Ego Keeps Itself Safe and You Fat

Eckhart Tolle teaches us that our ego's job is to survive and therefore it will do just about anything to do that...including having us play "roles" that may not serve us in the long-run. Playing these roles can lead to overeating...continued from yesterday's post...Fattening Roles to Drop

When I would overeat (aka binge) I would then tell myself I was stupid or I had no willpower or that I was a fat slob. Those were all judgments, not facts.

Now if I feel the urge to stuff my face, I can look behind that feeling and (sometimes) figure out WHY. Turns out it isn’t because of some giant personal flaw! Typically I find that when I have this temptation it is because I am doing something that doesn’t feel good or authentically me...or I am not taking care of myself and am over fatigued.

At that point, the point I realize this, I have the opportunity to choose. I can choose to be more authentically me in the best way I can, given the situation. I can choose to separate the situation from myself by recognizing that it just IS...and that my thoughts and emotions are independent of it, and then I can work to change how I’m feeling...as Abraham teaches to “reach for a better feeling thought.” Or I can choose to suppress my feelings by drugging myself, whether that is with food, alcohol, drugs or even over exercising!

What helped me when I did choose to overeat in order to hide from my feelings was to consciously acknowledge that was what I was doing. I would literally say out loud “I know that I am eating to push down my feelings of fear (or discomfort or pain or anger) and I give myself permission to do this...this is a way I have developed to protect myself and right now, at this moment, it does serve me”

By giving myself permission to overeat I accomplished 2 things. 1) I tended to actually eat less and 2) I stopped beating myself up for doing it!

This is a wonderful place to start. From here it is possible to build up other coping skills.

This may sound strange, but I am actually grateful for my past overeating and the fat that resulted from it. Why? Because I know this was a tool that I used, one that my ego developed, to protect itself. It kept me alive at times. It also was, admittedly, a way for me to get some attention that my ego obviously wanted.

I no longer want that attention and I no longer need fat to protect me. But when I didn’t know anything else, my fat shielded me and helped keep me safe. How can I possibly be angry about that? I was doing the absolute best I could at the time.

Our minds and bodies are incredibly amazing things. They will work extremely diligently to keep us alive...they will creatively find ways to get this done...that is their number one priority.

It is OUR job to be as conscious as possible so we are in control of how we are living. When we actively choose our actions, our thoughts and thereby our emotions, then we can truly have the healthy, slender body that we are designed to have...and that we all deserve.

Fattening Roles (Not Rolls) to Drop

What roles are you playing and how does that affect your weight?

“In many cases, happiness is a role people play, and behind the smiling façade, there is a great deal of pain”

Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

This is a common role in the US where sadness and anger are not acceptable. We ask “how are you?” or “How’s it going?” but we don’t really want an honest answer...it is really a long way of saying “hi.”

We can become so immersed in this role that we aren’t even aware of our own unhappiness. Sometimes this role is magnified by other roles we take on like, “The good girl” or the “perfect wife and mother”. These are common roles for women who struggle with their weight.

We want to be liked and approved of...Tolle teaches that this is the ego—a very natural response. The trouble with this desire is that we often allow it to overshadow our true selves. When our efforts to please others, or to be perfect, or to be liked, cut us off from our true inner nature we will at some point rebel...and either punish or comfort ourselves someway...or both.

For me, this was accomplished by overeating and drinking. I was not being authentic, so my falseness and my dishonesty was quite stressful... I use food to calm myself and I got fat too, as a way of proving to myself and the world that I wasn’t perfect.

Tolle tells us to acknowledge our feelings, even the ‘negative’ ones. In the teachings of Abraham we are also taught his. Don’t pretend to be happy if you are not.

Figure out why you are having these feelings. Is there a situation that is influencing the emotion? Can you do anything about it? Can you remove yourself form the circumstance? If you cannot literally remove yourself then perhaps you can do it mentally.

The events around us do not CAUSE our emotions. We are 100% responsible for them. If we choose to keep thinking negative thoughts about an event and therefore feel bad about it...well, that’s up to us.

Our challenge is to keep the situation—the actual facts—distinct from our thoughts about it. Our thoughts lead to our feelings, you see?

Stuffing ourselves with food in order to suppress our emotions does not allow us to separate from them. In fact we will, consciously or not, create more negative feelings as a result. This is the key reason emotional eating leads to obesity.

By breaking that pattern and observing our emotions and the triggers of them we can free ourselves from the unhappiness that pushes us to overeat.

continued tomorrow

Relax, Refuse to Diet and Let the Sunshine In

Whatever action you take in a state of negativity will create more outer resistance and the universe will not be on your side.

If the shutters are closed, the sunlight cannot come in.

When you yield internally, when you surrender, a new dimension of consciousness opens up. If action is possible or necessary, your action will be in alignment with the whole and supported by creative intelligence.

Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

When we diet becase we "should" we are approaching our health from a state of negativity. Everything seems harder. Our cravings may increase, we may have more aches and pains or injuries. We may find more situations come up that seem to thwart our goals.

When we come from a state of peace about ourselves, wanting the best health, to be in alignment with our inner being, then these challenges seem to melt away.

Do they actually appear less often? Are we just less aware of them? Or are we better able to handle them when they do arise?

I can't say for certain and to me it really doesn't matter. It FEELS like they come up less and that they are less strong when they do.

I notice that thte times when I have the biggest challenges in maintaining my healthy choices, these are the times when I feel my aches and pains more, or when I feel the pull to overeat. These tend to be the times when I have "too much to do" and neglect my spirit.

Maybe I don't do my affirmations. Perhaps I don't stretch my body. Or I don't sit in quiet. I might not write.

