Welcome back!

My 92-year-old Step Mom, Dede

If anyone has a great sense of self, it’s my Step Mom, Dede.  She is the most loving, accepting woman I know.  My dad was very lucky to have found her.

Yesterday, I talked about how Truth is Real.  Real things have these qualities: they are good; they are true; they are harmonious; they are beautiful; they are perfect; and they are loving.  If they don’t have all of those qualities, they are not real.  They are, in fact, unreal.

Unreal things lack substance, substance being goodness itself.  You can easily distinguish what is not real and turn your mind and your self away from it.  an example: Dede is real.  She has all the qualities that make something real.  Some of our current politicians are not real, and need to be turned away from. You can fill in the names yourself, I’m quite sure.

One of the clues that help you to decide if a thing is real or unreal is this:  real things never change, while unreal things change.  Truth Itself is changeless.  2 x 2=4 is a changeless truth.  It is true now and will always be true. What’s really cool about this is that once you know a particular truth, nobody can fool you about any other answer.  For example, if I said that 2 x 2 = 6, you’d know immediately it was untrue, unreal, wouldn’t you?  Like that.

Mistakes (error) is not real.  You can turn away from mistakes and think something better in their place. If you currently think you are too heavy, and you recognize that it can change, you know immediately it’s not real.  So, turn your thinking away from “too heavy” and think instead “I am my perfect size.” Your mind has been waiting years for you to get this one.  It would be thrilled to give you “perfect size” if you’ll just keep thinking it……until YOU are convinced it’s true.

Hugs,

Pat

Everyone has at least one cross to bear. No one gets away without at least one. Ever. Some crosses are big; some small. Some are heavy. Some are psychological and thus, invisible. I’ve always been particularly galled by the fact that my cross to bear was big, heavy and visible. Three strikes!

I’ll bet you know exactly what I mean, don’t you? You’ve felt it too. You know the pain. And you despise this burden, don’t you? I have felt that way for over 65 years. It’s only recently that I’ve been able to set down this cross, dust off my hands and knees, and settle back into the harmony of my own wonderful being and have that be enough. Did you just sigh and ask yourself “How did she do that?” I will be telling you the story about my how.

Obesity has always been and is still the main catalyst in my life. Trying to solve this complex problem has dragged me through therapy, dieting, acupuncture, spas, hypnosis, fasting, high colonics, the est training, the convent, the Church of Religious Science, weekend group intensives, spiritual retreats, indiscriminate sex, smoking cigarettes, smoking marijuana, studying Eschatology, reading hundreds of books, hours of meditative introspection, making and losing dozens of friends, looking for satisfaction in my career, and swimming naked in an algae-laden frog-filled pool owned by “God” near San Diego.

You’re with me each page of the way. The growing incidence of obesity in our country clutches at my heart and makes me want to prove what I understand for me and then for you, because I love you.

You Are Another Me

I know that you are another me, struggling to discover your unencumbered self. I know what that’s like and that’s why I’m sharing my healing with you. You’re invited to step onto my path any time you choose. I’ll tell you the stories to catch you up because I’ve been at this for a long time.

You and I are in an incredible learning curve on earth during our few short years here. Ultimately, I think that the understanding we each unfold truly IS our life, and I believe it is the one thing of substance we ultimately do take with us.

This leads me to believe that when Jesus said “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends,” he meant “If you want to exemplify the kind of love I’ve shown you, share all that you understand with your friends.” That surely is what he did. It’s what I’m doing now, as instructed.

It is an amazingly powerful place that I’m in, writing to you with the full knowledge that with this writing and the processing of all my sublimated feelings of hurt and anger, I am curing my mistaken sense of self.

I can see your eyebrows go up and your forehead furrow with doubt. That’s okay. I’ve seen your doubt before. I’ve come so far in this process of healing my sense of self that I now know beyond any fear or doubt that I’ve experienced in the past, this time is the charm, the period at the end of the sentence.

This is an excerpt from “My Cats Have Seen Me Naked.” Reading the whole book can help you turn on the “I love and accept myself as is” switch. You can purchase it here.

Happy, happy, happy

My brother called me last night after spending a few hours with my son Thad and Amy and Baby H. He commented that he had never in his life encountered such a well-balanced, loving and happy child. I know he has cranky moments like other kids. I mean, he must. I have never encountered one with him.  When I get to hold him and play with him, he’s always all smiles.

Happiness is our norm, and I think Hieronymous has, for the most part, never been torn away from his norm.  He is unilaterally loved and accepted and this allows him to stay inside what is normal.  Thad and Amy, you’re doing a superb job.

Those of you, my regular readers, would you like to return to your norm? We women have this tendency toward negative self-talk about our bodies.  Somehow, somewhere, someway we grew up with the concept that a) our bodies are who we are; b) other people have a right or a duty to make judgmental  comments about our body and c) we adopted the whole food/exercise idea as the way to handle our sinful selves. I’d like to address these things one at a time, because only in changing them will our bodies change, if we want out body to change.

a) Our bodies are who we are.  Inside your body lives the “I” of  you.  It’s invisible, changeless, perfect and good.  It is, in fact, goodness and perfection itself. Inside you is your Mind.  Your mind is the “I” of you - invisible, changeless, perfect and good.  The goodness who you are is 100% changeless.  Your goodness will never be deleted nor will it disappear.  You and I have added stuff to that goodness and perfection called “the negative thoughts I think about my Self.” We have believed those who’s input is less than generous, and we continued the diatribe long after their mouths clapped shut and they walked away.

It is our right, our duty, and our privilege to change the negative thinking we do about ourselves.  This work is done mentally because we are mental beings - invisible, powerful, changeless. So what’s the story behind overweight bodies?  We have thought them into existence. We have used our minds unduly, and our body, the faithful report card of our minds activities, has created a picture in the shape/size of our bodies to let us know we (our minds) aren’t thinking good thoughts.  We are not the body we have created, just like the robber isn’t the bank job he pulls. Our “norm” is to think good thoughts and remain comfortable, like little Hiero.

b) Other people have a right or duty to make comments about our body. You and I are here on this earth to learn the what, how, why, when and who about us individually and about life in general. Our circumstances - in particular, our bodies - are learning tools for this task.  Other people in our lives are ancillary lessons for us. They and their nasty ass words are a perfectly adjusted opportunity for us to do one of two things.

1.  Consider what is said to see if there is any truth in it.  If so, applaud your Self.

2. After consideration, if you find no truth in the words of another, cast it aside like pet poop.

Remember this:  the words of another can only have an effect on you with your permission.

c) We adopted the whole food/exercise idea as the way to handle our supposedly sinful selves. Because we are mental beings, we ought to have been taught from the get-go to use our mental tools.  The world at large doesn’t even know we’re mental, let alone that we have mental tools! The food we eat and the exercise we employ are effect. Effect has nothing in it that acts like cause. It is our minds thinking and coming to conclusions that are the cause part of us.  An effect cannot do that.  The reason that dieting and exercising seem to work is that the girl doing the dieting and exercising thinks that they work. Invisibly, she is using the power of her mind.  She thinks if she takes food away, she will lose weight, and she might do that temporarily, but if she doesn’t change the way she does the negative self-talk thing, the weight will return.  Oprah, bless her good, good heart, is a prime example of this.  And so am I.  And so are you.

I went kind of long today, but I think all those words bear saying. The old saw “Change your stinking thinking” has a lot of truth in it. I hope that my words today help you to see what you’ve been doing so that now you can change your thinking.  My book can help you do this work, and in particular will all the incredible questions in the two workbooks.

Love you.  Mean it.

Pat