Letting Go of Compulsive Eating
by Baba Shuddhaanandaa Brahmachari
As a person of conscience and loving kindness, you may look outside the windows of your own home, to your own or other communities and cultures, and see through your expanded vision millions and millions of men, women, and children dying of hunger and malnutrition. If you yourself are blessed with an incredible abundance of food, and also gripped with an insatiable craving for more and more food, you may not only be haunted by frustration from being overweight, but also inclined to feel guilty because you have and eat so much while others are literally starving.
But we know that guilt is a useless, even harmful emotion.
What I would like to share with you today are some simple practices to help you release your perceived shortcomings, failures, guilt and weaknesses and instead, lift your mind with your mind to rejoice in the fact that you’re blessed beyond all comprehension, every moment of your life. As you focus on the positive gifts that you have within you all your weaknesses will melt away, creating more positive energy for you to let go of your need to overeat, and re-channeling that energy into a life of happiness and peace. It is only when we are filled with self-love and self-acceptance that we can truly begin to love others and share with those who are less fortunate.
It is NOT About Food
First, do not worry too much about your compulsive eating habits, for when you worry; what you actually do is you keep repeating certain words, certain thoughts, and negative emotions. This only creates the ground that is necessary to force you to eat more and put you into a cycle of committing a mistake and then continuously regretting and repenting for it, which is the unhappy part of the whole story. This situation has not happened to you overnight. You may be thinking that the issue is one of food. But I don’t think so. It is not food at all. I know of many persons in the world and I know in the younger days there are people who eat more than you do. But all do not convert that into more fat than the body needs.
The issue is more hormonal and is one of lack of proper communication through the meridians or the channels (called Nadis in India) from the Central Nervous System to the respective organs. The communication blocks occur due to a sedentary life style, or due to excessive stress related to a life of unconsciousness. Again, it is a slow and gradual process how your mind gets infected with the virus of negative attitudes about things around you or your own personal growth. When it happens, it happens in silence, and your attention is somewhere else, but when the symptoms show up, it manifests in the form of inner imbalance.
Just as the inner imbalance, hormonal imbalance, and communication blocks have not happened overnight, do not seek a quick fix to this self-created problem. What is needed is to understand that if you have created it you are the one to uncreate it, and the only one who can undo it. Once the mind resolves, and is determined, then it starts working in the reverse direction to give back what was lost.
Don’t Fight Your Desire for Food
So how do you work to reverse the problem? For sure, don’t fight your desire for food; if you do, you will lose the battle. Just relax, and, with love and joy, work doing beautiful stretches with your body and most important of all, remember to breathe with deep, rhythmic breathing. Don’t forget to take a cat-nap meditation by counting to 90 like the ticking of the clock. Used with regularity, intermittently throughout the day, it will to fill you with positive cosmic vibrations.
Gradually, you will experience increasing hormonal balance due to your regular practice, done with love, and then your greed for food will diminish without effort. As the communication channels get clear and clean due to your breathing universal creative energy, you will find your emotional blocks are also getting released, without you even knowing the magic of its happening.
Eat if you wish to, but don’t forget to do the stretches and deep breathing and worship the God of positive energy and vibrations all around you. You will slim down and you will be healthy and beautiful, for in your inner Spirit you are Healthy and Beautiful. You are not what your body looks like; you are who You ARE, and your body is your most priceless gift.
Confirm that Your Body Is the Most Priceless Gift
Remember, nothing happens in our life which is not destined to happen. And whatever happens has a purpose behind. And the purpose is always beneficial and good for us.
The path of spirituality is the path of loving one’s own Self and orienting life in such a manner that whatever is thought or done is motivated by the higher purpose of attaining the knowledge of the Self. The concept of urge is essentially a movement in unconsciousness or unawareness or rather unmindfulness of what is beneficial to one’s own Self.
Once you confirm the fact that your body is the most priceless gift and that this is the only body to unravel the ultimate mystery of the Universe and also the only instrument by which you can do service to God in order to reach to the ultimate state of unconditional surrender to the Divine, then you cannot do anything which is harmful to this most unique instrument available to you in this birth. Thus your mind-controlled body is too precious for you to take it casually.
Become conscious of the purpose of human birth. Ask yourself every morning when you wake up from your bed how you are going to move forward toward the Divine without surrendering to addictive behavioral patterns and unconscious urges. Your positive affirmation about your positive powers to act mindfully in order to heal the body and not harm it anymore is of paramount importance in enlightening your path toward higher attainment. Just your mindfulness of the supreme opportunity that life is and your deep conviction to have God-vision will always put you on the right track.
Every night when you retire to bed, relax your body, meditate upon your breath, and then fill yourself with positive affirmations that you no longer need those foods that are harmful to you for any particular disease pattern and that the need for that food is no longer there in your soul anymore. And that you are healthy and happy with foods that are always conducive to good health and happiness. Early in the morning when you wake up, do practice the same technique once again, but this time have the conviction that you are going to be very mindful throughout the day of not surrendering to instinctive urges but instead be surrendered to the Divine Light which is your Divine Essence.
Practice Mindful Eating
As you eat and drink your snacks and meals, teas and coffee, water and drinks many times every day, begin to practice mindful eating. Once you are convinced about the Holiness of mindfulness, about the Grace of mindfulness, you will be able to eat while being conscious of the process of chewing and feeling taste more intimately, being truly present in the act of eating. If you can chew more and chew with awareness, you will not only eat less but you will add true quality to your food, as your consciousness, which is the essence of true power within you, will energize the food and such food will metabolize into purer energy for both your physical body and your mental body. You will never eat more than you need, and there will be more resources to share with others, such as the malnourished all around us. Now once you start practicing mindful eating, which is like meditative eating, it will gradually become your practice. Wherever you eat, you will offer it to the Higher Self first, and then enjoy the food to the full with your powerful mindfulness.
Consciously offer everything you eat as oblation to the fire of hunger in your stomach. This will be like the fire ritual of Yajna. Then your very act of eating food will be a Prayer of gratitude, meaning you are offering the food to God. As you keep offering every food to the God within you, you will see that your food will fill you with health and harmony, peace and bliss.
When you eat in a group, don’t talk all the time, but practice eating with mindfulness. You don’t even have to talk about your practice to others. It is your inner attitude and happiness while eating that is important, and quite naturally you share that happiness with others. Mindfulness is happiness. Your mindfulness would radiate positive vibration to your food and to your family and friends too.
As your friends see your joy, your grace, your vibrant happiness, and how you are not just enjoying your food as an act of material pleasure, but a blessing of the whole Universe, they too will one day become interested to know the secret of your glow. Then you can share. You share when you have practiced yourself.
Observe Your Eating without Judgment
What I am trying to share with you is this; do not worry about the intense desire for food, which is part of life force. The unfulfilled desires manifest in everyday life for everyone. You are not alone in this. Don’t condemn yourself thinking that you are out of control. What is happening to you is natural.
Instead of finding fault with your lack of control, when the desire to overeat or to eat unhealthy food comes, do watch this passion or deep emotion, just watch without judging. It will dissolve, for you are not fueling it with your judgments. Just watch. Just become mindful and watchful and aware. Stand apart from this passion.
You will experience a sense of calmness. Gradually love will flood your being. For it is the same energy that is manifested in your intense desires, which when observed and witnessed, turns into the most sacred Love that connects you to the Universe. Just watch, and Let go! Your world will change into a place of celebration and joy for Love will flow through you for all beings on earth. Offer it all to the Universe, to God, to Light Eternal-and reclaim the precious gift of your body as a temple of God.
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