File under: Mindful Consumption

My great friend Pimentao gave me a copy of Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior. I have been especially interested in the passages on drala, or "energy beyond aggression"—connecting the wisdom of your own being with the power of things as they are. As I was reading on my commute this morning, I came across this timely passage:

Internal drala [oneness in your body] also comes out of making a proper relationship to food, by taking an interest in your diet. . . . You invoke internal drala by developing greater awareness of how you use your mouth altogether. You put food in your mouth; you drink liquids through your mouth; you smoke cigarettes in your mouth. It is as if the mouth were a big hole or big garbage pail: you put everything through it. Your mouth is the biggest gate: you talk out of it, you cry out of it, and you kiss out of it. . . . Maybe you don't need to use it as much as you think. Appreciating your world doesn't mean that you must consume everything you see all the time.

Oh, like, the sangria, cookies, banana bread, and tortilla chips I binged on this weekend? (I was at the same rooftop party as Shivani.)

Over the past few days, my grief has manifested itself in a mixture of all-out bawlfests (even in public!) and complete disregard for my health (i.e. eating junk food—also in public!) I started to see myself as a lost cause. Perhaps I will always solve my problems with food. But, I remembered feeling an acute connection between my desire not to sit with my emotions and my desire to eat a cookie. Awareness. I'm filing the weekend under SUCCESS.