Tag: eating

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Eating Peace: What happens when you question “this is ugly!”

It’s so common to think your body is ugly, or some part of it is ugly, that I used to not even notice I was thinking it.

It was automatic. Like…of COURSE that needs improvement. Of COURSE that’s gross.

But after I learned how to do The Work of Byron Katie and question my stressful thoughts, I applied it to the belief “this is ugly”.

Wow.

In today’s video I share something I saw on my body not long ago, and I stared at it in fascination (a scar). In the past I would have thought of it as ugly, but on the inside I didn’t feel that old pain at all.

I give credit for that freedom to The Work.

You can do this, too.

Eating Peace: Do you think something about your body is ugly? You can find peace with this kind of thinking.
Eating Peace: Do you think something about your body is ugly? You can find peace with this kind of thinking.

Much love,

Grace
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Eating Peace: You don’t have to get it all figured out to find peace….Do This.

People ask me from time to time….how will I ever figure all my thinking out, find all the awareness I need.

Like, will I need to write things in a journal forever? Will my thoughts never end? What if I’m sick of analyzing myself?

Here’s something short and sweet to do when it comes to compulsion.

It’s he one thing you really need, to discover peace.

Much love, Grace

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I used to teach this differently….and it was not that great

eatingemotions
Eating Agony can turn into Eating Peace….you have what it takes to quit hurting yourself with your thinking, with your eating, and change your life

The first Eating Peace course I taught was in 2010, six years ago.

I can raise my hand and say with all honesty, even though some people benefitted, I was a total beginner and it wasn’t anywhere near as good and clear as the program is now.

Ugh.

It was not actually called Eating Peace back then. It was called “Too Much Not Enough”….because what I had found in my own recovery from horrible eating was that the way I ate had to do with what I was thinking.

What I was thinking was…..there was Too Much of something OR Not Enough of something in my reality, in my world.

Or both. Usually, both.

Too Much of something right in the very moment I was eating, or wanting to eat, when I wasn’t hungry. And Not Enough of something in the very same moment.

It’s like some kind of centered internal balance was GONE. Vaporized. The pendulum was swinging out of whack.

Too Much of what, or Not Enough of WHAT….you might be asking?

A most excellent and brilliant question.

What I believed was Too Much was most often the following:

big feelings, pressure, requests from others, too many demands, advice, danger, threat, boredom, disappointment, rebellion. The biggest feelings I had the worst time dealing with were anger and fear and every variation of either one (anxiety, nerves, rage, irritation).

What I believed was Not Enough in situations where I found myself eating when not hungry were the following:

my ability to stop the cycle, my capacity to love myself, receiving unconditional love from anyone, not enough time, not enough genuine attention, not enough kindness or forgiveness, not enough willingness to let something go. The feelings I felt most unhappy with that there weren’t enough of were love and acceptance.

My whole entire view of reality was it was flawed….and unfortunately so was I. Something was missing (Not Enough) or something was present that shouldn’t be (Too Much).

One of the best ways you can begin to explore your inner world (and get ready to be shocked by how this actually affects your eating–for the better) is to honestly examine your mind.

People believe they need a mate, money, time, kindness, a bigger house, a better job, world peace, no war…..in order to be truly happy.

People believe they must eliminate sadness, poverty, violence, and their own qualities of not-enoughness in order to be truly happy.

What I know is, if you’re waiting for life to be perfectly in balance according to your definition of Just Right….

….you’ll be waiting forever.

When I ate because I was angry, terrified, bored or hurting….I didn’t have the conscious thoughts “here’s what I think is too much for me right now, or not enough of right now”.

I just started eating. The belief sped by under the surface, and I quick started eating before I could see it. My feelings ruled everything, they were wild and frightening and very big.

The only way I’ve found to get started on unraveling this deep level of how I feel about life, and how this affects the way I ate, was to start by identifying the thoughts running in my mind—the stressful, troubling, harsh ones I felt about life.

We start to do this in the Eating Peace Core TeleClass.

And like I said, after six years teaching eating peace and the improvements I’ve made, and experience I’ve had along the way working with others, I am better at working and guiding people now than I was six years ago when I first wanted to share recovery with the world.

