Forgiving our Food

So many of us have food allergies, diabetes, gluten sensitivity, cholesterol issues, weight problems or other food-related issues.   It's easy to fall into the trap of taking this all too seriously and allowing food to become a controlling issue in our lives, and to believe that our food actually has the power to harm us. 

Rather, when we find ourselves thinking thoughts like; "I need to eat lots of vegetables to be healthy", or "I can't have fats or I'll weigh too much", or "If I eat grains or dairy (or whatever), I won't feel well", we need to examine the fact that we are allowing the ego to create fear in our minds around our food.  
 

 

I acknowledge that I am perfectly whole and healed.  I have created the belief that I need certain foods to heal myself as a way to join with the ego and separate myself from God. 

 

The ego's goal is to distract us from our truth.  It wants us to become engrossed in worries and fears.  It wants us to create judgments that certain things are bad and other things are good.  When we are in a state of fear, we are separate from God.  The ego wins. 

The ego wants us believing that bodies are real.  It wants to keep us away from the truth that We Are MIND.  Nothing physical can harm, hurt or heal us.

I release my attachment to believing that the food I eat can either harm or heal me and I acknowledge that my well-being is created in my Mind.  I ask the Holy spirit to be with me whenever I eat and to bless my food

 

So where does all this metaphysical thinking leave those of us who get hives all over our bodies when we eat certain foods, or are overweight or have dangerously high cholesterol?  Of course, it is perfectly fine to follow a sensible diet for now, if we feel led to do so. We must meet our world where we are right now.  Until we can absolutely and deeply know that we are only Mind, complete and perfect, it is prudent to do what our body "seems" to tell us it needs.  However, when we eat our food, we should do so with Spirit, turning it over to Spirit, acknowledging that we have faulty beliefs that our food can harm us and asking Spirit to help us know that we are actually healed and whole.


Here is a wonderful affirmation on food by Ernest Holmes in "The Science of Mind": 

My food agrees with me and I agree with it.  There is no condemnation in me or working through me.  I understand that food is a spiritual idea of substance and I am now in complete agreement with this idea.  Everything that I eat is perfectly assimilated and perfectly eliminated.  I have no trouble digesting my food for digestion is also a spiritual idea and works in perfect harmony with all that I take into my system.  My system is spiritual and harmonious with every idea that passes through it.  My food is spiritual and harmonious with my system.  Substance and supply for the physical body are both spiritual and cannot create any inner disturbance whatsoever. 

And another beautiful quote from "The Way of Mastery":

Those that know that only Love is real are not concerned with what they eat and what they drink.  For these things come into the body and leave through the body  They are concerned only with whether or not that which they consume for the sake of the body was consumed in Love.

For love is what allows the transmutation of anything that comes into the physical system and allows it to be turned to that which supports the energetic wholeness of the physical system itself.  It is far greater to have a bottle of Scotch for breakfast in a state of total Christed Love, than it is to have nine thousand vitamins with one tiny little fearful thought.

For you see, it is fear that causes you to be unable to digest what you place in the body.

 

 

I have been greatly inspired this week by some thoughts on food by Corrine Zupko on "From Anxiety to Love" who was asked the question: "What's the point of eating healthy or taking vitamins if the world is an illusion?"

 

 

 

Zupko says; "It all boils down to this.  "I exercise/juice/take medicine/take vitamins because I still haven't accepted that I am already healed.  I still haven't accepted that EVERYTHING is coming from my sleeping split mind and that all healing comes from within.  I still believe the cause of healing is outside of myself, and something that will be achieved "later".

Her whole article is terrific and very thought provoking.  I have read it over every day this week.  You can find it here.

 

 

The holidays are a time of food and togetherness.  Let's be mindful this year to turn our thoughts on food away from guilt and toward loving acceptance of the food we eat, the people in our lives and the world around us. 

 

 

 

 

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Forgive Your Family for Christmas

What could be a more beautiful gift than to free our families from old angers and hurts?  This is something we can do quietly on our own.  We don't need to have any "deep" one-on-one conversations or unpleasant family dramas to do this.  We can simply go inside, into our own mind where all the "real" stuff happens. 

