I was going to write an e-mail that had something to do
with the upcoming Superbowl…maybe about how powerful
our internal “winning and losing” can be…not just in fueling
the multi-billion-dollar sports industry…
But in arguments and power struggles with the people we
dearly love and cherish…that start as innocent differences of
opinion…but that then escalate…almost with a life of their
own…into winning and losing that hurts and attacks.
But I got this e-mail in response to the one Friday about
cravings and trying to fill ourselves and our lives with other things…
…like food, sex, money, looking beautiful, being smart and getting
lots of degrees, exercise, power, enough approval to make the
pain stop…it’s all the same thing.
———
Dear Grace,
I had tears in my eyes when I was reading your e-mail from yesterday.
I could really see how your struggle with food and eating was just
like my attempts to do enough, and learn enough when I was
in my early twenties.
I was innocently trying to make myself OK, but didn’t know how.
I tried with all my strength but I just couldn’t ever succeed at what
I was trying to do which wasn’t anything all that unusual.
I was in such despair and depression after trying over and over
that I just couldn’t try any more and I couldn’t see that my struggle
would ever end.
I finally took sleeping pills and booze, to make sure it was enough
to kill me because no matter what, I didn’t want to go through this anymore.
My mom found me and I was rushed to the hospital
and was in a coma for a couple days.
I woke up and was then angry to still be alive and on top of everything
else, I would now have to face the embarrassment of having
tried to commit suicide.
Like you, and so many people I’ve talked to, I’ve done a life time
of seeking with every therapy, meditation technique, prayer, success
seminar, religion, book, practice, soul searching, journaling, and
trying to find answers from people I thought could provide them.
It seems that I learned something from everything, but with doing
The Work these last years, it seems that all my previous searching
makes sense and I have compassion for myself and what I was
doing and though I still struggle with many things, I notice a
deepening sense of peace and little by little, struggle less and less.
I find that working alone and with others in teleclasses and the
helpline and with friends who do The Work, I have a common
language of the soul to continue this process.
Sometimes there are periods where I actually don’t struggle
or strain at all.
It’s not a big mystical thing like I thought it would be.
But it is the greatest gift and miracle I could ever imagine to
just feel OK as an ordinary person.
–A friend in The Work and in Life.
—————–
I love hearing from this dear fellow traveler about his own life
journey.
Come join one of the upcoming teleclasses, all listed here. We
laugh, we cry, we investigate….amazing!
Love,
Grace