This last Friday, @ The Desoto OceanView & OceanSpray Inn where I have been making "Radically Raw" Breakfasts every Friday for two months now, I made a fun breakfast (to rave reviews) that would make a great Raw Brunch for a small crowd. I will share my menu and recipes following!
I also wanted to talk about my quest for going Raw this summer and continue my periodic Raw Blog “check-in” about how it has been going.
Truthfully, it has been a little bit of a roller coaster ride. In my journey and quest for seeking to “go raw” (eat 100% raw), again I find it is not just about going on a diet for awhile, it's about finding a rhythm to yet another lifestyle change.
I would say I knew this intellectually going into it, but it's another adjustment that needs time and space in my life to be able to evolve into something I can and want to live with. And there’s an emotional component to this evolution. So, while I am seeking another lifestyle I also am rammed into the feelings of loss yet again.
It turns out you cannot bring something new into your life without creating space for it, and this means disrupting old patterns, emotions, and some times bumping up against other people's uncomfortableness with your choice to change (not to mention bumping up against your own uncomfortableness with your choice to change.) So not only have I been feeling saddled with my own inner fight it can sometimes manifest outside of me with the people I care about most, and that can often scare me back into my status quo.
So, my journey to”go raw” has been a journey of making space: practicing the tools I know in order to release old patterns and belief systems, to let go of the fear, and open to the vulnerability.
One of the reasons why I wrote my book, "The Chakra Diet For True Transformation", was specifically to share these tools and share with others a a structure and methodology for bringing something new into our lives. Most of us carry a lifetime of engrained patterns and beliefs, along with those of a generation or two from our family, which are clearly not working for the majority of us, particularly with respect to the health of our physical, spiritual or emotional beings, as well as that of the planet’s. We need to change. We want to change. Not just for ourselves, but for the health of our children, their children and beyond. Change, it turns out, is not easy.
This is why it is important to find a program or protocol that you can follow, something that you can initially get excited about, and which creates structure for those times when you feel lost and afraid. Most especially, having a mentor or coach is a gift to yourself in this process. When your own mind chatter gets going and starts giving you all the reasons that this change is not good, to be able to hear another person’s words from one who is willing to be the voice of reason when the ego is fighting can make all the difference.
Change is rarely acceptable to our egos. Our ego is all about maintaining the status quo. It’s not a bad thing, that’s just how the ego is wired. Push hard on it on the subject of change and it will push back, typically by rationalization or by making excuses. And if the ego feels like it is up against the wall, it will go all out in manipulating you into staying where you are, no matter what. That's why the idea of diets for short periods of time is so popular: change without disrupting the status quo. You have made a deal with the devil, so to speak. We really are not changing ; just hanging on for one, two days, weeks or even months, and then we can go back to what our ego knows and no one has to give anything up.
We are the proverbial child with two hands full of goodies and who want what is lying ahead of us, yet we never really want to let go of anything to get it. But that is just not how energetics work. So, working with the ego is an integral component of bringing about change, of transformation. It is as important to the process as the effort of bringing in different foods or new habits while letting others drop away. It is a healthy and necessary part of change, something we all say we want, but at the first sign of a struggle with the ego, it can feel like a hardship and can feel like a losing battle. This is why it is so important to have coaches, teachers and mentors in our life.
Some times it will work that a family member or a friend will get behind you to cheer you on in your goal, but unless they are ready and willing to change right along with you, to be open to the changes occurring in you, it's not likely to work out. Relationships in our lives will change when we start to change. Our inner world change will always have an equal change, reaction or response outside of us. That’s a good thing. It’s just helpful to have someone who knows their job is to hold for you, no matter what.
Coaches, teachers and mentors can see and hold for bigger and better possibilities for you. They can hold when you cannot. They can be a necessary shoulder for you to cry on, or a guide to help you talk to your inner selves and discuss your ego’s sabotages and possibly those of your friends and families who, though they love you, just are not comfortable with your choice to change.
Good coaches, teachers and mentors are unattached to specific outcomes, which allows them to guide you and remind you of your goals, while gently, or not so gently, pointing out your own ego mind games that you can get caught in.
But best of all, which is why I have so appreciated my teachers, mentors and coaches, is that they can see the hurdles we have overcome and are quick to point out from where we came, how much progress we have made! This has always been so hard for me to do. It’s so easy it is to see others’ accomplishments, but for myself it is always about what I have not accomplished, which is a constant and endless list of where I want my life to be right now! I can exhaust myself just thinking about it.
It feels so good when you get sooo.....tired climbing that mountain and you believe you are failing because it feels so useless and endless and you cannot possibly waste any more of your time on this futile goal when your coach taps you on your shoulder and says “Turn around! Look where you started and see where you are now!” ...And that feeling of accomplishment washes over you and you know it can be done and you appreciate yourself for how far you have come. When you let that in, that vulnerability, that appreciation, that self-loving, that’s when the ego changes. And the mountain disappears.
If you do not have a coach, mentor or teacher who is capable of holding for you while you reach for something different, you can certainly still reach your goal, but it often can feel hard and futile and most often you will stop just shy of your goal, not realizing you were steps away from where you were wanting to go.
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