Our own individual act of forgiveness will begin to change our personal relationships with each of our family members, and it might even change the overall family dynamics, too.  More importantly, whether or not our family changes dramatically, we will have a new perspective, one that is more loving and accepting.  We will be more peaceful and happier than before.

Because we have spent so many years with our families, feeling irritated, annoyed, hurt and even possibly abused by them, the wounds relating to our families run deep.  Even people who have relatively easy family relationships will have much to forgive when they really start to dig honestly into their pasts. 

Let's start by looking at our own beliefs.  If we experience feelings like these below (and everybody does), we can be almost certain that we will find their roots in our early childhood years with our family:

• I'm not worthy
• I always get abandoned
• Nobody likes me
• I always get what's leftover
• Everybody ignores me
• I'm not good enough
• I get rejected
• I'm not loveable
• What I feel does not matter
• Nobody listens to me
• They only like me when I'm good (or smart, or funny, or pretty, or whatever)

Go ahead and look at this list and decide which beliefs apply to your life.  Now set aside a little quiet time to spend with each of these thoughts.   Think back to your childhood and try to remember times when you felt these beliefs intensely.  What was happening?  Who was involved?  Now try to remember the very first time you experienced any of these beliefs.  Remembering the very first incident is a wonderful thing because it gives you a specific moment in time and specific people to forgive. 

Now its time for a little forgiveness work.  In "Forgiveness is the Key to Happiness", I recommend lots of different forgiveness processes.  I find that each processes works best for different types of forgiveness issues.  For deep family stuff, one process I like to use involves Colin Tipping's Radical Forgiveness forms.  You can get these at www.colintipping.com under "Free Stuff".  You have to register for the site, but it is well worth it.

The old pain and hurt we associate with our family took years to build up and develop, so don't expect to be able to root it all out over-night.  This is a process and it will take time.  However, you can accomplish miracles if you just get started on it.  Whatever you do before Christmas, even if it is only a small dent, will help you make it through the holidays with more peace in your mind and love in your heart. 

Forgiveness is really a lifestyle and it is something that happens over months and years of looking deep within to find acceptance for all the people and everything that occurred in our past.  A lifestyle of forgiveness creates a happy life.  Don't waste time living without peace.  Give yourself the best Christmas gift ever and get started on forgiveness now!

 

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What do you Choose?

"Nothing outside yourself can hurt you, or disturb your peace or upset you in any way."  --A Course in Miracles Lesson 70, Workbook

It's all a matter of choice.  How do we choose to see the world?  If we choose to see it through the eyes of forgiveness, the world will treat us gently.  If we choose to hold grievances, the world will continue to seem to be a fearful place. 

When we forgive, we are trusting God and knowing that everything we experience is for our greater good.  Sometimes it can be hard to understand this, especially when we are in the midst of  what seems nightmarish.  However, almost always, a purpose behind the pain comes clear at a later time.

In the meantime, we can look at the painful situations we have drawn to us and meditate on what we can learn from then.  What can we accept and forgive here?  How is this situation helping us to grow and purify and come to know more of love?

 

 

 

 

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Who is Irritating You Today?

Make it a practice to search your mind each day to discover all the people you feel annoyed or upset with.  Don't miss anyone.  This is important. 

Maybe a stranger cut you off in traffic on your way to work this morning.  Perhaps you stopped in for coffee and some pushy lady gave you a good jostle without saying sorry.  Was your spouse in a grouchy mood?  Did your children leave a mess in their rooms?  Do you have a client who is not returning phone calls?  Is a co-worker talking too much and wasting your time?  Maybe a friend is calling on the phone to whine about her relationship with her boyfriend, once again.

   

Gather all these people up in your mind and, one by one, forgive them all.  It only takes a minute or so for each person.  Just get it done!  If you can't do it right now, be sure you do it before the day is over.  In fact, the best time might just be as you crawl in bed tonight.  Forgive every one of the day's offenders and sleep peacefully.

If you create a habit of forgiving everyone, everyday, your life will change. 