I’ve heard the same kinds of thoughts over and over again by working with many people, and I recognize the similarities those of us who eat off-balance have about food, eating and the body.

Sure, there are variations. Some people have never been super heavy in weight because they’ve vomited or over-exercised. Some people have under-eaten most of their lives and felt extreme tension around food. Some people have been chronically overweight or even obese, or yo-yo’d up and and down and been on a thousand diets.

But even if the symptoms and the appearance looks different, they are all sides of the same coin.

The coin that says “something is wrong with reality here”. There’s too much, or not enough. I can’t handle this. I’m too scared. I’m too angry. Life is too hard.

I call the Eating Peace Core TeleClass the “core” teleclass because we dive into the basic first-level beliefs most of us carry who have eaten weirdly.

When I first started out teaching, I wanted so badly for everyone to find relief and freedom, I hardly talked about myself. I didn’t share what I really thought when someone was struggling, even though I had lots of experience. We needed to question reality, after all….this wasn’t about the food! But it was jumping over too big a canyon, and people didn’t get what I was talking about.

Wait, isn’t this about eating?

I learned along the way to move back and forth between questions of life, and questions about eating, and to listen very closely with every group and class for the unique flavors and concerns of every person present. I learned that it was never the same, but it was helpful to present the patterns I saw come forward, and share these with everyone, every time.

So, that’s what we do in this Eating Peace Core Teleclass. I’m sharing with you what I found very helpful to begin with on my road to recovery, and how to practice it in an ongoing way.

For the first two weeks (Module One) we look at our relationship to the food/eating/diet plan. Everyone shares theirs with me. We dialogue back and forth about it. You will make a commitment to explore why you eat too much when you do, or why you eat too little when you do. What takes you out of a peaceful, balanced, normal way of eating?

Weeks 3 and 4 (Module Two) we identify our judgments about bodies. This is fascinating, to write what we think about someone’s body who is “overweight” and what we think about “perfect” bodies. Where did you learn how to see this way? Finding out brings huge ah-ha’s and insight for many.

During weeks 5 and 6 (Module Three) we remember moments of eating with our family of origin. What was it like when we were young, with mom and dad, or other huge influencers in our lives? What did these people say, or model, about eating or reasons to eat?

Finally the last two weeks (Module Four) we get to really sink into what we think there’s too much of in our lives, and not enough of in our lives. What’s missing, what’s overwhelming? We get to make a list and see what our thought-system holds.

Only by identifying clearly all our beliefs can we take them to inquiry and actually QUESTION them. When we question our thinking, we can change our vision, and change our eating, and change our lives.

Everyone who takes Eating Peace Core Teleclass will get weekly exercises and then we’ll go through the actual inquiry process on our live phone calls using The Work of Byron Katie. You’ll know how to begin working with your eating in your daily life, and begin the journey of the road home to eating peace.

Peace means never eating so much you hurt yourself, and never eating so little you hurt yourself.

This Eating Peace Core Teleclass will be the last until the fall. We meet Mondays 5:30 – 7:00 pm Pacific Time for 8 weeks beginning tomorrow, May 9th. Room for 2 more people. Please write to me if you really want to enroll, but you can’t afford the fee ($395). It’s my privilege to help everyone who suffers from eating battles, food fears, body hatred and criticism, to question their beliefs and change their eating.

This course is also excellent for those wanting this support, but not ready to take the full Eating Peace Online TeleProgram offered for the past two winters. This long course, covering more than 3 months together from November through February, is a very comprehensive practice combining the best practices and spiritual principles of a mindful, feeling-full, peaceful life with food. It’s a program of transformation and everyone who joins Eating Peace Online gets access to life, so no matter where you are in your journey….you can take the time you need to come home.

Join this 8 week class by clicking the link here: Eating Peace Core teleclass.

Much love, Grace

 

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Eating Peace: what IS eating peace? should I get a food plan?

