Bad news for mushrooms

It had been a productive day so far, I got my outlines done for class and got quite a bit of reading in. I'd washed dishes, cleaned my room a bit, emailed my notes to my group and even managed to get a nap in.  I was feeling...off though, and more than anything I was feeling restless.  Wanting some silent entertainment, I chose to pull cards, and immediately when I thought of it I knew it was the perfect night to do it. Instead of doing it the way Nama showed me, however, I chose to read the instructions for the cards.  I knew that the cards also followed the I'Ching but I was unsure how, so I was eager to learn how.  After preparing my materials, getting my coins and paper/pen, I was ready.  What to ask the deck first...success? No, I never have any interest in that...love? Maybe later but not right now. Then it came to me. This issue of weight has been plaguing me and I feel as though I am climbing an impossible mountain.  Even though I know it is absolutely do-able and even the logistics of how to climb it, in practice I find myself nestled in failure.  So I asked, why is losing weight so difficult for me?

I drew 33--Retreat

Geese intuitively know before the seasons change that the time for retreat is imminent.  That have built in understanding that they must depart once the days get shorter, or they will invite danger...In human life a considered departure is a sign of intelligence when it is in response to insurmountable odds.  Whenever you have a deep intuitive sense that it would be unwise to remain any longer in a situation, or in a relationship, pay attention it it.  The intuitive self knows when periods of transition are approaching...

When it becomes clear that the surrounding atmosphere has become chilly, and what once supported growth and expansion is no longer available to you, consider all your options--but not for too long.  Avoid any tendency to intellectualize and watch out for the circular fretfulness of a mind that won't budge until it figures things out.  

Let go is another form of retreat.  Letting go releases the grip of over-identification with something, someone or some concept that might have been useful or even precious once, but now needs to be put behind you...Only humans are so foolish as to ignore the signs, preferring to hold fast even to that which is likely to make them suffer. 

I was stunned at how closely this resembled everything I wrote about yesterday and everything I have been feeling lately.  My weight has really never bothered me as much as it has lately, it feels like a prison. I think about all this Jung I read yesterday...about how we have to acknowledge both parts of a thing so that we can transcend.  Perhaps I have not been the least bit inclined to acknowledge any positives or uses for carrying this much weight but perhaps I should?.  It served me...(my entire body is tingling right now on the cusp of full disclosure about something so incredibly intimate). It served me because it gave me a buffer; I could be invisible when I wanted to and simultaneously it would not be ignored.  I do believe my weight is a physical representation of my inner struggle: be seen|be invisible.

I would imagine that anyone who has ever known me would find it hard to imagine that I do not enjoy being social or in the company of others, and that is half true.  I do enjoy socializing but I very rarely (and only recently) discuss myself or anything of true value to me with others.  I suppose I am guilty of the thing I hate most, offering inauthentic conversation. Only...it is not so much inauthentic as it is superficial.  I steer very clear of going deep with anyone.  So being heavy allows me to both have an unmistakable presence, as well as escape intrusion of those wanting to get to know me as (in my head) they would a more physically attractive person.

I did my I'Ching lines and they were the same except lines 4&5 which lead me to the 40--Deliverance:

Line 4: do not take anything for granted.  Sometimes what imprisons us is exactly what we cling to for security...make sure that you are not trying to hold on to anything that has the potential to grow into a familiar old prison. Line 5: It might be comforting to think that somebody else can liberate us, but the truth of the matter is that each of us holds the key to deliverance in our own hands.  When outside circumstances combine to remind you of your inner freedom, it is both a gift an a provocation.  If you expect the door to open magically by itself, you're living in a fantasy.  Your'e going to have to put that key in the lock and turn it, and then push the door open using your own strength.  

Do I really need to further explain how spot-on-relevant this is?

It dawned on me that when Marianne Williamson said to Oprah, “Until you accept the magnitude of your function, your unconscious mind will sabotage any attempt to show your full magnificence" what she was really saying was the same thing Jung said in his second principle of the psyche, the principal of equivalance,

The energy created from the opposition is "given" to both sides equally. So, when I held that baby bird in my hand, there was energy to go ahead and try to help it. But there is an equal amount of energy to go ahead and crush it. I tried to help the bird, so that energy went into the various behaviors involved in helping it. But what happens to the other energy? Well, that depends on your attitude towards the wish that you didn't fulfill. If you acknowledge it, face it, keep it available to the conscious mind, then the energy goes towards a general improvement of your psyche. You grow, in other words.

But if you pretend that you never had that evil wish, if you deny and suppress it, the energy will go towards the development of a complex. A complex is a pattern of suppressed thoughts and feelings that cluster – constellate – around a theme provided by some archetype.

If you pretend all your life that you are only good, that you don't even have the capacity to lie and cheat and steal and kill, then all the times when you do good, that other side of you goes into a complex around the shadow. That complex will begin to develop a life of its own, and it will haunt you (source).

So, I have to acknowledge it...its function, its utility, its protection as well as its expiration, and its imprisonment. Then I have to let it go.  I do believe I thought I could get through it without being 100% honest about it all. Without saying that yes, I eat too much of the wrong thing and do not exercise enough.  Of course, I know all the things I need to do, but when it comes time to do them I feel incompetent because I am not good at them.  I really really hate not being good at things.

I realize that I set ridiculously high standards for myself (and this test our professor gave us last week on parts of our personality proved it). I know that I am not going to be immediately good at working out, even if once upon a time I was decent at it.  I know that...but when it comes time, it just feels defeating.  It feels pathetic really, because somehow in those moments you feel every lb that you are, and you wonder how it got so bad? How you got so far away from yourself? And the only thing you know to make it better is the thing that got you there in the first place. No, not food, not sugary drinks, not skipping workouts; giving up.  It is a difficult thing to admit that I gave up. That I felt too incapable of handling whatever was going on in my life at the time and that I went to food for comfort.

I haven't yet reconciled the bad taste that feelings of weakness leaves in my mouth. Nor have I found any discernible rewards from admitting my physical incompetence.  I do, however know that I am at a point of transition. I am at a point where, I feel ready to fall forward off the cliff into the unknown and that there is no solace where I am anymore.  I feel like my days have gotten short, and if I stay I am inviting danger in the form of diabetes, heart disease, infertility, and likely my biggest fear: loneliness.  Isolation caused my me and my inability, or rather...my unwillingness to let people in and be susceptible to hurt in any real way.

That is what I know today.  That is what was confirmed today.  Light on a dark truth...but really, bringing light to the darkness is only bad news for mushrooms.