from our Asilomar retreat, which is happening now:
This morning, at our first eating meditation, a woman said — this is a paraphrase, not her words exactly — Oh My God — I get it. All these years I’ve been trying to fix myself. I’ve been working on myself, thinking I was going to finally get to the point where what was wrong wouldn’t be wrong anymore. But now, here, I see that I could have kept that up for the rest of my life because really, there is always something that seems like it needs to be changed or fixed. But when I drop the story of being broken, when I see that it’s like a mantra I keep repeating (I’m broken, I’m broken, I need to be fixed, fixed, fixed), there is a wholeness that is also here. A softness. Something that has never been broken. And it feels like love.
Tears followed. The whole room was moved, opened, changed.
Later on in the morning, we paid attention to being present — and what it is like to really truly shower yourself with your own attention. So many women are so used to paying attention to other people at the expense of themselves. We seem to feel as if we will get in trouble. Or that it’s not nice to stay present in our own bodies. That other people need us to leave ourselves. That leaving ourselves is a sign of love for another. And that movement away from ourselves leads to disrespect of our bodies, leads to using food or another substance to fill the hole left by our absence.
It’s good to come back. Be aware of your left foot. Your butt in the chair. Your feet on the floor. Let yourself really take up the space you’ve been given. You get another chance, it’s another day. Another breath. What would happen right now if you showered yourself with your own attention, just for three minutes?