Eating Peace Core teleclass is starting next week. Mondays for 8 weeks. 5:30-7:00 pm Pacific Time.
And what IS eating peace anyway? What does it look like?
I know you understand the word “peace” and what it feels like. Peace is soft, kind, supportive, loving, empty and nourishing at the same time. It’s the absence of war.
Eating Peace is the absence of debate, argument, attack, violence or fighting with food or the act of eating. I used to fight with every thought I had about eating and my weight or my body.
What I was really fighting with, was my experience of my life and reality. I could not see much peace in reality, so there wasn’t much peace in my eating either.
Listen here as I share some of what eating peace is like, now, and can be for you, too. Everyone has this birthright. You are born able to eat peacefully.
If you’ve had questions about food plan, and getting one….there are many ways you can land on what really works for you. I share an introduction to this in the video today.
If you want to know more about the Eating Peace Core Teleclass, you can read all about it and sign up here ($395 for 8 weeks, and please write to me if you absolutely cannot afford the fee, I am always open to considering options with you, if you deeply want to participate). Click HERE to read about the course, and register (and there’s a short summary of the modules below, too).

Much love, Grace
Eating Peace Core TeleClass:
Module One: (weeks one and two) Underlying Beliefs that fuel eating off-balance and the Food Plan. Should you follow a food plan, or not? I’ll share when it’s a good idea, and when not. I’ll also share the most common underlying beliefs I’ve found that create eating havoc. You’ll send me your peaceful food plan and I’ll share mine with you.
Module Two: (weeks three and four) Judging Bodies. What are your thoughts about how you should look, or what those other people look like? What do you think of other perfect bodies? We’ll explore why we
Module Three: (weeks five and six) Who Taught You? Here we look at what we innocently learned from those around us, whether family of origin or society or both. We learn to disconnect our actions from what we thought was “truth” about eating.
Module Four: (weeks seven and eight) Peace Beyond Beliefs. We look even deeper at the underlying beliefs, including what we’re thinking there’s Not Enough or Too Much of in our lives that isn’t food.
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Two terrible, awful, horrible, no good, very bad things

question your stories about death, or craving..... .....feel the mysterious inexhaustible silence
question your stories about death, or craving…..
…..feel the mysterious inexhaustible silence

Every year at the summer Breitenbush annual retreat in late June, we have a movie night.

We watch the film Turn It Around with Byron Katie.

In the movie, quite a few courageous people get up on stage with Katie.

They share their innermost suffering and disturbing thoughts with the whole audience (and in this case, all of us who ever watch Turn It Around, too)!

That’s brave!

Last night, I showed Turn It Around in my Eating Peace retreat.

I’ve seen it about 10 times now, and it’s still moving for me.

One of my favorite pieces of work is when a young woman shares that her brother died in Afghanistan, and how enraged she’s felt about the loss, her devastated family, and death itself.

What an amazing question to ask someone as they consider death (to ask myself)….

….who would you be without the belief that death is so awful?

Without being against death, and anything leading to death?

It does seem to be the overwhelming way of it, as in 100% of the time, that we die.

So why get so disturbed?

What’s this deep, terrifying upset all about, anyway?

It’s profound to think of, at this level.

Almost the same, for me, as the process of addiction (which is what everyone is looking at so very closely in Eating Peace these three days).

Craving.

This whole over-eating, under-eating, worrying about eating thing.

What’s So Upsetting?!!

What’s going on in any moment, that we would choose to start to eat, and eat, and eat…..or drink, and drink, and drink…..or smoke, obsess about a person, shop, internet, clean, facebook….

….want, want, want?

What is so disturbing about the moment we insist we need something to…..

WHAT??

We looked at this today, in our retreat.

What does that thing, person, activity…..give you?

People noticed they thought eating, in those compulsive moments, would give them comfort, reward, compensation, soothing.

What does believing that death-is-terrible give you?

Huh.

Why would I choose to think death-is-terrible is true?

It’s like there’s some kind of idea within that if I didn’t think death was terrible, I’d twiddle away the hours I’ve got, I wouldn’t care, I’d be weird, I wouldn’t get freaked out about loss, change, and things coming and going (people or animals).

I’m afraid I wouldn’t truly love, I’d be too detached.

But is that true?

Whether it’s death I find frightening, or this empty moment, or this gruesome image from a memory….

….when I believe my story that this situation is lousy, or bad for me….

….I become fear, loss, sadness, distress, drama, excitement.

That’s who I am when I’m believing my story.

Alone, confused, not exactly trusting of the universe and reality.

