Welcome back!

I spent fifteen days on vacation this month.  I was in Pennsylvania for part of the time and at the Teachers Graduate Course in Eschatology the remainder of the time.

In both cases, I met with people who wanted to talk to me about my book.  Some had read it and loved it.  Some had read it and not understood it.  Some had read it and discovered wonderful things about me in it that they didn’t know.  Some read it and discovered wonderful things about them that they didn’t know!

It’s the “discovering wonderful things about them that they didn’t know” that prompted me to tell you about this book again.

Writing this book was an adventure and a joy in the unfoldment of my life. It helped me to synthesize a lot of ideas. I learned a lot of new things about myself as I wrote and I was able to give grateful recognition for many of the ideas I’d unfolded because they became more clear in the writing.

If you are working to achieve a spiritual healing in your life around the topics of self acceptance and self love, this book and it’s accompanying workbooks would be a boon and a blessing. You will see a lot of yourself in me as I share the living of my life, and then you can work through your own ideas via the workbook. I know that you can achieve greater clarity and insight with this work. It is not to brag but simply to share the truth when I tell you that many secrets of Life’s unfoldment are contained in this book. I’d love to share them with you.

Love,

Pat

I respect the work of many diet and exercise experts. They are truly dedicated to the task of dieting and exercising to maintain the form they consider appropriate, sexy, good looking, and healthy. The problem I see in this approach is that only the superhuman are able to achieve and maintain it. I’ve found spiritual healing much more beneficial despite your size because you can take it with you. It also leads to self acceptance and self love.

The diet and exercise approach appears to have a piece lodged within it that says “Unless you do this and look like this, you are not successful or acceptable.” I was never able to accomplish one of those acceptable bodies although I did try many, many times. God knows I tried.

I felt the disdain of others, men in particular. My parents nagged constantly for me to “do something” about it. I once had several surfers walk past where I was sunbathing on the beach at a trim size 16 and say with a snickering laugh “Oh, look! It’s a beached whale.” I became obsessed with my not being okay. It’s a very uncomfortable way to live.

The judgment, criticism and contempt of others was a heavy cross to bear. I made it heavier by agreeing with them. Yes, I was too fat. Yes, fat meant lazy and dumb. Yes, because of the size of my body, I was worthless!

But wait a moment! Wasn’t I out there earning a living for me and my two sons, with no help from their father except a measly $100 a month, if and when he felt like paying it? Hadn’t I bought two homes by myself on a clerical salary? Hadn’t I been buying my boys the OP shorts and the Van tennis shoes they needed to wear to fit in with their classmates? Didn’t we have great food due to my frugality and artistic cooking? Wasn’t I being promoted at work due to my talent? Wasn’t I in middle management capably running a team? Wasn’t I dating? Didn’t I drive a current, well-maintained car?

How could someone so terrible-looking and so worthless be accomplishing all of this, and I personally think my accomplishments were marvelous! There must be something of value there that everyone else wasn’t seeing because they couldn’t see past my body.

So, dear readers, I began the journey within myself to discover what was there that other people weren’t seeing due to their own conceptions of what was acceptable. I think now that their vision is rather short-sighted, but, gosh, did it serve me well!

The journey within is one of the most exhilarating trips I’ve ever been on. I was driven within by the world and it’s opinions, because the world of without judged harshly and erroneously. I wanted to find my own value. I wanted to know that my one sweet life was worth living.

My journey within has involved therapy, hundreds of self-help books (reading and applying), moving away from my parent’s church of choice, finding a home in the realm of metaphysics, criticism from my family because of my decisions in this arena, finally settling on one area to study, becoming a teacher of that study, writing a book about my life, and setting up an avenue to share my understanding with other women who suffer from a body that just doesn’t measure up to the world’s mistaken standards.

I like to watch the 1940’s musicals so I can still see plump thighs that jiggle. I’m saddened by the emaciation currently in vogue and called “appropriate and acceptable.” My heart goes out to girls who are starving themselves to maintain this look. Some of them are in my own family and it breaks my heart to see what they’ve embraced.

I believe we are here in this relative experience to discover that there is an ‘absolute’ that relativity is about. I think that relativity includes many, many tools that teach us about ourselves if we will become silent observers of our lives and try to figure out a way to become objective vs. subjective. I believe we have to pull ourselves away mentally to become those silent observers. Step back from your one sweet life and see what you see. Learn to classify what you see into big buckets and always search for the lesson inherent in your experiences. That lesson, once discovered, will cease to parade in front of you, hoping maybe this time you’ll get it!

I used my body as a teaching tool. It taught me that what I was thinking is what I got. I learned that to think “I am too fat” made me too fat. I learned through observing my thinking that in truth, this is a purely mental experience. I learned that my body is the Report Card of my thinking. I love my body as is. I learned that my mentality is one powerful Cause Machine. I learned that everything in my experience is caused by me through thinking. I learned that this happens whether I am aware of it or not.

You can have fun with this fat thing too. You don’t have to accept the remonstrances of others as your own personal truth. I still get a kick out of my quick response one evening when I was strolling with a girlfriend. A carload of surfers caromed around the corner and one hung out the window yelling “No Fat Chicks!” So I quickly pulled down my sun dress and showed him the beauty of my Italian heritage. The look on his face is tattooed in my mind and I’m laughing now while writing this.

Become philosophical: if life has handed you this lemon called Big Body, find a way to turn it into lemonade. I did, and this is what spiritual healing is about. I travelled within and I discovered a wonderful me in there. She’s highly intelligent, an incredibly organized and efficient worker, extremely talented, very sexy, and both loving and generous. I’m wondering: who’s inside you waiting to be loved and accepted by you?

Love ya,

Pat

Perfection Unfolding

This is Hiero, my grandson, who know zip about today’s topic. I hope he never does.

I always do a lot of Google research when I write articles for this website to be certain the keywords are optimized so that more of you can find the site or the blog. For today’s topic, I was amazed that the numbers of occurrences for size acceptance and self acceptance were quite similar, and in fact, self acceptance had more hits than size.  That’s a wonderful omen!  There’s hope for the women of America.

If I stand before a mirror and I judge my acceptability by my size (regardless of what it looks like, or what shape it is in) there is a chance that I might simultaneously reject my self. The main point I’d like to make here is that you can accept your Self whether your size is acceptable to you or not.  I think the best thing to do is to accept them both, as in, right now. If you can embrace both of them, I think from that place of loving acceptance, you can take the steps necessary to refine either your size or your concept of self.

If you accept neither, it’s really hard to implement change.

Today, at the encouragement of Lisa Bonnice, I am thinking about “How is holding on to fat helping me?  How is fat being my friend?” because I’ve plateaued.  :(  Although I don’t like plateaus, I know they happen for a good reason and I’m going to find out why.  I know there’s a pony in here somewhere.

Love,

Pat