the deep research, practice, wondering and exploration when it comes to the basics around EATING….
….I’m opening up a new Eating Peace Core Teleclass six week program, as a foundation for doing your ongoing work on emotional and compulsive eating.
We begin Friday March 4th from 2:00 – 3:30 pm Pacific Time. All audio (no video). Join from anywhere in the world with skype.
If it’s time to dive into The Work and Eating….I’d love to have you.
Click HERE for all the information and to register.
“I did The Work because I was in a hurry.” ~ Byron Katie
Big peace,
Grace
P.S. If you prefer in-person immersion learning, join me for the Eating Peace Retreat in Newark, California April 15-17 in six weeks. Everyone who enrolls in the telecourse can register for the April retreat for a special gift rate of $297 (instead of $347).