So who would I be without the belief that my mind, my thoughts, my story, the images I see, my fantasies about death, my fantasies about this moment (that invent the need for some compulsive behavior) are true?

Who would I be if I didn’t believe my stories?

Including the story of death?

Including the story of uncomfortable feelings and moments and situations and addiction?

I would be feeling, seeing, being myself, which includes for me nutty pictures (some frightening) and judgments racing by and a brain full of thinking (sometimes).

Noticing that even though I see pictures of what death might be like, or other people I love dying, and even though I wonder about death a lot….

….and even though it sometimes occurs to me that a moment is annoying, missing something, more than I can handle, or boring….

….I don’t have to believe it.

In fact, I often don’t.

I don’t have to do anything.

I don’t have to get up, or fix it quick, or eat something, or figure out how to handle it.

Without believing my thoughts, they are just there, being themselves.

Me, too.

Oh, and look at that.

The universe is being Itself, too, in all its wild mysterious glory, full of lives being lived temporarily (it seems) and moments happening only for an instant (even moments full of craving) and things morphing, moving, opening, closing, changing.

Turning the thoughts around in every way: death is wonderful, craving is wonderful, life is terrible, not-craving is terrible, my thinking about death is terrible, my thinking about craving is terrible.

Could these be just as true, or truer?

“She who is centered in the Tao can go where she wishes, without danger. She perceives the universal harmony, even amid great pain, because she has found peace in her heart. Music or the smell of good cooking may make people stop and enjoy. But words that point to the Tao seem monotonous and without flavor. When you look for it, there is nothing to see. When you listen for it, there is nothing to hear. When you use it, it is inexhaustible.” ~ Tao Te Ching #35

Question your thinking, feel wonderful and open, rather than terrible and closed.

Yes. Even about Death. Even about Addiction.

The world keeps doing what it does….

….and yet, it looks so different.

Much love, Grace

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Heal Your Uglies

Do you ever get the uglies?

That’s what my youngest sister once labeled my 10th grade experience of looking at yourself in the mirror before you went to school, and feeling…..well…..

.…ugly.
Register

I have three younger sisters, and we all had our self-critical moments when we were young.

But one day, I was telling my little sister how the day before on my way in to school I felt awful and I didn’t want people to see me, but by the afternoon, after I had a blast at band practice and some fun joking around in the hallways, my favorite teacher commended me on a project I had done, and I pretty much forgot about it.

She nodded.

Oh I know what that’s like, she said.

“It’s just the uglies.”

She was 12.

How’d she get so smart?

Instead of actually focusing in on the details like they were true….

….like that your face was blotchy, your hair was oily and flat, your thighs were too big, you had a zit on the edge of your nose where it meets the cheek, your clothes weren’t cute, your jacket was dirty, your eyebrows were too thick, your stomach was gross…..

…..it was a way of describing a whole way of thinking.

The Uglies.

She was identifying a mood, a way of looking that made everything appear ugly, rather than believing something really WAS ugly.

Which is what happens to us sometimes, even as adults.

I’m sure you’ve noticed.

You’ve got your Uglies glasses on.

When you feel self-conscious, self-critical and dismissive towards yourself, there may be something else going on besides just a tendency to be self-critical.

Self-hate and self-criticism doesn’t just pop out of the sky into you.

You weren’t born with it.

I always find, if I get the uglies, I can ask myself…..

…..what’s going on?

What am I believing to be true right now?

What’s the inside of my head like in the moment, my perception of the world?

I know it’s a big question, but it sure is better than attacking yourself for a huge list of faults….

….and far more fruitful for digging out the root of the suffering.

When I see me as ugly, I’m almost always seeing something else as frightening, sad, confusing, or irritating.

Ugliness is in the mind.

Here’s a powerful question that I never dreamed of asking consciously when I was in tenth grade:

What am I afraid of?

You can make a list, if you like, of people you feel nervous around.

These are people you feel might be making decisions about whether you’re an attractive person, or an unattractive person.

Romantic partners, colleagues, co-workers, students, boys, men, girls, women, mom, grandpa, brother, aunt, boss.

What’s the worst that could happen, if they find you ugly?

(You might also consider what’s the worst that could happen, if they find you beautiful, if this fits for you).

