Gluten me
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Gluten me
When we are young, we learn and grow by experimenting with cause and effect. We swing from a branch with one arm, throw a ball up above our head, and jump from one rock to the next. We learn from every success or misstep, “…ok, that didn’t quite work how I had in mind. I’ll do it differently next time”.
There are some things we instinctively know from the start of our life, for instance when our body needs to drink or eat it immediately tells us what and how much we need. When we become adults this way of being is still there, though our tastes often seem to have changed – “pull over to the side of the road, I have to have salt and vinegar chips right away!”. Whether it’s a sandwich, smoothie, cigarettes or a beer, we still pay close attention to what we desire and get hold of it as quickly as we possibly can. This attentiveness to what our body wants is just a natural part of caring for ourselves. Or so it seems and so we reckon.
I’d been eating gluten all my life. The thought of going without it never ever crossed my mind. I didn’t even really know what it was – after all, every time I ate something with it in I was ‘fine’. Better than that, I felt like I was sustained with the energy I needed for everything I needed to do that day. I did have pimples on my skin though and started to see a correlation between them and the sugar and dairy foods that I ate, so tried going without these ingredients in my diet for a while. As I noticed a difference in my skin I continued to abstain, sensing the aesthetic benefit this choice might bring.
But gluten eh? Give it up you say? I guess I could try it, it could not hurt to see what a short break is like…
“Ok so bread is out, pasta too, even eating gluten-free replacements feels too similar so let’s give that a miss. Cornflakes and cereal are gone, I’ll have muesli for breakfast instead. Yeah, but what about oats – do they have gluten or do they not? Hmmm…I guess my body will know what’s what”.
‘Oh my God! what on earth is going on?’ I felt like I had been hit by a truck or maybe 10. Was I ill and coming down with a virus? I never was one for coffee but felt I’d need to have a few to simply function, my body was experiencing so much lethargy and pain. I started to track back in my head over everything I’d done and said. “What could be the cause, I’ve never felt like this!?”
Then it dawned on me: it was the gluten I’d given up, wasn’t it?
As soon as this awareness came the cravings started to kick in. I’d never dreamt or fantasised about toast or macaroni in my whole life (though I liked both well enough), but suddenly they were all I could think about. I’d committed to trying this gluten thing a try though, so I pushed on with my frittatas, soups and veggie meals over the next few days.
‘Oh dear – I can’t go on like this maybe it’s good for some, but what if I am one of a select few who needs gluten in their lives to survive? Is that a medical condition that exists? ‘Glutenous Musthaveness’? – there must be some people out there with that condition surely?’.
‘Listen to your body’ I had heard it said, and mine was saying in no uncertain terms “gimme gluten now!” So I relented and dabbled with sourdough breads (they were meant to be friendlier for your gut or so I had read) and returned to eating some pasta too. “At last, it’s over” my body seemed to say. “I was happy enough before, trying to cut this gluten thing out has caused me so much strife!” I had to agree – what possible incentive was there to go ahead?
But as I returned to my ciabatta and cooked the spaghetti for dinner that night there was something in me that felt it wasn’t quite right. It wasn’t my tummy telling me that but something bigger I couldn’t see, a whole body knowing that I had to give eating gluten-free another chance.
Resigned to the fact that my previous treats could no longer be enjoyed as they once were, I returned to going without gluten in my food. This stop start cycle went on for quite some time – with short periods where I’d adapt to my new diet and moments where suddenly it seemed too much and I decided I absolutely had to have that delicious piece of toast. This created a strange internal mania in my head, like a never-ending soap opera playing out:
“I’m doing ok but maybe I actually need a bagel right now?
“I feel a bit weird. I’m not sure this is good for me… I think I need some pasta today.”
“No, it’s just been 3 hours – I need more time to see the true effects of cutting it out.”
“How can I tell if its good or not if I keep going back?”
“Yes, but what about a muffin with honey on?... Ok, I’m in.”
Everyday life and simple tasks became hard to complete with this debate raging constantly in my head. I regularly cleaned out my cupboard of all the food with gluten in, only to find myself at the supermarket checkout days later, buying it all back once again. Comments came at this time too from family, work colleagues and friends such as:
“Ooh… you’re cutting that out, are you sure that’s good for you?”
“You look so thin. Are you starving yourself? Are you ok?”
“Gluten-free? No way – everything in moderation is best, as my Mum used to say.”
“Hmm… I’m worried for your future, take care of yourself.”
