MY JOURNEY, OUR

Journeys

I trust myself. How long has it been since you have been able to say this? Take a moment and imagine what it would be like to really trust yourself. Trusting yourself is about loving yourself from the inside out, accepting every part of your being. It is about living in your body, connected to an inner wellspring of deep wisdom that supports and guides you every moment of your life. And it is about having a responsive mind, one that is passionately curious about what is happening right here, right now.

I also trust my life.

I know how to wake up each morning and open to the unfolding of my day — both the easy and the difficult parts of it — aware that whatever shows up is a part of my journey into an ever-deepening connection with life. I am much more fascinated with showing up for what is than with trying to make it into what I think it should be. The joy this brings is beyond words.

How have I been fortunate enough to find a deep and wondrous connection with myself and with life when so many people live in reaction, existing in a world of struggle that is usually subtle and sometimes very painful? So many live in the belief that they need to be better or different from what they are to be okay. How do I experience a deep love affair with myself when so many not only do not love themselves but think that if they do they are being selfish? And how did I discover the joy of living in my body when so many live almost exclusively in their heads, believing that their bodies are just vehicles for maneuvering through their lives rather than wellsprings of wisdom, clarity, and support? The amazing thing is that it was my compulsions that brought me to a deep and abiding connection with myself and with life.

It wasn't always that way. As a child I lived in a household where nobody was really there, a familiar experience for many of us. Sure, people were going through the motions of living, but there was no real human contact. There were no playful eyes, no loving arms, no listening hearts that welcomed me into the world and let me know that I was valued for who I was. Children need a sense of connection and support from their caregivers. Being deprived of this essential nutrient of life, I left the world of I am!, in which I was easily and comfortably myself, and instead based my life on the belief that I am not/I should be — that I was not smart enough, beautiful enough, witty enough, that I had to change myself to make myself "better." I became a human doing rather than a human being, and the further I got away from who I really was, the more I lived from fear. I tried to make myself into the right kind of person to get the connection that I so desperately needed, but it was never enough.

By the time I was a teenager, self-judgment and despair filled me to my core, and my life became a never-ending maze of pain. I became vulnerable to anything that promised to make me feel better — and compulsions topped the list. I discovered that they could temporarily free me from the deep unease, struggle, and heartache that made up my inner life. When my cravings were satiated, I could relax all my trying, and for brief moments, I could taste a bit of the deep joy I had known before I had disconnected from myself. But quickly the self-hate and despair (that always came after a wave of compulsive activity) would devour my peace, and I would tumble back into that familiar place of struggle.

For almost half my life, I both hated my compulsions and desperately needed them in order to survive. They numbed my heartache enough so that I could at least function. I was taught that my compulsions were bad, and yet they relieved the pressure of always trying to make myself better or different from what I was. Binging on food is one of the strongest memories of my childhood, as I desperately tried to ingest the love I craved. I can remember when I was twelve years old, coming home from school, putting two pieces of toast in the toaster, and as soon as they popped up, putting in two more. Quickly buttering the finished toast, I stuffed them into my mouth so that I would be ready to butter and eat the next two. On and on I went until the fullness in my stomach temporarily numbed the emptiness in my heart.

I then went on to discover the mind-numbing world of prescription drugs, alcohol, busyness, and even some street drugs. Over time, most of these habits dropped away, but my core compulsion — overeating — remained. My descent into eating hell took many twists and turns over the years, all accompanied by great self-hatred, deep despair, and a sinking feeling that I was just too weak-willed to take control. Every failure at being in charge only fueled more self-disgust, which brought on more eating. After years of failed diets, counseling, shots, pills, hypnosis clinics, fasting, and anything else that promised a way out of this descending spiral, I weighed 220 pounds. I, like everyone else, was trying to heal my compulsion using the only method that was around at that time — control.

Learning to Listen

Thank God that controlling my compulsion didn't work for me. Stripped of any illusion that I was powerful enough to be in charge of these deep forces that would come roaring through me, I began to hear, as if over a very fuzzy phone line, a deep knowing inside me. This knowing said that lasting healing comes from being curious rather than controlling, that it comes from mercy rather than manipulation, from responding rather than reacting. It is about opening what has been closed, reclaiming what has been hidden, and remembering what has been forgotten.

I began to work with a woman who deeply understood these truths, and like a comet returning from the depths of outer space, I began the journey back to myself. One of the first things she invited me to do was to let go of the violence of dieting. This was like asking me to jump off the end of the world. I just knew that I would gain a thousand pounds in a month. But after a small weight gain, things began to settle down. As the clouds of my controlling mind began to lift a little, I could see that it was in listening to what was going on inside me when I was...