DANCING IN THE DARK

 

Your soul is here for you to experience and become aware of your immense magnificence. Your soul does not want you to live a safe life behind closed doors, with only half of you expressing itself  and living according to the tenets of an outdated and limiting belief system, imposed from the outside and handed down through the generations.

 

Your soul wants you to experience  your power, your genius, your courage, your independence- it does not want you cowering in the corner or shortchanging yourself. Your soul will lead you into your fear so that you can find your trust, into your disempowerment so you can find your empowerment. It will lead you into your oppression, so you can find your liberation and into the  your sorrow so you can find your joy. It will maneuver you into a position of being completely stuck, so that you throw off the shackles of your righteous positions , access your humility and walk the pristine path of Truth. Your soul’s greatest joy would be for you to seek and retrieve and restore to its former glory fearlessly all the parts of yourself that you banished, vilified and made wrong and forgot about so long ago.

 

You have a choice. You can live according to your soul’s agenda, working in harmony with that part of you, seeing your life through the eyes of your Divinity, or you can continue to live your life through the lens of separation, struggle for survival , where there is never enough, where you are never enough , where people and circumstances in your life are there to be fixed, vanquished or avoided and where your best laid plans are routinely washed away like a wave washing away a child’s carefully constructed sandcastle. Here is your choice: Get with the big picture, the deeper truth or suffer some more.

 

Most often your soul brings you into relationship not for a ‘happily ever after’, but so you can see yourself. The parts you love and the parts you hate. You are in relationship to find balance, to find equanimity, to retrieve the lost parts of yourself and to love all of you, the dark and the light, the Divine and the diabolical and then and only then do you gain the opportunity of meeting yourself  in that field that exists beyond all notions of wrongdoing and right-doing, alluded to by the great poet, Rumi.

 

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DIETS, MEMOIRS AND WORKSHOPS……

This blog writing is a unique experience! There is no one but myself holding me accountable for writing this blog, and this weekend I attended a memoir writing workshop and had no time or even psychic space to devote to my blog! Also, although my blog has a lot of traffic, people seldom leave a comment, so it feels like I am speaking into a void. Leave a comment please !!!! ….even if you completely disagree with me! That’s what makes our world so rich.. diverse views and opinions.

I am preparing to run a one day workshop on Meeting the Shadow in two weeks’ time and I have asked  Jeff Malone (Debbie’s Executive Director) to support me in ensuring it is a once in a lifetime experience for my attendees. I really want THIS one to be unforgettable. I know I stand before a very discriminating group of people and my delivery of this most sacred material has to be impeccable, as does my integrity. In other words, I demand of myself that I not only talk the talk…

Conscious eating for the past two weeks has been quite amazing. I have lost two kilos and several inches and only eaten what I find delicious! I just have learned to identify when I am full. Its quite amazing. No more deprivation. Every now and again I forget and find myself in default mode, eating unconsciously as I used to. That’s when I overeat. Its that simple. I have eaten, since I began this practice, roughly half of what I normally eat. I realize that conscious eating is not unlike conscious living, and all of those coaches who read this blog, you will recognize many of the principles underpinning our work , in Paul Mckenna’s book. Its like taking Debbie Ford’s principles into your relationship with food and your body. Please if any of you do try this, email me or leave a comment on how it has worked for you.

What an amazing workshop I attended this weekend! Run by screenwriter and author Helena Kriel, an ex South African who now lives in Los Angeles, I learnt all about creative writing, developing your protagonist, pitting your protagonist against an antagonist and the magical transformational arc that needs to occur as a result. Once again , the Ford principles, stalked so many of her profound insights, especially around the relationship between protagonist and antagonist (even if the antagonist was not a person but a political system)  and how the antagonist exists on some level within the protagonist! These themes, weave their way through our lives and human history and brilliant writers like Shakespeare knew them intuitively.

 

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CHALLENGE

I was in Exclusive Books last week and a book by Paul Mc Kenna caught my eye  entitled, ”I can make You Thin”.  I have been battling to lose a few kilos for many years. I find diets require too much will power. My addiction to sweets and chocolates always wins out eventually, no matter how much I get my head right.

 

There was something about the simplicity of his methods that made sense. He gives you four golden rules all backed up by reason and research.

 

Rule no 1) When you are hungry, eat. I realized I eat usually because it is mealtime and it has nothing to do with whether I am hungry. I eat if food is placed in front of me and its mealtime.

 

Rule no 2) Eat what you want.  You have no idea how sick I am of Woolworths chicken slices and baked potato. Tuna makes me want to projectile v…. just the smell alone of it . I am so bored with the food we eat at home, which is always made with calories and kilojoules in mind. So saying eat what you want is well, liberating!

 

Rule no3) Eat consciously. That is, savor every morsel.  Between bites, chew your food twenty times and put down your knife and fork. Pick it up again for the next bite. This forces you to eat slowly and consciously.

 

Rule no 4) When you are full, stop eating. Notice when you are full and stop. If ten minutes later you feel hungry again… eat.  But stop when you are full.

 

So I put this to the test last night . We went to a restaurant and I ordered a bowl of fettuccine with artichokes and olives. I followed instructions… and after about six to eight mouthfuls (about one third of the plate) I was full. I took the remainder home in a doggy bag, in case I felt hungry later… but I didn’t . I was amazed. I did the same with breakfast and ate about one third of my French toast. Unheard of. I usually feel hungry after one slice of French toast and by ten thirty I am hungry again. Not this time. Maybe its just the glow of a new plan….. like new brooms sweep clean.

 

He also said if you feel hungry, it could be that you are thirsty so drink a glass of water and only eat after that, if you are still hungry. Apparently, dehydration can mimic the feeling of being hungry.

 

What I realized is that this method changes your relationship with food. Using consciousness. Yay, just up my alley! He has also supplied a DVD and CD to listen to with eyes closed every morning to entrench this new way of being and new relationship with food in your subconscious mind.

 

I am excited, but the jury is out. He claims to have a 71 percent success rate, whilst diets have a nine percent success rate. It seems unbelievable that I could just happen to pick up a book that changes my relationship with food overnight, after years of trying. Is it too good to be true? I will weigh myself in two weeks time and report back…….. I promise to be honest with you , even if I have fallen off the wagon and gone back to old eating habits. Even if I put on weight. Does anyone want to join me?

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