Friend of Julie: Meditation and Sitting with the Pain

I have been a mediator for a long time, and one of the most basic lessons about doing sitting meditation is that by eliminating all distractions, and making a commitment to staying put, you are left with all of the noise, internal movies, mind productions, which are rattling around in there are running us all the time, unconsciously. 

I am finding Julie's process very similar.  With such a stripped down way of eating, so much of the obsession taken/given away, and a commitment to staying with it, I am noticing so much about the patterns which have run my physical life for decade after decade.  Before, when I would simply clamp down control on all of the cravings, I often lost weight.  But it didn't feel as if I had changed anything in the depths of this addiction.  The essential relationship between me and food felt the same-just that I had put it in jail for the moment.  But always the fear that at any time there would be a jailbreak, a prison riot, and I would be "out of control" again.

There is something about how Julie teaches us, and about, once again, that wonderfully cheerful send-off she gave us after the first group of "Have fun suffering", that is profoundly different and feels like a deeply meditative process.  I am not denying the cravings.  They are there from time to time and, as she said at the refresher last week, they will probably always be there at times.  What I am developing, in this new practice, is an ability, as they say in meditation circles, to "sit with" the cravings.  To experience them fully, not pretend they aren't there, but slowly learn that they are just feelings.....conditioned experience, screams from a body that may mistakenly think it is going to starve, automatic triggers from seeing or smelling something.  They are strong, but I don't have to be convinced by them.....I can see through them, let them know that in reality we are not starving, we are taking good care of our self, and that my behavior does not need to be controlled by these feelings.

With Julie's help I have been able to squarely commit myself, I think for the first time, to dealing with the sense of deprivation, to knowing that, as she says, it will not kill me.  That "sacrifice" gives me the opportunity to learn so much more about myself, and about human nature in general.  Aside from the weight loss and improvement in physical health, this learning is an incredible gift.

Don't know if all of this will make sense to anyone else, but wanted to share it.

Eva