When you start writing about what can happen if someone thinks you’re ugly, you might be amazed if you really allow your mind to go there.

  • they’ll reject me
  • I’ll be all alone
  • they’ll win, I’ll lose
  • she’ll fire me
  • I’ll never be happy, or loved
  • I won’t be part of the inner circle
Now you have a threat you’re more clearly aware of.

The suffering you believe occurs when you’re rejected, left, abandoned, fired, cast out, dismissed, hated.

From this point…..

…..with a clearly stressful belief about what it means if someone thinks you’re unattractive…..

…..you can inquire, and do The Work.

Guess what I noticed as I did The Work over time on everyone I was afraid of, all the people I thought were judging me and criticizing me, or abandoning me?

After doing The Work for awhile, when I glanced at myself in the mirror at the beginning of my day in the morning….

….I smiled.

I automatically saw someone cute, and supportive more of the time.

I saw an image looking at me that said “Oh Hi! There you are you absolutely adorable person!”

Seriously, I actually started thinking that, almost every time I saw myself.

I did not try to make myself see myself as kind and loving, it just happened.

It was the result of questioning my thoughts and seeing through eyes that those other harsh people in my life had not rejected, abandoned, hated, dismissed, abused, hurt, or betrayed me.

They may have said some pretty mean things, and taken some pretty dreadful actions….

….but I understand now….

….they had The Uglies.

In the Eating Peace retreat, one exercise we do is fill out the Judge Your Body worksheet.

We get to look at the parts of our bodies that we just can’t see as beautiful, and put the nastiest thoughts in our minds about the body on paper.

Some of us try so hard to be thin, have the right clothes, have the right gestures, put on the best makeup and dream of the perfect non-rejectable image.

But calming your worries and fears down by trying to make the body look right is so difficult.

And besides…..we get old, we decline, we get sick or hurt, we have imperfections.

Why not start relaxing all that effort right now….

….and put the intense energy of the Uglies into questioning your stressful beliefs, into questioning the stressful way you actually SEE?

You can do this.

Come join me January 22-24 for the next 3 Day Eating PeaceRetreat in Seattle area.

The more you question, the more you can take off those Ugly glasses.

Your natural eyes see beauty, love, kindness and acceptance.

I say this because if I can see the beauty now, anyone can.

Yes, even you.

Much love,

Grace

P.S. I am sending this note today to those of you on the Eating Peace mailing list as well as Grace Notes, as I know many people suffer from eating issues and body image concerns. The upcoming retreat is filling and I’d love to have you there, to support you healing your Uglies.

If you want to update your subscription to drop or add any Work With Grace mail, just click the tiny print below that reads Update Profile and feel free to make changes.

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Eating Peace: A crazy strange idea (that works)–stop trying

Have you ever stopped to notice, that every single time you reach towards something when you feel uncomfortable….

….food, drink, smoke, internet, activity-you-promised-not-to-do….

….you’re trying to feel OK.

But you don’t feel OK.

You’re trying to.

So you put something in your mouth and eat it, and you forget about how you weren’t feeling OK for awhile.

You move on.

Other stuff happens.

Now, you’re drunk, or stuffed, or exhausted, or your money is gone, or you feel guilty, or you feel horrible pain.

That thing you didn’t feel OK about is long gone.

Now, you have worse problems you have to attend to, and work on, and self-hate to deal with on top.

What if….when you got the first inkling of Not-OK about anything, you didn’t try to get away from it or fix it or do something about it?

Believe me, I know it’s weird.

It’s not what is usually offered, or suggested, or what your mind will chatter away about with many possible ideas to solve the problem.

Not solving the problem is VERY strange for the mind.

But try it on. What if you didn’t try to be OK?

Stop Trying to be OK....see what happens
Stop Trying to be OK….see what happens

Peace,

Grace

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Eating Peace: Be Simple, Lie Down, & Remember you can’t Fail

Recently someone wrote to share a stressful thought she has that I’ve heard before, in every variation possible.

I’m afraid I will fail. I already failed many times. I can’t seem to succeed. I will regret the outcome, later, in the future because it won’t be a success. 

Being a human being, you’ve probably noticed a thought pattern like this, as your mind watches the memory of what you’ve been like, and then imagines what’s possible for you in the future, based on what you’ve been like so far.