A TV show or mirror in a shop, a comment or awkward life event could be enough to tip me off back into a trip to my nearby supermarket’s bakery. Through this process it started to become clear that there was much more to this gluten thing than just the wheat seeds and flour.
I started to investigate eating out and found gluten was liberally sprinkled in the most surprising places – "another downside to this unfortunate scenario” I sighed as I resigned myself to making home cooked meals. I needed to seriously step up my chef game it seemed – where I had previously relied on my Mum’s old recipes and takeaway meals, I now had to strike out on my own into a world of wheat-free delights. I found quickly there was a lightness and tastiness to eating this way that I could not deny. Certainly, these meals seemed to leave me feeling fresh and were easy to digest… but then later on, the cravings for gluten would come on in waves.
We all have our behaviours that we have learnt and picked up as we have grown. For me there was a toughness and harshness that I still brought to myself at times. In giving up gluten I cut not just gluten out, but all grains and pretty much anything that wasn’t green. Looking back, I can certainly see this ‘all or nothing’ attitude didn’t help the transition I was experiencing and made it extra tough for my body and me.
The tiredness I had experienced for the first month began to shift at last as I started to go without gluten for longer periods of time. But still the thoughts would come that I needed gluten in my life and that cutting it out was a great harm to my health. This sort of thing could hit at any time, but especially in the supermarket as a random pasta packet caught my eye.
Over the subsequent months I started to have Chakra-puncture and Esoteric Healing for the first time. Through these sessions I began to get a sense of a very different way my body could feel. Where the tiredness and lethargy normally were, a connection and warmth in my chest and my heart were there. I hadn’t realised my body was so heavy and hard till this new sensation fired up. Gradually my body began to clear the fogginess of gluten I had eaten for so long, and the cravings diminished and became manageable after a while. Eventually bread became a stranger in my house… I was all in with this gluten-free thing at long last.
Then one day after I broke up messily with my girlfriend, I went on a getaway trip with a friend to an isolated outback town. At the hotel we were staying in I was suddenly ravenous and saw a cheeseburger on the menu that seemed to be calling to me. “What the hell” my head said, "it’s been ages, you may as well have it and see how you go – how bad could it be?”
Hours later I was doubled over in my bed in agony. My kidneys sore like I had been pummelled in my back by an Olympic boxer, my stomach tight and bound up, like someone had their hand clenched on my insides with a super tight grip. I immediately knew it was the gluten and dairy that I had eaten that was the cause, but my mind boggled and wondered out loud – “how it could be this bad? Not so long ago I could eat these things without batting an eyelid, what kind of weird development is this?” Far from becoming more adept at handling life, it seemed I had regressed and was more susceptible to complaints than ever before. This was not what I had pictured evolution to look like.
Over the next couple of days, with medication and a lot of water, the pain in my body started to subside, but still throbbed along in the background in case I should consider repeating my experiment again. I could not eat very much at all, only the simplest of foods, mostly I drank copious amounts of water in an attempt to wash my discomfort away. I discovered later on that I also had a stomach bug from some water I drank, a common occurrence for travellers in these parts. But I knew inside of me that this whole experience and what I went through was no mistake, but absolutely precise in how and when it had occurred.
As I returned home my body would not let up: I was in pain every time that I ate – my whole digestive area was irritated and unhappy. My usual ability to recover from things in just a couple of days was nowhere to be found. I sought out Chinese Acupuncture and nutritional advice, got tests and analysis on my faeces at large expense, and continually read about what it might be I needed to eat. But in the end I could see those things simply didn’t work for me, but left me back at square one, wondering again how to avoid this mysterious pain.
Gradually I began to accept that my body was trying to communicate something very strongly to me, and that I needed to eat very carefully and listen without prejudice to what that might be. Suddenly everything was simple, if the end result meant eating effortlessly. So I just focussed on food that left my tummy feeling pleased and at ease, without thinking about whether they were good or bad or on my ‘must eat’ list. As I did this the symptoms eased up at last, and over the next weeks and months they departed completely. Not only that, the thoughts and the cravings for gluten and treats disappeared too.
It started to become clear to me, how when we make a change in what we eat (or in any aspect of our life) the true impact isn’t always instantly great – it can take time to clear the built-up effect of our previous choices from our system. Not only that, but the switch can reveal what we have been attempting to escape. I could see now that making a change and flipping back and forwards as I had, was actually just a sneaky way of maintaining the ill effects. Now I finally had a long period of being ‘gluten free’ it was clear at last how my body truly felt. And that’s why when I regressed on my trip to what once ‘worked’… it suddenly hurt.
