EMBARKING
ON THE JOURNEY

You are about to embark upon a specific journey, and as with everything else in your life, you have two choices: you can play it shallow or you can play it deep.

The overeater has a delusional relationship with food, imbuing it with power it doesn’t actually possess. Perhaps you’ve subscribed to the magical belief that eating affords you comfort and strength, even when you are eating food (or an amount of food) that in fact can only hurt you. The overeater forms an idolatrous relationship with food in which powers that belong only to God have been ascribed to something else.

Begin by simply seeing this.

Spiritual growth is a fascinating process when you allow it to be. It is an inner journey from one insight to another, in which helpful realizations fall into place as you are ready to receive them. Twisted thoughts become untwisted once you see them for what they are. Your journey from blindness to spiritual vision precedes your journey from dysfunctional eating to a healthy and wholesome relationship to food; in fact, it is a necessary prerequisite for it. As you understand more deeply the roots of your weakness, you lay the foundation for the cultivation of new strengths.

The first realization on your journey to freedom is that you have come to believe a lie. Then, through the strength of your belief in this lie, you have actually made it seem true for you. The lie is that food that is actually bad for you has the power to comfort, nurture, and sustain you. Your task is to correct the lie.

The line from the end of the Lord’s Prayer, “For Thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory,” means “Only God has the power to comfort, nurture, and sustain me.” That line is not an entreaty but an affirmation, which when said prayerfully has the power to penetrate the deepest regions of your subconscious mind. You are realizing that food cannot nurture you emotionally, and that God, and only God, can.

In giving all power to Spirit, you realign the energies of your subconscious mind; you thus beckon every aspect of yourself—including your body—back to Divine right order. Your body is meant to be a reflection of your spirit, and both your thoughts and your cells will respond to a reminder of their Divine perfection.

The goal of this course is to remind your body of its perfection by reminding your mind of its perfection. By resetting one, you reset the other.

This course is cumulative. Every day you will be given a lesson, and while the content of that lesson is to be focused on for a particular day, its energy should be allowed to live continuously within your psyche as the days unfold. Compulsive eating involves two things: compulsion and food. You will not end your compulsive eating by substituting another compulsive practice. Therefore, this is not a course to race through, but rather a process to relax into.

These lessons are not meant to cause you consternation or feelings of guilt. They can neither be passed nor failed; you can neither be passed nor failed. Simply allow yourself to fall into them as into a gentle place, where you are equally loved whether you do the lesson “right” on any given day or you fall short. The only way you can “fail” a lesson is if you punish yourself for failing. This course is a journey, and as with any serious journey of self-discovery, there are days when we detour into darkness as we make our way toward light.

In moments that are difficult—perhaps you’ll read something inspiring in one of the lessons and close your eyes for a beautiful and peaceful time of meditation, but then find yourself an hour later finishing a whole bag of potato chips!—know that the problem is not the potato chips, but rather the fear that has been aroused in the presence of love.

It has been said that love brings up everything unlike itself, and sometimes just when we feel we are moving toward a solution, the problem jumps up again and grabs us by the throat. That is natural. It is part of the process. Do not despair.

In such a situation, simply take a deep breath, acknowledge yourself for your efforts, and forgive yourself for the detour. Know that the patterns of light you are establishing now will in time cancel out all darkness. Know that the greatest successes are often arrived at two steps forward and then a step or two back. And know that skinny people eat too many potato chips sometimes, too.

These lessons are simple, but their potential to heal you is profound. The reason the lessons are gentle is because your overeating is not. Only the power of love can overcome the power of hate, and make no mistake about it: your unhealthy eating is an act of self-hate. Overeating is a form of violence, and one of the mechanisms you are now dismantling is your habit of taking up the sword against yourself—whether the sword be knife or fork.

Begin with a commitment to be kind to yourself. Overeating is an emotionally violent act, and scolding yourself for having done it is just inflicting further violence. At some point you’ll act out those feelings, and it’s a pretty good bet you’ll lean on your fallback position of overeating as your favorite way to express self-hate. Not only that, but the overeating would then also be a perfect way to comfort yourself while feeling all that guilt.

Is the insanity becoming clear enough yet? And does it not follow that it would take a miracle to dismantle such a weird and twisted set of thoughts and emotions? At a certain point, you come to admit a truth that you previously resisted: you don’t have the human capacity to fix this problem.

Yet that’s not the end. It’s only the beginning. For in realizing that you can’t heal yourself, you begin to consider Who can.

These lessons are not just something you are going to read; doing this course requires your active participation. Occasionally you’ll be asked to procure an item or two or to do an activity, and often you’ll be asked to write things down. There are pages at the end of the book for this purpose, or you may wish to use a separate journal. Writing will be very useful to you throughout the course, as it will help you integrate the lessons more fully.

With that, let’s begin our journey.