On both my husband's and my sides of the family, social time means eating time. Back at the beginning of this month I let all of my intentions fly out the door with a weekend that was truly an experiment in stuffing my face. I was miserable physically, mentally, emotionally for a full week. As I lay on the couch in pain and cursing the situation that put me in this gross state, I had an aha!/duh! moment of realizing that there was no one else to blame. I had done this to myself. It was not excusable to say that my family equates food with fun, that I was raised with a mentality of if you paid for it you eat it all, and that if I don't eat cake on someone's birthday, it will hurt their feelings. This Deva journey is about living life on my terms, getting the last drop of juiciness out of every moment, and being the absolute best me possible. So, how can I continue letting something as basic as eating be controlled by what other people think?
Over the last 6 - 9 months I've been reading a lot, experimenting a lot, and being very interested in the raw food lifestyle, in going green, in putting nutrition above all else. I've become a huge fan and follower of David Wolfe and am using his Longevity Now Program as a basic guide. But as Bob Doyle says, there's a big difference between being interested in something and being committed to it. I'm not sure I'm there yet. Right now I'm on day 3 of a 3-day raw/green trial and I feel so good I might extend it to 5 days...........we'll see.
The thing is, I've been on this spiritual journey 9 years or so, ever since my friend Antigone handed me a copy of Cheryl Richardson's Stand Up For Your Life, and while I can look back over everything I've accomplished, both in the physical and spiritual realms and know that I'm barely the same person I was then - it was hard! It took a long time. And I can honestly say that I have grown more since I drank my first raw chocolate smoothie and choked down my first glass of Vitamineral Green (which btw I love now!) 9 months ago than I had in the previous 8 years. It feels like maybe that's not a coincidence.
There's a quote by Gloria Anzaldua that says something to the effect of When you're in a downward spiral, you only have to change one thing to make it stop. There's an entire industry of self-help/law of attraction experts telling us how to stop the negative spiral of thoughts and emotions that lead to self-sabotage and the inability to reach our potential - but it seems to me that most of them are leaving out the mind-body connection from their formulas. If my body feels gross and disgusting (and I'm not talking about my emotional response to how my body looks compared to how I think its suppose to look.), if it's sick and tired and full of chemicals and gmo's and simply doesn't feel good, how am I suppose to rise above how I physically feel and choose only the good emotional/mental thoughts and feelings? What if the better, faster, more efficient way to break the spiral is to change something physical? Like what I put in my mouth.
So many traditions talk about my body being a temple, but as I've learned more about feminine traditions and earth based systems of thought, I've come to think of my body not only as the house of goddess, but as an instrument, a tool that I use to connect to her, to my Self. My body is how I receive messages from Source in the form of emotions and feelings and intuition and a sense of "knowing." When I have a thought or an emotion, as discussed by the above mentioned self-helpers, I physically feel it somewhere in my body. Those physical feelings are how I know I'm doing what is right for me - or not. And if my instrument is not in peak health, then my messages from Source will at best be garbled, at worst I won't hear them at all.
A Deva friend recently commented that she couldn't imagine life without bread and pasta, and I understand that food is supposed to be fun and joyful and taste good. And I didn't start this nutritional journey by taking things out, I started by adding things in - but here's the thing: I remember what my life was like before that first raw chocolate smoothie - when I ate a lot of bread and pasta - and I wasn't very happy. What if the things that I cling to (like birthday cake and giant Philly-Cheese Steaks on lovely bread rolls and the buttery garlic French bread) in the name of enjoying life are the very things which keep me from truly experiencing what if feels like to feel good? What if truly feeling good is something more than I can even imagine from where I'm at right now and the thing standing between me and it is a plate of spaghetti with white sauce? What if the key to having the positive thoughts and emotions that will attract whatever I decide I want is having a body that is not clogged with sugars and refined carbs and foods that are so processed and cooked that there is no nutritive value left in them? What if the thing keeping me from a full-on direct experience of Goddess is the broken instrument through which she speaks to me?
I just got off the phone with raw nutrition counselor Daphne Cohn and she told me take it slow, continue adding good things in, and allow a lot of grace and permission for whatever happens. I'm not sure I'm capable right now of never eating another cooked thing, especially bread and pasta!, but I am ready to think about it some more. I'm ready to determine where I am on the scale of interested and committed and to put some systems into place to support that. I'm ready to let my family be where they are separate from where I am and know that just as I don't have to let their opinion affect what I put in my mouth, they don't have to let mine affect what they put in theirs.
Food for thought, as they say. Please know I'm not preachin', I'm mullin' it over out loud.
Have the Reddest Day Ever!
In Grace,
Kell
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