Here's a quick and easy forgiveness practice you can use.  Picture each person you want to forgive individually and say: 

You are Spirit

Whole and Innocent

I Forgive You, I Release You

I Bless You With Love

 

You may have to repeat this a few times, but stay very sincere.  Really think about what these words mean.  When you say "You are spirit", know that each person is a beloved Son of God, made exactly in his own image.  And when you say the words "I bless you with love", visualize yourself gifting this person with as much love as you can. 

 

If you find that you are simply too deeply angry to forgive one or more of these people, you may need some hard-core forgiveness practices.  No worries, tools for handling the people and situations that really, really press our buttons can be found in my book, "Forgiveness is the Key to Happiness".

 

 

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Why We Sometimes Feel Hatred for the People We Love the Most

The people we love most are in our lives for an important reason.  They are our biggest forgiveness lessons.

Colin Tipping, author of Radical Forgiveness, theorizes that before we incarnated,we made agreements with certain souls to come here together with the explicit intention to help each other learn our life lessons.  I don't know whether this is true or not, but I do find that there are a handful of  people that repeatedly give me my daily forgiveness lessons.

Although some of life's lessons happen with people we only know for a short period of time, most of our biggest lessons come as we learn to accept and forgive the people we deal with on a daily basis. Our families, our co-workers, our friends...we love 'em...and sometimes we hate 'em!  After all, whose flaws do we experience the most, red and raw and right in our faces?

As I work to forgive the same small handful of people again and again, I begin to feel a great gratitude for each one of them.  It is their presence in my life that is helping me to know myself and to release and forgive what needs to go from my own mind.  

When we feel annoyed with others, we are actually annoyed with a certain aspect of ourselves.  I had great resistance for this concept at first, but as I have worked with it over time, coming eventually to accept it, I now know that it is truth.  More importantly, I repeatedly see the evidence of it in my own life.

At first it seemed impossible that I was actually seeing my own negative traits in others and reacting to them. It was so much easier to project the things that were wrong with my life outward, to blame them on others. "They" were the wrong ones.  "They" were bad.  "They" were faulty, imperfect and flawed.  "They" were the ones requiring forgiveness.

For example, it used to upset me to be around people who expressed anger and short tempered-ness.  What was wrong with them?  Why couldn't they just get on with life without tantruming about everything?  It was all so hugely unpleasant.

However, when I finally worked up the courage to look deeply into my own psyche around this issue, I saw that there was suppressed anger lurking in the depths.  I grew up in a family where it was not okay to express anger.  We were always "nice" people.  However, I see now that I actually have a great deal of anger that I have been suppressing, hiding it from the world, and in the process, hiding it from myself, too. Now that I know it's there, I can work to forgive and release it.

Since we are here to learn love and acceptance, it stands to reason that we will draw into our lives people who will help us do this.  We will attract people that will sometimes annoy and even hurt us because they are here to show us what we need to accept and forgive, both within ourselves and in others.

The irony of all this is that when we finally deeply forgive and completely accept the people we love (and "hate") in our daily lives, we are not going to need these particular lessons anymore.  When this happens, the people we love will become more lovable to us.  We will feel less annoyed with them, or they will simply cease to be annoying.  Sometimes we mutually release each other and someone will move on.  Most people will stay, but under happier circumstances.  Whatever happens, with forgiveness, we can know that it will all be for the betterment of everyone involved.  That's because forgiveness leads to happiness.

 

 

 

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Get on the Forgiveness Gravy Train

Forgiveness changes your life.  If you want to stop living a nightmare and move your life into the "happy dream" life the Course of Miracles promises, only forgiveness can get you there. 

Some ways a steady habit of forgiveness will change your life:

Your life begins to feel lighter, easier, more pleasurable.  This brings you happiness.

The people you've forgiven change and actually become less annoying.  The more you forgive them, the more they change.  This brings you peace.

Life eases up.  Nightmarish things occur less often or not at all.  This brings you security. 

You begin to feel powerful in the role you play in healing the world around you. This brings you joy.

As your forgiveness work accumulates, you find that you are actually forgiving yourself on a deep subconscious level.  You allow yourself to accept God's gifts because you actually believe you deserve them now.  This brings you abundance.

