Women Food and God: An Unexpected Path to Almost Everything

Pay attention to what you value. Pay attention to how and on what you spend your time. Your money. And pay attention to the way you eat.

God is not just in the details; God is also in the muffins, the fried sweet potatoes and the tomato vegetable soup. God—however we define him or her—is on our plates.

You become curious about that belief. How old were you when you first learned that? And what were your feelings at the time that never got noticed or felt or understood?

The biggest challenge at the naming-and-disengaging stage is that since you believe everything The Voice has said, you also believe that you need to hide your defects from other people lest they withdraw in abject horror.

Instead of using food to avoid discomfort, they are going to learn how to tolerate what they believe is intolerable.

Food—as matter turned to spirit—is the direct connection between the physical and the spiritual, between what we put in our mouths and what we feel in our hearts.

It is one thing to be conscious about food in the meditation hall, and another to be sitting in the dining room, refraining from taking even one bite until the entire group has been served.

Awareness and compulsion cannot coexist, since the latter depends on obliteration of the former.

“It feels as if this quiet, calm space has been waiting for me to come back to it, like it’s been here all my life, like it’s more me than anything else.”