FROM DARK TO LIGHT

Life is positively blooming!

Days ago, I replanted a Dillweed plant that was dying, drained-of-color and limp.  I was angry at the store that sold it to me like that.  Concerned about it, I watched it everyday, though i didn't hold out much hope for it.

Finally, the day before yesterday, it just positively sprang to LIFE with furry baby BRIGHT green fronds blossoming up!  And today it's furry green fronds have doubled in volume!  It is so exciting and heartwarming...my little dill babies!

LIFE is so amazing!

I sat outside eating watermelon for breakfast and watched a tiny white butterfly eat the nectar off of my once dying and now thriving Salvia plant.  I'd bought that one on sale from the almost-dead-sale-rack, but now, look at it, look at how beautiful it is, how it's already attracting life!

The plant's little nutritious periwinkle blue flowers, now restored to lovliness by only plucking off some dead heads, offered up their tiny delicate nectar cups to a gentle tiny white fluttering butterfly.  The butterfly danced around from one unstable stalk to the next, weightlessly dancing and enjoying what it could suck from each tiny flower.  Flutter, flutter, suck, suck, suck, hop, hop, hop!  I was mezmerized at the hopping fluttering little creature as it danced from one flower to the next until, finally, it's little belly was full,...and it flew away.  Fly, fly, fly!  Whish, and it was gone.

I set my watermelon rinds aside, took a deep sigh of contentment, looked out at the beautiful sky and sun and felt happy.

Life is so amazing!

I went about the work I'd set out in front of me.  I was going to make an Raw Almond Pate' and my organic almonds had been taking a water bath all night, just layin' in there, swimmin' around, happily germinating.  They still had their brown bathing suits on, but I could tell they were all nudists and couldn't wait to be sprung free from the shackles of their outer clothing.  They wanted their little white tushes to catch some sun.

The work was easy and meditative.  The sun beat down on my shoulders, the breeze blew through my hair as I sprang little naked white almonds from their brown papery jackets into an empty bowl.  Spring, plop! Spring, plop!  Soon, a whole bowl of naked almonds stared at me, saying, "HELLO! We are happy to offer ourselves to make your Luscious LIVING Almond pate'...!"

Thank you, little naked Almonds!

What a lovely morning!  Life is abloom everywhere!  

I walked back into the kitchen, bowl of almonds in hand, took a deep sigh, closed my eyes and wove my other hand over my Cuisinart, in a circle generating love and positivity.  In this way, I blessed the Cuisinart and I asked it to guide me.

Raw Food Prep is a think of Intuition and Energy, I'm finding.  If I'm not rocking a receptive, positive, creative, life affirming energy, things can go sour.  

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The Herby Almond Dip, with fresh herbs from my porch garden, came out looking and smelling so good!  But I waited to taste.  I'd just eaten the watermelon...and wasn't hungry...  (I can tell you now, it is DELICIOUS!)  I was being extra cautious.  I'd had a little E.D. moment last night that I didn't want to repeat. (E.D. is Eating Disorder in Eating Disorder Speak.)

Very long story short, what happened last night, is that I'd made the most awful raw cheezecake.  I definitely didn't bless the Cuisinart that time!  I mean, a real BOMB.  I  tasted the raw batter and winced.  AWFUL.  I tried to fix it and it got worse.

I poured the batter into a bowl, sprinkled some coconut over it, shoved it into the fridge to set and stormed away.  I sat in bed and stewed about it.  What kind of a raw chef am I?

And then, all I could think about was wanting to EAT that lousy tasting thing.  I wasn't even hungry, I was just mad at it and wanted to take out my frustrations on it.  At my expense.  We E.D. folks do stuff like that. Hurt ourselves, purposefully.

I went downstairs to see if it had set.  I knew I was walking into trouble.

Maybe it had come into itself miraculously and would taste better?  Knowing I wasn't hungry, I guiltfully dished myself up a serving and sat down with a fork with the best intentions - to discover what had become of it - to ENJOY a piece of raw cheezecake as I had been craving some - to enjoy a TREAT like any normal person!  Every awful tasting bite filled me with self doubt, so I polished off the serving and had some dates and some almonds to console myself.  (It you're an E.D. person, that makes sense to you.)

And then I felt really BAD because that was the first time since I've been back on track that I've eaten when I wasn't HUNGRY and I didn't enjoy it.  Not only that, I'd just made a very expensive failure.

