We can trust ourselves

Something has been floating on the periphery of my teaching mind for quite some time, and I knew from the first time I realized it, I would someday act on it and create something--a teleseminar, a book, a ?--to share it. It is touched on in Recreating Eden, and will be a part of the Easy World book, but it seems to be asking for something of its own. While this blog entry is not the ultimate expression of this Very. Big. Understanding., and I know it's not quite time yet to go big with it based on my own relationship to the topic, it's a start and will relieve for now the pressure of having something that is wanting to express through me. Okay, here it is:

Despite what we've been led to believe, we can trust ourselves. Read those italicized words again. Do you believe them?

We can trust...

...our inclinations
...our urges
...our cravings
...our passions
...our interests
...our energy
...our desires
...our bodies
...our emotions
...our rhythms...
...our perceptions
...our wisdom
...our intuition
...ourselves.

But we've been trained otherwise. When that hit me between the eyes last night, I cried in grief for all the self-loathing I, and the rest of us Earth-humans, have maintained because we were led us to believe that we could not trust these things--these innate messages from our cores, and struggled to deny them--kill them, even.

We were taught that others always knew best, and we'd better get on with changing ourselves according to what this, that, or the other expert and authority (including our parents) told us was right. How convoluted our relationships with ourselves have become and how divided we feel inside! "You cannot trust yourself," the unspoken indictment we've been living under all our lives. I am crying again just thinking about it--and feeling the pain of it--again.

What catalyzed this is that I was reading Shauna James Ahern's book Gluten-Free Girl: How I Found the Food That Loves Me Back...and How You Can, Too last night and something she said about her 3-year-old nephew really drove it home to me. She's talking about a blackberry-picking excursion with him and painted this word picture: "He swings his arms from side to side as he walks down the path, his sturdy little three-year-old body guiding him toward goodness." Bingo! Can't you just feel that? His body knows that wild blackberries are something of value to him--they taste delicious, which for him is not yet a trigger for "must be fattening"--and he is following his natural urge to go get some.

Ah, to be trustful of our urges, our bodies, our energy like that once more. To act not out of rebellion against those that telegraphed the disempowering messages to us, or to the messages themselves, but to act wholly from that place of self-truth within and feel not one speck of guilt or sense of wrong-doing. Something to move toward.

I do wonder why we created this tragic, painful facet of the Human Game. We are not victims, we are creators. So I will ponder this and when the time is right, I will allow something to come forth to help us heal it. I am feeling that seed of an urge, and I trust that.

Oh, and by the way, I believe you'll just love Shauna's book, whether you're gluten-intolerant or not (I'm not--though I do think I am better off without wheat). Her writing is as delicious as the food she describes, and the book is as much about her own process of finding her authentic self as it is about food. For a sample, visit her blog, www.glutenfreegirl.blogspot.com but I warn you, you may start reading and not stop, because it's not only delicious, it's addictive! But trust your urge to keep reading--what she writes is very soul nourishing.