Understanding our food choices
PRINT PAGE
Understanding our food choices
So much is written, watched and heard about food for losing weight, gaining weight, energy, vitality and health but there is precious little information available about the part that food can play in our personal development, our evolution and our increasing awareness of and presence to, self and others.
My experience is that this is a constant process of refinement and discernment, and the rewards are manifold. Food is an aspect of our lives that allows us to experience the forces that are at play in our universe. There is a healing force that supports us all to live in truth, harmony, love, joy and stillness and then there is an opposing force that wants the very opposite of this. It wants us in eternal unsettlement so that we cannot access the loving wisdom that is always on offer from the universe. When we are aligned with this opposing force our choices are harming and work against healing.
Bringing our attention to our food, how it makes us feel, when we crave certain foods etc., can be a great tool for developing a relationship with these opposing forces.
What we need to eat, as opposed, of course, to what we are told we want to eat, can be constantly refined and distilled. It’s a cyclical process, and the more we pay attention and take care with what we ingest, the clearer our bodies become, and thus the more discerning we become about what we are being encouraged to want or need to eat.
This clarity and increased discernment mean that we really notice the effect that certain ‘foods’ have on our bodies and we can also become more aware of why we are choosing or at least craving certain foods. This level of discernment was simply not available to me when my body was cluttered and dulled with processed foods, sugar, alcohol and excessive starchy carbohydrates. Of course, cleaning up the toxicity caused by certain foods means we become discerning, not only about what foods to eat, but also about what sort of energy we want to be around, what sort of people we want to hang out with, what we want to watch on television, if anything, what films we want to see, who we want to sleep with, where we want to be to eat our meals, what clothes we want to wear etc. As we become clearer, we become aware of what really suits us; consequently, our behaviours and choices change.
As a result of this increased awareness, I have also come to realise that my alignment with either of these powerful forces determines whether I seek certain foods in order to cope with different feelings.
Initially I was only aware of using food to resist negative feelings, like fear, sadness, remorse, guilt and tiredness. Lately I have also felt how I am persuaded to use food to dull my vibration when it is reaching the next level of expansion in my awareness and what I can access from outside of myself.
Recently I stretched myself by responding to a call to offer an on-line course on relationships. After I had responded to the impulse to offer this, I felt my body being pushed towards starchy doughy food to dampen down my enthusiasm for this next level project, numbing the trepidation I felt about putting myself out there in this way. As I moved through this fear and continued with the project, I recognised the craving for salty and sugary foods to distract me from allowing an outline for the program to unfold. Then – after I’d run the first module, I noticed that I was craving sugar and chocolate to unsettle me as I felt quite pleased and contented with how well it had gone. I realised that a part of me was being tempted, by the energy that seeks to harm, to use certain foods to prevent a part of me, the soulful/healing part, accepting this next level of settlement with the expansion that had happened with the completion of the delivery of the first module. It was as if I was being pushed to use food to create a racy unsettlement so that I could not accept this new vibration in my body because of what had just happened.
Sometimes I am able to recognise, in time, the force that sets up these cravings for what it is so that I can resist that force. Other times I give in to it and lose the settlement that comes with accepting the next level of expansion that is on offer for me. Becoming aware of the two forces has really supported me to make more healing choices as it feels less daunting to tackle something outside of me than something internal that is a part of me. Of course, knowing that there is an energy that is intent on me making harming choices helps me to choose to align to the healing energy. When I used to see it all as just myself and my inexplicable lack of loving responsibility, it was much harder to make loving choices! Instead, I now know it is the invisible forces at play.
Of course, that energy which wants us to stay unsettled and resistant to expansion does not only use our relationship with food in this way, it also uses our behaviours. I work as a psychotherapist and often when working with couples I see how one partner might be resisting the settlement and expansion on offer when they arrive at a more loving place between them. As a result, sabotaging behaviour comes into play to disturb this new vibration between them. This can be in the form of picking an argument, becoming super controlling, withdrawing, blaming, picking on something they do etc. The same can happen when we start a new job and can feel the expansion on offer and then are encouraged to choose behaviours that will sabotage the settlement of accepting this new challenge.
When we become aware of these patterns and want to begin to manage these unhelpful sabotaging choices, it can be very helpful to use our relationship with food as a starting place.
Our bodies are quick to respond to the increased clarity and awareness that come when we change our eating and drinking patterns. Of course, this level of awareness means that we will realise and feel much more of what we and others around us are aligned to and what they are choosing to do and feel. Then we can develop a fitness for what we are becoming aware of so that we can tolerate all the feelings that come with this increased awareness.
Further reading:
Understanding our food choices (part 2)
Filed under
Awareness, Energy, Harmony, Over eating, Weight-loss
