Challenged right out of the gate
After I posted my recommitment to embracing my health – I got ready for bed. As I was brushing my teeth, I created the intention to remember my commitment. I know myself . I can be so disconnected with my own commitments that I will “forget” them by morning. More than once, at the end of a day, I make a commitment to eat healthy and do what supports my body physically and my heart spiritually. But then the next day, maybe sometime around 1 or 2pm, I’ll suddenly stop and think: “Wait! I was going to do better today!!” It’s as though I’ve thrown all my intentions and commitments right out of my mind, as if they never existed. Once I remember, I feel disappointed and want to back up the clock and start the day again. Ugh, what a cycle, right?
But today, I remembered and quickly. I made myself a yummy green smoothie (watermelon, strawberries, and spinach with all the healthy goodies). It tasted and felt great. I was feeling good.
Fast forward to dinnertime. We had cabin fever and decided to head out for dinner. We went to Taco Del Mar. Because I had been so good all day and eaten so sparingly, I thought it “wouldn’t hurt” to have a bigger dinner. So instead of a smaller portion and the healthier ingredients of say, two soft tacos or a taco salad… I had a chicken quesadilla. And not just a chicken quesadilla, but a chicken quesadilla platter! It was tasty… (but so are the tacos).
How I went from a too large and nonnutritious meal to thinking I needed something for dessert is lost in the mysterious workings of my addict-addled mind. Trust me when I say… when it comes to sugar, I’m not sane. Seriously! Ask my husband, Paul. He’ll vouch for it. In fact, he gamely and bravely tried to talk some sense into me while I stood perusing the various ice creams (looking for the brand with no HFCS – a form of insanity right there – but we can talk about that later…) in the freezer section. But I rationalize it away and carried on. I picked up two quarts of Breyer’s All Natural ice cream, one flavor for Amira… and one for me, since I wanted a flavor that had wheat in it and my daughter is allergic.
With the ice cream safely in the car on its way home with me… Paul starts to get through. He talks about how I help and consult my friends and family with their health challenges. He talks about how I spend hours researching and coming up with suggested plans and “prescriptions” for their healing. Then Paul says to me: “You need to do that for yourself.”
And I realize he’s right.
If I take even a cursory look at a file with my health concerns and issues… ice cream wouldn’t be on my recommended list. But I’d rationalize with you that I want to eat the occasional cup of ice cream. Don’t buy into my addict talk, though. The problem with that approach? Two things. One: quite honestly, my definition of “occasional” is a unfortunately loose. If there is a carton of ice cream in the house, you can be pretty certain I’m having more than a cup of ice cream more than maybe once or twice a week. And two: Healthy people CAN eat an occasional bowl of ice cream without harm or detriment to themselves. But me? I’m not healthy. I’m not healthy physically or spiritually. The dinner and then the ice cream right on its heels – it was a physical filler and numbing agent – in hopes that it would carry over and fill and numb my spirit too.
There you have it – not even 24 hours out from my declaration and I hit my own resistance to what I said I wanted! When I’m disconnected with myself, a rote and habitual form of resistance runs me.
I realize now, as I’m thinking it over and sharing it with you – what I have ahead of me is the work of being connected with the healthy life I want. Embracing my health is more than eating the right foods and exercising. It’s not really about that. It’s being awake. When I slow down, meditate and am listening and present to my life and my spirit – the work I want to do is no longer work or agonizing resistance. Instead, it is pure joy and passion again.
I’ll close with a version of the “tagline” I created for this when I first started out…
This is me, signing off and Embracing Love and Life! Embracing My Health!
PS – It wasn’t the most economical thing to do – but after having a cup of ice cream, I threw out the rest of my carton of ice cream.
June 18th, 2010 at 2:33 am
You said “…what I have ahead of me is the work of being connected with the healthy life I want”. And that’s true. Ultimately it _is_ you that will need to continually re-create, re-imagine, and re-embrace that connection to your healthy life. BUT… Don’t let that come to mean “I have to do this alone”. You actually _do_ have a connection to the vision of your healthy life. That’s me, and the other people around you.
We (your friends and family) have heard your dreams many times, and we’ve seen the repetitive behaviors that have sabotaged them. Part of your embrace of your health is your embrace of our counsel and intervention. If you practice seeing yourself reflected in others, you’ll eventually come to see yourself more clearly.
Love you!
June 18th, 2010 at 6:23 am
I am so in love with you two.
Janece, this very honest post does more for my physical and spiritual health than any diet offer or needlepoint affirmation. Thank you.
June 19th, 2010 at 1:24 pm
Thank you for this clear and insightful post, Janece. x
It’s true that we cannot achieve spiritual connection by fixing external symptoms that arise from perceived disconnection. This is religion’s most common and desperate failure, with its rules and aversions and exclusions. Because God is found everywhere, at every time, in every being, in every context, bar none, absolutely.
This means that _everything_ is one’s spiritual connection, not leaving out one single event, issue, mood, thought, situation or impulse, as in this post… =) Even falling asleep, asleep, dreaming, and rising toward waking, it must be one’s first response, the lens through which all of these are allowed simply to happen without commentary.
When considered, not as tasks, but as doorways, every one of these is a trailhead inward to the center where I AM radiates (with no qualifiers or descriptors, far beyond words or thoughts or actions, giving rise to them).
Truthfully, even health is secondary as unshakable health only comes from the Absolute.
You live a life of service to your family and friends, and we are all the better and happier for your love and attention.
But most of all, the spiritual path is a life of unconditional service to one’s Self.
It’s there, in silence, “covering one’s head”, that all healing and connection must be found. As that place enters awareness and is allowed to submerge all parts of daily life, barriers fall and the world around responds to our inward (often unspoken) devotion, opening, surrender and undivided attention. Love (which is the life force itself) flowing inwards flows outwards, and not until then (when it recognizes itself). Then it becomes mental and physical health naturally, without any effort, in its pure form.
Simply accept (don’t even try to comprehend) Love, moment to moment, as your only conscious aim. You can accept by doing or not doing. Nothing else is of value without it. It cannot be known outside total dissolution of all else in it. Whatever resists it is not you, only a creation of yours, over which you accordingly have absolute power to identify and disregard (not combat, because it is not real in the first place).
I think the only essential power we have is to make that surrender, provide that undivided attention, that listening, that total regard. All other powers we discover rely on that. One of those discovered powers is the power to be and to do successfully _without effort_, which is a form of denial. One simply Is, and the result is one simply does.
July 6th, 2010 at 8:18 pm
I can SO relate to this.
August 28th, 2011 at 10:01 am
I stumbled in when looking for a recipe for lettuce- I still have buttercrunch from last weeks trip to the market to use up. I also have escarole that I will stiry fry tonight in flax oil with onion, garlic, white beans and potatoes.
I joined your feed. I love it so far. I’d love to see a “Power Food of the Month” post.