The more you forgive yourself, the more you see the false self and the false world you've created.  This brings you truth. 

As you  begin to see your false self you begin to really see the insane lies you've been telling yourself and the insane things you've been doing, and you develop humility.  This brings you dignity.

Life slows down.  You take more time with what's important.  You know the difference between crazy ego schemes and the simple truth of God's love. You see the "real world" all around you.  This brings you beauty. 

You see your brother in every person you encounter.  This brings you love. 

Forgiveness will bring you everything you truly want!

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Forgiveness is Easier Than You Think

Yes, it actually is easy, once you get the hang of it.  In fact, it's not only easy, it's pleasurable!

However, easy forgiveness requires a shift in the way we view the world.  We have to stop thinking about the world from the same perspective we've seen it from all of our lives.  We have to let go of a world where "me" and "them" are two different things. 

In order to forgive easily, we need to see the world as a place where we are split off from our normal home in the Oneness of God.  We are here to learn some lessons and purify, but our real home is with God.  In our real home, we all live in perfect bliss, forever. 

When we come here to earth, it's set up so that we forget everything about our true reality.  Then we start to get all caught up in the illusions that make up our lives on earth.  We start to want things.  First we want toys and playmates, but later we want houses and cars and relationships.  We might want success, fame, power or glory.  Wanting these things can set us at odds with other people.  Often, one person wrestles these things away from someone else.  One of us wins, and one of us loses. 

When we lose, we can feel hurt, angry or fearful.  When we win, we feel guilty, although some of us are not aware of this in our every day consciousness.  Rest assured, however, that whenever we win at the expense of someone else, we create guilt deep in our sub-consciousness. We all have mountains of this guilt hidden deep in our minds and it is the source of our real anxiety, worry and fear.

In reality, we're all the same, each of us created exactly in God's image and loved infinitely by him.  God wants us to know this about each other.  The way we do this is through our forgiveness.

When we forgive, we drop our earthly view of the person we are forgiving and we see their higher truth.  We know them as God's beloved son.  We recognize that if God loves them unconditionally, then they are truly worthy of our love, too.

Of course, in the beginning, this is not always easy.  It takes practice to get good at this.  What happens, however, as we start to forgive others, is that we find that we feel so much better afterward.  Over time, we realize that we can feel better NOW, if we will only let it go, shift our perspective and see the higher truth of our trespasser.

Another benefit of forgiveness is that as we begin to forgive the people and the world around us, that horrible guilt that has been building up in our sub-consciousness is dissipated.  Over time, through our weeks, months and years of forgiveness, a significant release of this guilt occurs and we find our lives become peaceful and happy, even blissful. 

If you are just starting out with forgiveness, try this beautiful forgiveness process from Lesson 68 in the Workbook from A Course of Miracles.

As a beginner, I would recommend that you not start out with the most difficult forgiveness task in your life.  Rather, select the people who are only mildly annoying you, people who are not wreaking major damage to your life. Let's go for success and ease this first time out of the box!

"Think of the minor grievances you hold against those you like and even those you love.  It will quickly become apparent that there is no one against whom you do not cherish grievances of some sort.  This has left you alone in all the universe in your perception of yourself. 
 
Determine now to see all these people as friends.  Say to them all, thinking of each one in turn as you do so:

 

I would see you as my friend, that I may remember you are part of me and come to know myself. 

 

Think of yourself as completely at peace with everyone and everything, safe in a world that protects you and loves you, and that you love in return.  Try to feel safety surrounding you, hovering over you and holding you up.  Try to believe, that nothing can harm you in any way.  Tell yourself: 

 

Love holds no grievances.  When I let all my grievances go I will know I am perfectly safe." 

What about the people who do real damage to our lives...how do we forgive them? Obviously, serious injuries require serious forgiveness work. In my book, "Forgiveness is the Key to Happiness", there are many forgiveness processes explained. There is a process that works on any problem in your life. Rest assured, however, that even serious forgiveness work can become easy and pleasurable. And the rewards of living a steady forgiveness habit are simply too fabulous to pass up!

 

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