That same mind will compare the failing you, to the possibly successful you, and see a gap.

Then it will say to you…..yep. See! 

Something’s missing. You’re obviously not capable of doing this on your own. You need help.

A LOT of help.

Notice how stressful this is, to think you can’t do it, you won’t make it, you’ll not succeed, you can’t get there, you’ve screwed up many times already and failed over and over again.

Super stressful, discouraging, frightening, sad.

Here I share a little mantra I learned that made a big difference for me, a way to interrupt the pattern of reaching for unneeded food (or uncomfortable thoughts).

Peace,

Grace

 

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Eating Peace: 2 most important areas to study to go from eating war to peace

Please join me for a free webinar on Sunday, November 8th. Share this email with others who may be seeking peace with eating. I suffered horribly, and now I’m free and here to help others end the battle with eating and troubled thinking.

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It can feel so depressing when you look at where you’d prefer to be with eating (at peace) and you’re incessantly not there (at war).

Watch my video to see the two areas of focus you’ll need to spend time with in order to understand your eating experience….

….thoughts and feelings.

It’s the only way this whole thing gets resolved for good.

You can focus on how you act, what you want to have, but without making peace with thoughts and feelings, the war-like feeling will always return.

Thoughts are very speedy, feelings are very messy and chaotic.

You can be with them anyway.

The surprise is that you don’t need anything more than this. You don’t need to know how to change your thoughts or feelings.

As long as you spend time with them, see them, give them some attention…..

…..you’ll be on your way to peaceful eating.

Peace,

Grace

P.S. Free webinar on November 8th at 8:30 am. This will be different than any webinar I’ve done so far. I’ll share how to walk the path through the dark woods from eating war to peace: Join Eating Peace Webinar. I’ll also share all the details at the end for those of you interested in joining Eating Peace Online: 12 Week Immersion starting November 17th.

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Don’t Be Careful, You Could Hurt Yourself

If you're too careful about what you say, you could hurt yourself
If you’re too careful about what you say, you could hurt yourself

Eating Peace 3Day Retreat is one week away. Room for more. Join me in this thrilling ride of ending wars with food, eating and body image. October 9-11, 2015. Northeast Seattle. Register HERE.

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I need to go easy on him.

Have you ever had that thought when you know you need to bring up something to somebody that you’re pretty sure they won’t like to hear?

Phew.

Feeling mixed about speaking up is very common for a lot of people.

Dangerous results come to mind. Like people getting really mad and running away, or lashing out.

When I was in my twenties I probably got the prize for being the most indirect, angst-ridden, nervous, unclear communicator when it came to dating and men that you’ve ever met.

Well, OK.

It maybe could have been worse.

And here’s the funny part. (Sort of funny, let’s put it that way).

If I didn’t speak, and let it build, and tried to make myself tolerate and NOT talk or say anything hurtful, guess what also tended to happen during those years when it came to communication?

Yep.

The complete opposite.

Slicing someone to shreds verbally on the inside. Being super bossy and controlling. Laying down the law.

I kind of hate to admit it.

The critical part was pretty mean. It mostly happened on the inside. I sometimes gossiped about people I felt scared of. I didn’t want to tell them to their face because I was super worried about hurting their feelings and pleasing them and remaining safe.

It took a lot for me to snap.

My most common way to snap?

Eating.

Since I didn’t let myself speak up to anyone, especially men, so I could avoid hurting their feelings……

…..I would go on these eating binges that felt like tornadoes.

It was like something clicked and I’d say “f*&K IT!” and stop controlling, suppressing, diminishing and squelching my own inner anger. In a mixture of panic, rebellion and fury, I’d eat everything in sight, or drive to find whatever food I damn well wanted.

I also smoked cigarettes, or drank beer or wine.

I was like a Rebel Beoch.

By myself in my own car driving around listening to loud music.

Finally telling the whole world off by expressing the inner energy like a fire storm.

When no one was looking.

(How was that workin’ for me? Um, not so hot actually).

The trouble with letting out energy sideways like that, it never gets directly resolved.

The truth was I felt the crushing experience of believing that Other People I Love could both hurt me, and be hurt by me.

