Neutrality. Switzerland comes to mind. How many times has someone said to you, “Why can’t we become like Switzerland and just live without all the conflict?” To be neutral you have to not take sides, not divide yourself up, not see bad or good but the truth in both sides and lets face it that is not how most of us have learned to be.
To relinquish effort however is actually what we must do. Loving without conditions means acknowledging both sides without judgment. It means forgiving ourselves where we see judgment. Most interesting I learned in this chapter that it means accepting that I do feel both sides of almost everything and it is that fight within me that keeps me in constant battle and unable to be at peace.In relinquishing effort I am not choosing and living one side over the other, I am accepting both sides within myself, feeling them and then letting them be fixed by a power higher than myself simply because if I feel broken I can not fix myself. Feeling being the important word here because I am exactly how I should be. My “broken” is only my confusion in not realizing that I am whole only when I accept all my feelings and let the larger Whole find my place within It.
Nothing is good or bad, wise or stupid… those are only judgments we lay upon a situation. A situation which in itself is neutral. The wind will blow, the earth will shake, the waters will rise and fall whether I am there or not. People have lessons they are learning in ways I think I understand or not but I am not here to understand their lessons. I am here to accept each moment for it being here, acknowledge it for being without weighing it down in my own mind for its meaning. It is here because it is here to show me love and the way home. It is an opportunity to en joy a bit of home while still on the journey.
Food porn. I belong to a prayer group and one of the lessons suggested substituting porn for addiction. This opened a door for me. Porn suggests godlessness. Addiction needs God’s help. Porn is taking an addiction and not only blocking the healing but going into the darkness. The moment I said “food porn”, a door opened. I realized that I have been blocking the love that I was trying so hard to give to myself. My eating no longer was seen as an attempt to abuse my body but to love it. I remembered my first moments after birth- discomfort, cold, warmth and FOOD. I remembered those evenings in the past when the family sat in front of the tv with a large bowl of ice cream to watch “Lassie” on Sunday night. In an instant, curling up on the couch with a bowl of sugar coated popcorn was seen as a way I was trying so hard to love myself. Of course I immediately wished the large bowl of ice cream during the “Lassie” watching had been a healthy bowl of veggies, but it wasn’t and the sugar/ carb combination was engraved as love food. Now I know better. At least in my head I get that healthy eating means healthy body but in my wiring love will always be those few moments in this world that I first experienced and the warm and food. The foods bringing back that experience were the ones that now are known to be the least healthy for that body. Last night when I en joyed the sweet popcorn I loved me. I am learning to consciously love myself. Porn doesn’t survive in consciousness. I’m letting God into my thoughts and to clean out the crud so to speak. I believe that although I will always be addicted to love through food I will learn to love myself in a healthy way with foods that not only love for the moment but love continuously. The porn side of the addiction will give way to a high to love myself with good quality. Open the door. He is the doorway to change.
