Well, I know I said I wasn't gonna, but

I went ahead last night and plunged into another chapter in Geneen Roth's newest book Women Food and God.

I haven't read the entire work, and she's not mentioned a whole lot about the God part yet....but from the video clip below I can assume her conclusion is that we are God.  I don't buy that, but I do believe that when we learn to be kind to ourselves, we meet with God on more healthy terms.  If you've got 5 minutes to spare, this is Geneen reading from her new book:



I'm at a place in my spirituality where I've stopped hating my humanity.  The whole "I'm a horrible rotten person who deserves hell but for the atoning death of Jesus" theology doesn't work for me at all anymore.  I spent many, many years asking for God to heal my food issues, help me lose weight, etc.  Since it didn't happen in any sustainable way, I assumed I was doing something wrong.  Eventually, I gave up asking for help and continued despising myself.

Ya know, it's hard to love your neighbor when you don't really like yourself.  If you spend a lot of time dissecting all your 'sins' and being mean to yourself, I guarantee you won't get healthy and fit.  Geneen explains why, and it fits very well with what I've experienced so far.  BUT I had to drop this "I'm a worthless sinner...thank God he still loves me because I sure don't" mentality.

Abraham Lincoln was quoted as saying "When I do good I feel good.  When I do bad I feel bad.  And that's my religion."  Mine too.  Boils it down to the bare minimum of truth.  But I still believe there is Something Very Good called Love outside of us, the Creator who yearns to connect with us, not so we can snuggle up on a celestial lap to be petted to offset when we feel an utter mess.....not to condemn and shame us....but just to help us connect with our true selves and others.  Who we were created to be.  What life is for and about.

Before this shift in my thinking, I felt schizo most of the time, feeling bad about myself because of my 'sins' of gluttony, then guilty when I felt proud of myself for accomplishing something.  I guess you could say it's been much easier to think of God as non-personal in the human sense.  I actually cling to the old adage "God helps those who help themselves."

So I do feel I'm getting 'help' from an outside Source, and that though God lives within us in some weird way, God and I *are* separate entities. We're just majorly intertwined I'd say.  (I'll be the pink strip, and let's say God is the green above, k?  That'd make the blue strip the 'other' in our lives.  We're all joined together by God.  Easy peasy.)  So I just superimpose that view onto what Geneen is saying, and it works for me.  If you hold to a more traditional view of Christianity, please don't throw the wisdom of this book out.  There's so much good stuff in it.  Same goes for Carol's stuff.  No, the bible doesn't mention Energy/Beauty Types, but that doesn't mean it isn't real.

I'll end with an excerpt that struck me last night:

(pg 79)
"The shape of your body obeys the shape of your beliefs about love, value and possibility.  To change your body, you must first understand that which is shaping it.  Not fight it.  Not force it.  Not deprive it.  Not shame it.  Not do anything but accept--and, yes, Virginia--understand it.  Because if you force and deprive and shame yourself into being thin, you end up a deprived, shamed, fearful person who will also be thin for ten minutes."

In light of this, I had me two toasted mini whole wheat bagels with peanut butter and jelly for lunch, and there will be no workout today.  Perfect.