The Unwinding Path

(Tres) “descamarado”

147.5. I have been that weight all week. No change. Since losing two and half pounds the week before it was a little discouraging, but the truth is, I have done very little to change the weight. This past week was the first real week I had been able to get back into a somewhat normal routine – in other words, I was home for the whole time as opposed to popping off here or there. I think the first two and a half pounds were due to not eating on the run.

On the positive side, I sort of feel like I have a base line in which to work. I did do the self-hypnosis and that has helped. Now it is time to really get to work.

Photograph by net_efekt

Getting out the cyber feather duster, I decided to get rid of some of the winter blahs, take advantage of the energy from a 50+ degree day, and finally get the cobwebs out of the blogs. Ha. Are you looking around trying to see the changes? Well, in my aesthetics of maintaining a slightly professional edge on things, you would have never really seen the cobwebs. I am good at surface cleaning. No, these were the cobwebs that lingered in the basement level of the blogs, you know the type, hard to reach so it involved getting a step ladder out.

What are these changes? I finally upgraded The Transparent Hypnotist and The Unwinding Path to WordPress 2.7. Call me slow if you must, but I am always cautious when tweaking things. This time though, it went very smoothly. The redesign of the interface works well and functionality seems intact. I still cannot spell check on either blog, though. I cannot quite figure out why. But I tend to write in a word processing program and paste in the text, so the spell check is no big loss.

The question is, how will the poll widget work out tomorrow on The Transparent Hypnotist?

Photograph by cursedthing

Warm cat on my lap, purring herself to sleep. Thoughts of words to be written float in and out. Time is lost and I just recline in this semi-state of repose. I am aware of the traffic outside. I am aware of the furnace blowing warm air. I am aware of the weight of the cat. I am a battery that has been recharged, inspired, relaxed, hopeful…

Photo by hlkljgk

Out of the warm oven came the delicacy that I have never forgotten – a delicacy that I became aware of at age five and took me from being a rather thin, stringy child, to a pudgy one. Sitting at the kitchen table with my best friend, her mother placed two flowered cake plates in front of us. Onto each of these she slid a toast point, but not just any toast point, a toast point that included melted cheese. Though it is hard for me to get past the memory, the cheese was actually a processed cheese slice that had been wrapped in plastic moments before it was laid to rest on a slice of bread and entered the stove.

It had been a terrible day. My friend had slammed my fingers in the door. She had made me feel clumsy because, as she said at the time, my fingers should not have been lounging on the door jam. My tears of pain had become tears of frustration. All the other children who lived on our street and were present had laughed.

So, her kindly mother had come to the rescue and in trying to sooth me had fed me those amazing toast points and processed cheese. I could not get enough of them, though they did begin to fill the void. Tasty bites encompassed my senses and I forgot the humiliation

During those early years, I grew apart from my best friend. I was too non-intellectual for her and her school crowd. I would come home feeling very stupid for this or that, and my Nan would feed me (never toast points and processed cheese – I never had them again, though there are times thirty years later that I still crave them). We would work through my homework with a bowl of comfort food.

This toast point memory came to me recently during a self-hypnosis session. I was struggling with a desire to eat cheese curls while I worked on a scholarly paper. Whenever I work on scholarly papers, I tend to want to eat cheese products (gorge on them is the reality). In trying to stop myself, I decided to investigate the craving using self-hypnosis and this long forgotten memory came to the surface.

Since doing this, it seems the void is gone. No longer do I feel the urge to stuff myself to fulfill what my self-esteem had lost.

This idea, creating a hypnosis audio for sale, has been spinning around in my head for a long while. Though in my incarnation as the transparent hypnotist, I had made a conscious decision to not do too much self-marketing, after not receiving a grant to help fund my program for using hypnosis to boost abused persons’ self-esteem, I need to be more proactive. Using any proceeds from this audio might help that goal along.

I am now in the planning stages.

There was a time when I was just about vegan. There was a time when I was catwalk thin. There was a time when my bones did not feel the weight of my choices. There was a time when Yoga practice was a daily deal.

So here I am, clothes too tight, tired most of the time, and 20 pounds heavier than I would care to admit. I can only offer excuses for this: a month of travel, extreme stress, and yielding to unhealthy habits. All not really worth the mention.

I have decided to take myself in hand and do something. To start of with, I bought a new scale, nothing fancy, just measures my weight and nothing else. I have also updated my account at Live Strong where I am going to start charting my diet, fitness and water consumption.

Today, I have made the commitment to lose 20 pounds.

I have been pretty faithful to meditating for ten minutes a day (except for one day this week). Normally, I do not mention or write about it because what I get out of the process is beyond words, but sometimes, rather than reaching a non-dual awareness, information comes to me.

What kept coming to mind today was the fact that I am still dealing with a disappointment (not getting a grant that I was sure was mine…). What came to me was that the real heart of my disappointment lies within the idea that I am a people pleaser. I want people to like me. It is a source of validation. The person responsible for providing the grant is a teacher of mine. This was not just a money disappointment but one where I felt rejected by this teacher, not worthy. In feeling this way, I realized I have put him in an unrealistic position where he decides if I am validated or not. In the past couple of days I have belittled him as a defense mechanism (in my head) (I went through a bit of an anger stage) So today during my short mediation, I became aware that I really like him as a person and he is a good teacher, but I really do not need him to like me (only to be a reasonable and knowledgeable source) in order to like myself.

Ah, my human silliness.

This post represents my attempt to add more functionality to my blog. I am hoping that it will automatically post over at The Unwinding Path. Fingers are crossed.