The next morning, I sat at the computer, and wrote about it.  I reviewed all of the events.  I wasn't hungry...then the dates...and the almonds...the fat...the sugar.....  I began to get more and more upset the more I wrote.  "I'm compulsively eating again.  I'm doing it again.  I've lost it. It's all gone.  I can only do good for a week.  I'm a  total failure."  I got up from the computer.  I skulked through the hallway and had the brilliant thought to go weigh myself.  Bad idea.  I was already in a negative emotional reactive spiral.  And indeed, I weighed 3/4 lbs heavier than last I checked, and walked away from the scale even more dejected.

But hungry.  So, Flash forward to the butterfly breakfast...me sitting out there with my watermelon and naked almonds and everything in bloom, happy, happy, baby dill and sunny smiling Salvia and butterflies! My cares and concerns of the night before had washed from me into a poetic butterfly breakfast of absolute beauty, and I'd noticed it.

Now, I'd write about it!

And, as I wrote and recounted the story of the butterfly, I felt like energy was pouring through me, happy happy!  And then I weaved my way to the story about the cheezecake - in much more gory detail - how awful it was, what i put in it, what i should have put in it, how I do this to myself, eat things that I don't like, aren't I worth more than that friggin' expensive thing, what was i going to do with it now, I'd gained weight, I'm hopeless.  My shoulders hung lower, my entire energy just evaporated.

Just WRITING and REVIEWING the cheezecake weightgain story, and my ENTIRE MOOD had CHANGED for the WORSE again.  I now felt absolutely MISERABLE!  

And I found that incredible.

What I FOCUS on really DOES change how I feel.

Focus on the FAILURE of last night, on my awful hopeless eating disorder, on the failure of weight gain, on wasted expensive flops, on the re-occurence of emotional eating, and I suddenly feel AWFUL again.  Focus on BEAUTY and springy dill and hopping butterflies...and I feel HAPPY!

The tendency to want to dwell on the negative is all part of the mental insanity of indulging an eating disorder, and, I suppose, it's a tendency of just being human.

I wrote about what eating when you're not hungry feels like, horrible and empty.  I wrote, "It feels like you're not really a part of yourself, like you are somehow very disconnected.  And scared.  And angry at yourself.  And feeling unworthy of good things.  I start eating and realize I don't even LIKE this thing and I'm still eating it BECAUSE I don't like it because I'm a trash receptacle for bad things.  I'm just no good and don't deserve to enjoy life.  Figuratively, it's almost as if I walk through a trapdoor and find that it's very dark in there and I'm going the wrong direction, away from the light, and I can't find my way out.  I just keep going further and further and it just keeps getting darker and darker the further I go because I just keep going further into the darkness, all the time, struggling and panicking to find the way out, but I'm not looking where the Light is."

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

On the other side, it's all so clear!

I see the Light and I LOVE how it feels to see the light and go towards it!

(Better yet, next time, I don't even fall into the trapdoor anymore!)  p.s. I think the coconut oil was rancid.

The light is always there, I just have to want it.  I have to want to feel GOOD, and be SICK and TIRED of feeling BAD, of eating emotionally and abusing my body with extra food....when I'm not even HUNGRY and when it tastes BAD.

I want to shout it from the street tops - I AM WORTHY OF GOOD THINGS, OF FEELING GOOD!

It had been such a PLEASURE, such a VACATION from MYSELF,  to be eating when i was hungry this last week, and not when i'm not.  Last night's sneak peak reminder into how I used to treat myself (though it PALES in comparison to the POUNDS of food I have binged on at times), has made me realize I can easily "go" there, but don't WANT to anymore.

I want BETTER for myself.

~ ~ ~ ~

My mom and dad :-)))  You just gotta smile!

There is no more fear today.  No more fear that the snowball has started to roll and I can't catch it.  Or the feeling that I'm on a merry-go-round...and can't get off.  Control was restored almost instantly after realizing my failure...and I have no more fear anymore.

What was my failure?

Focusing on the wrong thing!

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Healing from an eating disorder is a thing of moving from living in the darkness, to reaching for and grabbing the light and living there and seeing how really great and un-scary it is.  How did I not know this before?  

Life is abloom and I wanna grab ahold!

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

By My Attention to Things, I Am Making Choices... What people do not understand is that you do not choose something by looking at it and shouting "Yes, I would like some of that!" You make your choices by your attention to things. In this Universe that is based on attraction, when you look at an unwanted thing, your attention to it causes an activation of the Vibration within you, and then the Law of Attraction brings more like it into your experience.
--- Abraham
Excerpted from the book, The Vortex, Where the Law of Attraction Assembles All Cooperative Relationships # 454
- www.abraham-hicks.com

xoxo michelle joy