The wonderful thing about learning to stop the incessent chatter in our minds and becoming present in the moment is that in an instant we are returned to who we actually are. Babies and very young children are completely present and awake to their surroundings, they are fully themselves. However as we grow, this becomes obscured by layers of life experience that have told us we are something other than what we are. These are layers upon layers of disappointments, shame, disapproval, comparisons, wishing, searching, grasping; each one further concealing the impeccable truth that we are already completely whole just as we are. At the core of each of us is an inner wisdom, a profound and abiding beauty. There are many names for this; some people call this your Authentic Self, Inner Light, Source, True Self, God, Holy Spirit, Buddha Nature, Christ within, Creator. Regardless of the name we give it, it is there, it is constant and this inner wisdom always knows the truth of our being.
People who have been able to accomplish really amazing things, like Oprah Winfrey, Martin Luther King Jr, Mother Theresa, etc. don’t inherently have a bigger or brighter light than anyone else. What allows them to accomplish what they have is that they have been able to peel back the layers and deeply access the same light in them that is in you and in all of us. Experiencing wholeness and living as fully as possible is a matter of connecting with that light, returning to ourselves as we actually are. When we are aligned with it we know it, we feel it and when we are out of alignment with it we REALLY feel it.
One of the things that I do when I am out of alignment is I reach for food when I am not hungry. I hope that food can ease the uncomfortable emotion I am feeling, distract me from whatever situation I wanted to avoid or delay something from happening in the future. It never works; it just leaves me feeling more disconnected from myself.
I have come to learn that the struggle with food and my body has been trying to communicate something very powerful about my deeper hunger: my hunger to be whole. The desire within me is not one for food; nor is it even truly a desire to be thin; it is a craving for wholeness, connection to that light at the core of me.
We all have our areas of shame and darkness, those places in us that block us from fully attaining wholeness. I have come to see that although they play out very differently they are not all that different. Perhaps for some it is fear of failure, a belief that we aren’t smart enough, that we aren’t loveable, aren’t worthy, an emptiness that we continue to fill with toxins and toxic actions. No matter what it is, until we come to clearly see these broken places in us and recognize that they are illusions, stories we have created not really who we are then we will not be fully whole. The gift that the present moment delivers is that when we truly engage in it we will always connect to the core of our being; our light, and if even for a flash, a fleeting instant, this brings about the peace that is craved and delivers us to who we already are. The skills taught in the Deeper Cravings course are just some of the mechanisms that help us connect, but points of connection are everywhere, all around us, all the time. It is a matter of recognizing them.
I do not feel I have fully arrived at a ‘healed’ place in terms of my food and body issues. I also do not feel it is possible to ever completely arrive in terms of healing. What I have learned instead is that it is a kind of unfolding, an emerging that will continue, likely for the rest of my life. It is a continual learning process, a slow shedding of the layers, a lifetime of glimpses of our true Selves and the beauty possible to us. Presence delivers us tiny moments of complete connection with God; tiny moments of heaven and wholeness. Perhaps learning to become fully awake, to clearly reveal that beauty at the core of our being is, in fact, the entire point of this journey called life.
Deeper Cravings 