When I don't do the things that feed my soul, when I am not being that person, that is when the "Old Laurie" shows up and brings with her doubt and fear.

I am so blessed to have wonderful friends, family and teachers who help me to recognize when she arrives so I can send her on her way before she unpacks all her baggage!

Feel Your Inner Health

To expand on the previous thought...reading on in A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle,

“Although body-identification is one of the most basic forms of ego, the good news is that it is also the one that you can most easily go beyond. This is done not by trying to convince yourself that you are not your body, but by shifting your attention from the external form of your body and from thoughts about your body—beautiful, ugly, strong, weak, too fat, too thin—to the feeling of aliveness inside it. No matter what your body’s appearance is on the outer level, beyond the outer form it is an intensely alive energy field.”

“When you are in touch with the inner body, you are not identified with your body any more, nor are you identified with your mind...you are no longer identified with form but moving away from form-identification toward formlessness, which we may alls call Being. It is your essence identity. Body awareness not only anchors you in the present moment, it is a doorway out of the prison that is the ego. It also strengthens the immune system and the body’s ability to heal itself.”

So to heal the condition of overweight we must lose the identification with that form. I thought for a long time it was important to label myself as fat, as obese. And in a sense it was...because I needed to become conscious aware of the fact and not fool myself. Now it may seem like it is obvious when we gain excess weight...but it is amazingly easy and common for us to ignore the signs. We think our clothes have shrunk. We avoid full-length mirrors and being photographed.

It can be a critical step in self-awareness to acknowledge where you are in order to enable you to change, claiming our “fatness” is not necessary...we need to let go of the label and feel our inner health, the potential inside that we have for our health...in order to achieve our health we have to feel it and accept it.

Love Your Body Don’t Identify with It

I know that some people will think that if you don’t “identify with your body” that you don’t care about or for it. That is not the point...the point is that your body just is a part of you. You are not your body any more than you are your profession or your address.

“To refrain from identifying with the body doesn’t mean that you neglect, despise, or no longer care for it...You can also improve the body’s condition through right nutrition and exercise. If you don’t equate the body with who you are, when beauty fades, vigor diminishes, or the body becomes incapacitated, this will not affect your sense of worth or identity in any way...It is not just people with good or near-perfect bodies who are likely to equate it with who they are. You can just as easily identify with a “problematic” body and make the body’s imperfection, illness or disability into your reality.”

Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth, Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

How many of us have grown to identify ourselves as fat or obese...or as someone who doesn’t exercise...someone who cannot succeed at their health goals?

We deserve to love our inner selves enough to get past the labels, beyond the body identification.

I had to be aware that I had a fat body in order to be able to make a change...as long as I was hiding from that or making excuses about it I was stuck. Then I had to stop referring to myself as fat to stop identifying with that label in order to manifest the change.

Consumerism, Bulimia and Anorexia

Eckhart Tolle writes in A New Earth, Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose,

“In some cases the psychological need for more or the feeling of not enough that is so characteristic of the ego becomes transferred to the physical level and so turns into insatiable hunger. The sufferers of bulimia will often make themselves vomit so they can continue eating. Their mind is hungry, not their body. This eating disorder would become healed if the sufferers, instead of being identified with their mind, could get in touch with their body and so feel the true needs of the body rather than the pseudo needs of the egoic mind.”

He continues and talks about our struggles with body image thus

“she ‘sees’ is the mental concept of her body, which says ‘I am fat’ or ‘I will become fat.’ At the root of this condition lies identification with the mind. As people have become more and more mind-identified which is the intensification of egoic dysfunction, there has also been a dramatic increase in the incidence of anorexia in recent decades. If the sufferer could look at her body without the interfering judgments of her mind or even recognize those judgments for what they are instead of believing in them--or better still, if she could feel her body from within—this would initiate her healing.

The body is “after all no more than a physical form that shares the destiny of all forms—impermanence and ultimately decay.”

Stuff, Stuffed and Over Stuffed

It seems to be natural for humans to want more...more stuff, better stuff.

Eckhart Tolle writes in A New Earth, Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose,

“The unchecked striving for more, for endless growth, is a dysfunction and a disease. It is the same dysfunction the cancerous cell manifest, whose only goal is to multiply itself, unaware that it is bringing about its own destruction by destroying the organism of which it is a part.”

I see this in humanity in general...our consumerism, greed, desire for more land, more poser, more control, is destroying our planet. If that is left unchecked well will destroy our planet and thereby destroy ourselves. In the end our lust for more leads to having nothing...to being nothing.

While I can’t control the global events, I can apply that to myself and to food.

By unconsciously feeding our bodies more and more, by trying to feel full, filled, “fulfilled” we add excess fat to our bodies. If that is left unchecked then that excess fat will destroy our bodies just as our global excess can destroy the world.

By focusing on our personal changes, by no longer needing to overstuff our bodies we gain health and control. I believe that this will also translate to our needing less “stuff” because a lot of the emotions behind this consumerism are the same. So in a very real sense, by focusing on our health we can positively affect the health of the entire planet!

Fat is an Illusion Not Who You Are

Don’t let illusion control your life. Become aware of who you are not and you will become more aware of who you really are.

Eckhart Tolle writes in A New Earth, Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose,

“The recognition of illusion is also its ending. Its survival depends on your mistaking it for reality. In the seeing of who you are not, the reality of who you are emerges by itself.”

When I apply this to our health, our physical bodies I realize that when we stop labeling ourselves and recognize that the fat that surrounds us is NOT US...if we realize the fat is not our true reality then we open the possibility of our true being-ness, our true self to emerge from that illusory shell.