This was an ‘aha’ moment for me, to realise how our body becomes slowly acclimatised and seemingly ok (more truthfully numb) to poisons we take on, to the point that we champion and promote these things as great or ‘our favourite taste’. In truth they help maintain a state where we are given thoughts and cravings that make us think that the poison is ok. But once we make it through the uncomfortable cold turkey symptoms and let go of the addiction, then finally our body is free to truly speak at long last – and loudly it does.
So all we say we love and need and adore in this world – is it actually nurturing us? Or are we addicted to the fix it provides and blind-siding our in-built honestly? So many of the things we strongly proclaim and champion, what if they are just distractions to avoid feeling what is truly taking place? I could see that this way of being comfortably numb wasn’t exclusive to my food by any means.
“You won’t bite the hand that allows you to think you think, for if you do it will not let you think anymore.”
Serge Benhayon Teachings & Revelations Volume IV, ed 1, p 59.
As I began to live without gluten in my diet, my energy levels became steadier and more consistent, my tummy flatter, my mood swings dramatically less, all without me even trying. I noticed something else too – I was a lot more sensitive to life than I had been before. My previously stoic and calm demeanour wasn’t always as easy to maintain. The gluten it seemed, like a thick gooey sludge had been covering up all my cells, so I didn’t have to feel what life was actually like. Giving it up revealed a sensitivity in me I had been attempting to hide for a very long time.
Though the gluten was gone, it was clear other aspects of my life could be used the same way that the food had been. Whether that be music or sport, study or work, there was a blanket of stuff that could be laid on top to distract from what I was sensing deep down. But never again could I believe that the thoughts and ideas that I have in my head are necessarily real – my body had shown that it was the one who knew the bigger truth, beyond any words that are said.
“The suppression of who we truly are may not be the same as being clobbered by a heavy mallet, but its impact is just as damaging with regard to what is obliterated beyond ease of reality.”
Serge Benhayon Teachings & Revelations Volume IV, ed 1, p 90.
Looking at life and reviewing it all, it is clear 1 + 1 doesn’t actually equal 2 the way we are taught. When we pull over to the side of the road for the chips or snack we say we must have, we are being informed not just by a nutritional need but by a drive and desire to dull our awareness.
Philosopher Serge Benhayon presents the simple fact that life is an outplay of two distinct types of energy – Fire and Prana. Every moment we live, every move that we make, we are informed by one of these two energies: one that enriches and one that leaves us in a perpetual state of feeling less.
This is an important addition or part to the law of cause and effect that has long been conveniently ignored – the energy you source to make a choice will determine the intelligence that informs what you do next. So one choice into illusion is not just a simple misstep off your course but a redirection down an entire route that will make you think you are open and clear, when you are not. Until something wakes you up, this web of convenient lies becomes your life, instead of naturally connecting to everything that the universe is.
“If we use the intellect to work-out our truth, we are not beginning with the most basic simple foundation of our very essence, which is the pure love that is within the inner-heart.
Serge Benhayon Esoteric & Exoteric Philosophy, ed 1, p 214
Ponder on this.”
If everything that we do, every moment we are alive, has the potential to heal or to harm depending on the energy we source, then when we live battened down in the mud and sludge of the lie that we are ‘human only’ and here for just one life, we confirm and empower that energy to increase and maintain its grip. And we unwittingly send out a message to everyone else – ‘don’t you dare live in a way that’s different to this’.
When we view life with an understanding of the true energetic integrity, we all hold, it is clear we are not as innocent or neutral as we like to pretend. But also, not as powerless as we are told.
Each moment we live has a ripple effect. Every movement can be a prayer of reunion with God. But there is a part of us that would like to avoid our responsibility and huge part in the mess. So we settle for the surface of what we’ve deemed good instead of letting ourselves feel the truth of what’s taken place. We correlate our true state with being comfortably numb – instead of being connected and truly alive.
We are otherworldly super powerful beings perfectly placed to disrupt and disturb all that’s not from heaven in this world. Life was never about what life has done to us, but what we have to bring to humanity. It’s never too late to embrace Love as our way, any moment of any day.
Like superheroes waking up to their true purpose in life, we finally see that our true sustenance in life is light and all that comes from our Soul. The quality we choose on the menu of only two options, fire and prana, is what counts. Life is no longer a matter of living gluten free – but embracing the true power and glory of being who we truly are.
Filed under
Bloating, Body awareness, Digestion, Gluten free, Tiredness
