Obsession: Part 1
Being in a relationship [whether romantic or platonic] with someone and refusing to surrender to the love because you don't want to give yourself to something you will eventually lose. That's called living in hell. That's also called leaving without leaving. Dying before you die. It's as if there is a part of you that so rails against being shattered by love that you shatter yourself first. Another name for this pattern? Obsession.
Have you ever had a book that seemed to understand your thought process and expressed it in ways you never could? Have you ever read something that explained everything you've ever felt but never knew how to communicate? I recently read the book Women Food God by Geneen Roth (quote from above and throughout) and was awestruck at how much it hit home. Per usual, when I find a book that I relate to, I underline, highlight, footnote, and memorize passages I connect with. This book has been the most relatable for me and I thought it would be healing to pick it apart further.
So I've decided to do a mini series of blogs entitled Obsession. It is talked about in the book and has been a prominent part of my life (and maybe yours too). This book explains the connection of food to spirituality in an incredible way, and I hope that you get the chance to read it if you've ever felt bondage to habits or feelings of helplessness. It shows the deeper struggle in our souls, the spaces on our plates that are filled with our beliefs.
Women turn to food when they are not hungry because they are hungry for something they can't name: a connection to what is beyond the concerns of daily life. Something deathless, something sacred. But replacing the hunger for divine connection with [food] is like given a glass of sand to a person dying of thirst. It creates more thirst, more panic. .... We have become so obsessed with getting rid of our obsession, with riding on top of our suffering and ignoring its inherent message, that we lose the pieces of ourselves waiting to be found beneath it. But fixing ourselves is not the same as being ourselves. The real richness of obsession lies in the ineffable stillness, the irrefutable wholeness, that is found it turning toward its source.
Obsession is a way of organizing our lives so that we never have to deal with the hard part.
Obsessions are ways we leave before we are left because we believe that the pain of strain would kill us.
Obsession gives you something to do besides having your heart shattered by heart-shattering events. It give you the illusion of felling everything without having to be vulnerable to anything.
I used to think (well, okay, sometimes I still do) that the less I showed up, the less it would hurt when I lost everything. When people I loved died. When things fell apart. Sometimes I shock myself.
Somewhere along the line I started believing that the purpose of living was to pass the test I'd be given when I died. At the moment of my last breath, there would be a judgement hearing at which I'd be forced to review my life. Given my propensities toward taking the bigger piece of anything and amazing large quantities of earrings when so much of the world lived on less than a dollar a day, there would be no doubt about the verdict: I was going to hell. Unless, of course, I spent the remaining days of my life trying to be selfless like Mother Theresa [...]
This mindset is destructive. But this passage is so me! Is it you? I tend to think of Paul in Romans when he talks about desiring to do what is good, but not carrying it out. Doing the things he does not want to do and not doing the things he wants to do.
The ever waging war.
Have you ever had a book that seemed to understand your thought process and expressed it in ways you never could? Have you ever read something that explained everything you've ever felt but never knew how to communicate? I recently read the book Women Food God by Geneen Roth (quote from above and throughout) and was awestruck at how much it hit home. Per usual, when I find a book that I relate to, I underline, highlight, footnote, and memorize passages I connect with. This book has been the most relatable for me and I thought it would be healing to pick it apart further.
So I've decided to do a mini series of blogs entitled Obsession. It is talked about in the book and has been a prominent part of my life (and maybe yours too). This book explains the connection of food to spirituality in an incredible way, and I hope that you get the chance to read it if you've ever felt bondage to habits or feelings of helplessness. It shows the deeper struggle in our souls, the spaces on our plates that are filled with our beliefs.
Women turn to food when they are not hungry because they are hungry for something they can't name: a connection to what is beyond the concerns of daily life. Something deathless, something sacred. But replacing the hunger for divine connection with [food] is like given a glass of sand to a person dying of thirst. It creates more thirst, more panic. .... We have become so obsessed with getting rid of our obsession, with riding on top of our suffering and ignoring its inherent message, that we lose the pieces of ourselves waiting to be found beneath it. But fixing ourselves is not the same as being ourselves. The real richness of obsession lies in the ineffable stillness, the irrefutable wholeness, that is found it turning toward its source.
Fixing ourselves. Isn't that what we all try so desperately to do? We work harder, study harder, diet, lift weights, self punish. We become so obsessed with perfection, so obsessed with reaching it so we can get rid of our obsession, that we end up falling further and further from any "peace" of happiness. We continually reach outward looking for something to fill this gaping hole we hold, only to find that anything we grasp leaves us in a darker, deeper emptiness. So we continue to obsess. We focus our minds on something that can be controlled, something that can distract us from the fears we so desperately try to run from.
Obsession gives you something to do besides having your heart shattered by heart-shattering events. It give you the illusion of felling everything without having to be vulnerable to anything.
I used to think (well, okay, sometimes I still do) that the less I showed up, the less it would hurt when I lost everything. When people I loved died. When things fell apart. Sometimes I shock myself.
Somewhere along the line I started believing that the purpose of living was to pass the test I'd be given when I died. At the moment of my last breath, there would be a judgement hearing at which I'd be forced to review my life. Given my propensities toward taking the bigger piece of anything and amazing large quantities of earrings when so much of the world lived on less than a dollar a day, there would be no doubt about the verdict: I was going to hell. Unless, of course, I spent the remaining days of my life trying to be selfless like Mother Theresa [...]
This mindset is destructive. But this passage is so me! Is it you? I tend to think of Paul in Romans when he talks about desiring to do what is good, but not carrying it out. Doing the things he does not want to do and not doing the things he wants to do.
The ever waging war.
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