Day 179

Thoughts: Revealing my self to myself : Thoughts that shape my health and determine what I eat.

Jinjee a 39 year old raw food eater said "What I would tell my 20-year old self if I could go back: You could probably be having some really lovely, happy, warm thoughts right now, if your mind wasn't so busy being addicted to stressful, anxious, negative thoughts. Just like you could be eating some fresh, in-season, organic fruits right now if you weren't busy being addicted to overeating dense, low quality, chemically flavored foods. You can't imagine of all the wonderful, beautiful, light-giving thoughts, moods, and delicacies you are missing out on!"

I am so afraid to live out there and be bold and courageous all the time. Yes I am addicted to stressful, anxious, negative thoughts. These thoughts allow me to disconnect from people, my self, love, the universe. I do allow myself to be courageous and bold, and then I come back from that as I'm not sure yet how to be that all the time. I am afraid of people. Yet if you meet me you would say I am confident. I think you are all better than me. All of you. No one is not better than me. That's how paranoid my mind is. I am afraid to shine my light all the time.

The first time I have truly loved myself as an adult was a couple of weeks ago. I looked into the mirror and instead of being ashamed or embarrassed and looking away, I looked right into my eyes. I connected with myself. I experienced love and forgiveness. It was amazing. The most lifting experiences I have had. I apologize for not having the courage two weeks ago to share this, I let fear get in the way and thought that if people knew I am happy when I look in the mirror that I would be weird. They will think I am weird if I love myself. See how afraid I am of people judging me. This is crazy, I would hope that everyone looks in the mirror and experiences love for themselves. I am my own worst enemy.

It seemed easier to appreciate and love myself when I was younger. Until the vicious circle of guilt, shame and punishment started where I would use food in place of emotions. To avoid particular emotions I would just eat and eat and eat only to find myself in a darker place than before I started!

In 'Shifting the Horizon of What's Possible: Beyond the Vicious Circle' Jane Wright explains it perfectly.

"Like historians and novelists, we too construe our own histories as we see them, and realities get created accordingly. Here's how it works: Something happens. We simultaneously assess and interpret what happened—we assign meaning, categorize importance, draw conclusions, identify action to be taken (or not), form opinions that linger. This melding or collapse between what happens and the meaning we assign to it happens almost instantaneously and becomes our framework for what's real, not something separate or outside of us. When we can begin to "uncollapse" all this, we have a say in the matter of who we are, and the room to create and design our lives."

I have learned that no one and no thing can make me happy. No one and no thing can make me satisfied. No food can make me fulfilled. Only I can. I generate my own well being, health, happiness, love. I generate it from INSIDE.

If you stay consumed with the tasks of outside things, you'll give up inner peace. Take a moment to be present and feel what's all in you and around you. It's where your solutions and true wealth lives. - Marquese Martin-Hayes

Once we have inner peace the outer will come. Outer is the expression of inner.

In Heidi Williams's 'Reality vs Perception' she says "It is the ultimate to be able to acknowledge and accept the past, be open and awake to observe and be in the moment of the present without any form of pre-judgmental expectation, and conformatism to our past experiences . Making a purely conscious thought occur with a blank open non opinionated mind, is the ultimate. Freedom of thought, without any fear is a powerful tool. It is courageous. It is admirable, it is non-judgmental, it is internal power.

It is hard as human beings to not be influenced by fellow humans words or judgementation or even actions as we are naturally so absorbent to energies ... but it is what we choose to do with those energies is what really is the key to homeostasis. As negative energies and traits such as anger, hatred and jealousy manifest themselves into a dis-ease with the human body if absorbed, it is important to acknowledge the feelings and emotions and release them ... but is it so simple ... Is this why there is so much dis-ease amongst humans?"

I have a dis-ease. And that is honouring my emotions. Anger, upset, regret, reasonableness, cynicism, reactions to outside circumstances. That is they are things happening OUTSIDE of me. They are outside of my self. That is believing them to be real and true, believing that emotions are who I am is a terrible disease, for then my frequency is that of a negative energy, and I am polluting the world with my negativity.

My biggest fear in starting this Earth Diet challenge for 365 days was that I would fail. I created an identity that only knew how to deal with emotions using food, an identity that liked to avoid emotions. One of the questions that arose when I took on this challenge was, 'How do I not be without this identity? How do I not be without an addiction? How do I not be without bingeing?'. I had created my self in this identity of pain and suffering and had become addicted to it.

In 'Transformational Imperative: Revealing Our Selves to Ourselves', Balvinder Sodhi says, "Enormous value is having direct, hands-on access to who we are as human beings—to being able to actually impact our actions, to change course should we so desire, to be the authors of our own lives. The single biggest stop to having this kind of access is one of identity (the “who” it is that we consider ourselves to be), coupled with the impulse we have to cling to and defend whatever notion of ourselves we already have. How we “arrive” at our identity is mostly inadvertent—essentially built from a series of what we see (consciously or not) as failures to do or be something. When these “apparent” failures arise, we make decisions about how to compensate for, respond to, and accommodate ourselves to them. So whether it is one or 10 or even 40 years later, when something inconsistent with how we see ourselves occurs, we still hold on to that with which we’ve identified— leaving us no powerful way to be with whatever is going on.

The degree to which our behavior is filtered by our identity goes unrecognized—the default filters then set our values; bestow meaning; determine the aims, limitations, and purpose of our daily life. They become “us,” they are “us,” and we only get what they allow—obscuring access to ourselves and to what’s really possible in being human. Unless the identity factor is addressed, the answer to the question, what does it mean to be human, gets looked at only through that lens. But stepping outside of our identity isn’t so easy—as it’s achieved a certain density throughout our lives—it is all we know of ourselves. The idea that another whole idea of self is available can be disconcerting, invalidating. In setting aside “all the usual things that gave us an ‘identity’—the accident of our time and place of birth, the accident of being a human being rather than a dog or a fish—we become aware that this so-called self is as arbitrary as our name. It’s like standing over an abyss, recognizing that ‘I,’ as we know it is not an absolute.”*2 But it is here, with this recognition, where transformation occurs.

Transformation does not merely change our actions, it uncovers the structures of being and interpretation on which we are grounded. This revealing of our selves to ourselves occurs in a profound way that can alter the very possibility of what it means to be human. And while transformation is not an event, there is a definite before/after quality to it. Transformative learning gives us an awareness of the basic structures within which we know, think, and act in the world. This shift does not rid us of old contexts, it simply stops defining who we are."

The transformation for me was committing to The Earth Diet and eating only foods naturally provided by the earth for 365 days.

www.landmarkeducation.com
www.thegardendiet.com - Jinjee
http://www.facebook.com/marquese



Challenges: Kicking out the thoughts that do not have me believing in my self.

Triumphs: It's lack of faith that makes people afraid of meeting challenges, and I believed in myself. - Muhammad Ali

What I Ate Today:

Breakfast: Strawberries and blueberries!

Lunch: Green Thai Curry with potatoes and brown rice (Last night's creation)!

Dinner: A avocado with walnuts.

Dessert: Chocolate balls with peanut butter (crushed peanuts)

Snacks: More strawberries and blueberries mmm mmm mmm the perfect snack!

Recipe: Recipe for Green Thai Curry is on blog Day 21. Recipe for chocolate balls is blog Day 115.

Exercise: Exercising love and forgiveness for myself!

186 days to go!!!