I wanted everyone to be pleased with me so that I myself never got hurt, and never caused hurt.

In many ways, this is the sweetest, dearest, kindest most loving impulse…..way down deep inside the heart.

Do you see how innocent the impulse is to have no one, including me, ever feel frightened, abandoned, ashamed, or unworthy?

You have this inner impulse of gentle loving kindness, too.

But somewhere along the way, thank God, I discovered that being super careful not to hurt anyone had an obvious assumption for me under the surface:

That it was possible to be hurt (oh terrible), and that hurting must and can be prevented.

But here’s the bummer twist to the plot.

If it’s possible to be hurt and to cause hurt, AND you believe you can prevent it, then you’re in deep doodoo.

You have to be insanely careful.

In my situation with men and dating, I’d just not answer the phone if a guy was trying to reach me for a second date. Or I’d act super this-is-friends-only and pretend I didn’t hear if a guy made flirtatious remarks who I wasn’t really attracted to.

If you believe in getting hurt, you may have to “work” on yourself to make sure you quit acting so hurt. Or you may do everything you can to relieve the hurt, end the hurt, get rid of the hurt. You need to constantly learn techniques to fix the hurt, repair the hurt, and quit suffering about the hurt.

But you just can’t accept the hurt.

No way.

You gotta FIGHT it, SMASH it, DESTROY it, BURY it.

(Munch munch chomp swallow chomp munch smash chew crunch grind chomp).

But who would you be without your story about HURT?

This includes not only hurting when it comes to dating….

….but every kind of emotional fear of getting hurt, like with friends, family, kids, siblings, co-workers, bosses, neighbors.

Who would you be without the belief that you are capable of hurting just like you were hurt?

Without the belief that it means you are worthy of being hurt, if you were hurt?

Or that someone else is worthy of being hurt, if they hurt you (or hurt others)?

What if you didn’t have the thought that hurting is forever?

“There is only one problem, ever: your uninvestigated story in the moment.” ~ Byron Katie

For me, to question my beliefs about this world hurting me has been the most basic, deep mystery brought forth by The Work.

It seemed like the universe was unfriendly.

You know, those unfriendly situations? You know the ones I’m talkin’ about?

Bad stuff happens.

Who am I though, in this present moment, without that thought that hurting happens, that getting damaged is irreparable, or that it means the universe is not so nice?

Not denial, not sugar-coated, not making it look fine when it isn’t…..

…..this is really looking to see what is actually, genuinely true.

I keep finding, with the help of others and the support of life, that every time I believe I’ve been hurt, I’m carried or pushed or guided or pointed, however softly and subtly (sometimes intensely), to something different.

Something healing.

My disordered crazed eating brought me to seek help, which brought me to the wisdom of others who had healed before me, which brought me to looking deep within at my definitions of pain, history, family, love, parents, work, God, life and death.

Your suffering may have brought you here today, to read these words, because you are a lover of understanding life and reality.

You want to know the truth.

Me too.

I turn the thought around about that thing that hurt so horribly:

  • that experience healed me
  • I was not hurt
  • it did not mean I was deserving of the pain
  • there is no need to be careful here
  • I have not unforgivably hurt other people
  • I did not hurt myself permanently
Could these be just as true, or truer?
Remember, this isn’t denial.
It’s not condoning or believing yay, I got hurt or someone else got hurt.
It’s holding it all in one wide open expansive place, mysterious and unknown.
“If you can learn to remain centered with the smaller things, you will see that you can also remain centered with bigger things. Over time, you will find that you can even remain centered with the really big things. The types of events that would have destroyed you in the past can come and go, leaving you perfectly centered and peaceful. You can be fine, deep inside, even in the face of a deep sense of loss…..Ultimately, even if ‘terrible’ things happen, you should be able to live without emotional scars and impressions.” ~ Michael Singer in The Untethered Soul

Keep inquiring.

We’re getting it.

Can you feel what’s centered and peaceful, even with all the suffering you’ve gone through in your life?

If you can’t….don’t worry.

Inquire.

Nothing more required.

Much Love,Grace

P.S. Do you hurt yourself with food and eating? Eating Peace may be a wonderful experience for you. October 9-11, 2015.For more information, click here.