The Dream..the final piece of the puzzle

And then came the dream....

A few months later, I had a night visitation in the form of a dream and all was made clear. 

Dreams of this sort are incredibly clarifying and dense with meaning.  There is a vividness which makes the dream quite real and unforgettable... a dream with great impact. 

My 1st boss was a fearsome Catholic nun. She ran the kitchen at the Catholic hospital. She was the 1st morbidly obese person I had ever seen.  From the moment when she came through the doors on 2 special canes and fell into a huge chair that had been custom-built to hold her girth, plates of food were handed to her.  I never saw Sister without a fork in hand.  She ate non-stop.  She was always in a sour mood and we did our best to avoid her.   One day, we came to work and Sister was gone.  We found that she had died.  She was not old. We knew that things would be easier with her passing and breathed a sigh of relief.  But 72 hrs. later, I woke up a different person. For much of the next 20 years, ALL I could think about was my next morsel of food. I was in a hell on earth...so fully taken over as I slept innocently at the age of 16, that it never occurred to me that her death was the trigger... 
So now to the dream...

In the dream 'Sister' came to me after all those years.  It was completely unexpected.  I had not once thought of her in decades.  But she was here now to show me what had taken place. 

You will notice a shift of tone and 'voice'.  These are her words and understanding...

'Sister' conveyed to me that she herself had been in the murderous grip of an entity with a raging lust for food. 

It had tried ...and eventually succeeded in taking her life.  

When she died, the parasitic  thing that took her out of life...the murderous entity...required a new host to feed off of....a new body.

Sister showed me that she had inadvertently created an emotional bridge between us and that the entity was able to use this 'bridge' to make the leap to its new victim...me.

She had created this bridge simply in the act of sitting in her familiar corner and staring at my perfect little 16 year old body with envy and lust.  She sat in her food trance and her eyes bore into me.  Day after day, she envied me and was resentful.  

The emotional and energetic connection was built in this way.  

Though she knew it was wrong, she did not understand how things really worked in the unseen realms and because of this, the damage was done.  She had not intended it. 

She made her appearance in order to explain things to me and to ask for my forgiveness.  

I was instantly struck by the truth of what she showed me.

It was as if my eyes were suddenly opened and I saw things clearly for the very first time. 

There was another layer of existence to be considered....that of the unseen...spirits! 

The mechanism of what had happened to me was quite hidden from me all those terrible years.  

It was no wonder that none of the answers I had come up with through all the years had ever quite fit.  It was all just fumbling in the dark...

In the dream experience, I was given a span of time in which to think things over and make my decision...to forgive her...  or not. 

I briefly re-experienced the whole panorama of events. I felt everything associated with it.

The resentment, the pain of those years, the shame and self recrimination, the terror as I lost control, the unfairness of it all...for me...and also for her. 

She had been as ignorant and deeply disturbed by something beyond her control as I was.

And her religious instruction was just as wanting as mine.       It was, tragically, of no help...

But at this stage, she had to make amends and seek my forgiveness. 

I considered all of this in my heart and I knew that I must forgive her. 

She also had suffered horribly in many ways.  I could feel her deep remorse and sorrow

I said from my heart, ‘Yes...I forgive you.            
You didn't understand how things worked.  I didn't either. 
Of course I forgive you!"
It was the truth.  

I felt so unburdened.  There was no need for anger or punishment.  It was just simple in the light of what had happened.   

Moments later she was gone.  Her mission completed.  
Her warfare ended. 

The dream ended peacefully and I slept a bit longer.

When morning dawned,  I awoke with the experience of a final shattering of the obsession.  As if a tiny grenade had exploded in my stomach, I felt shards of metal fly away from me in all directions.  And I heard a hideous shriek as the demon flew away.

The final remnants...

From that time up to the present day,  it feels so completely gone as if it had never existed.

Like a total erasure of history.  I could not recover the feeling if I tried.

In the next post, I will share some insights in retrospect and will show what I have learned about this layer of reality.  I'll talk about how these things happen and how to recover...

If any of you would like to post comments, ask questions or share your experiences privately, please add your comments or write to me @ skydancer.net   

blessings...

Anatomy of an Eating Disorder continued... Hungry Ghosts

I happened to attend a lecture given by a Tibetan Buddhist abbot.   In recounting the history and culture of his people, he mentioned a particular feast day that he call the Feast for the Hungry Ghosts.  Suddenly something inside me leapt to attention.  I had to know more!  It happened so fast...faster than thought.  It was urgent that I learn everything possible about this!

I had an opportunity to ask the abbot about this festival and this is the explanation that was given:

We are all here to learn and experience life and to grow as souls.  We must learn to develop and master our minds and bodies as well as our spiritual potential.  We work to overcome weaknesses and failings.  

Sometimes people neglect to clear their faults in this life.  They leave this life with unfinished business.    Let’s say someone is addicted…  A person can be addicted to many things....  

Gambling, drugs, alcohol, sex…any number of things.  These are some of the obvious addictions. 

In another post we’ll look into some of the less obvious problems…

When a person dies with these active lusts or addictions, their soul leaves the body.  In this state, their cravings are felt even more keenly.  For some, the desire is experienced as a kind of burning. 

The problem arises because the person no longer has a body with which to fulfil their desires or lusts.

This is the hungry ghost...

Their suffering can be intense and they will do anything to lessen their craving.

So the  hungry  ghost  will seek out a vulnerable person and attach themselves...

much like a hitchhiker... to share the vehicle of that person’s body. 

He went on to explain that in their culture if a person is approaching death, families take care to protect anyone who might be vulnerable to the hungry ghost.  Pregnant women, babies and young children, the elderly, and anyone who is otherwise weak from illness, trauma or grief is kept away for their safety.

 

Likewise, in recognition of the fact that the hungry ghosts are suffering and hovering near the earth, they continue to pray for them and they try to assuage their suffering by means of the Feast for The Hungry Ghosts.  The whole community comes together to spread a banquet table with miniature tokens of all that they might need in their present state. 

Tiny gambling tokens, small  glasses of  alcohol, sweets, miniature replicas of money… anything that souls get attached to are offered to the hungry ghosts so that they will partake of them and leave the people alone. 

They understand that the ghosts or spirits can exist on the essence of a thing and thus relieve their cravings for a time.  They know that they are acknowledged and prayed for and they will not cause suffering for those who still live on earth.

I was so fascinated by these ideas.  Here was a culture where such things could be talked about and dealt with openly.  Even my skeptical mind could sense the rightness of their ideas.

I sat with the story for several days, mulling it over.  It started to dawn on me that perhaps there was a connection with my odd behavior as I came to the end of each item that I had been addicted to. 

I remembered that as time went on, I even bought smaller amounts…  one donut, not a dozen. Finally… just a representative sample of each thing  with the sense that I did not have to take it into my body, but just leave it on the table.  And with that final move, I had relief.  And then very soon after… it was gone.

Finally, some small clarity was coming to me…

Anatomy of an Eating Disorder continued...

One of the turning points in the struggle with the problem came from an unexpected direction...
By this time, I had tried so many things in an effort to understand and heal myself from the addiction.  Everything from affirmations, religion, myriad diets, exercise, fasting, journalling...but I still wasn't getting better.

Then, a novel approach came to me by way of a book written by a Chinese Christian mystic named Watchman Nee.  It was suggested that I quit struggling and simply forgive myself and turn the job over to Christ.  It was terrifying to think of letting go.  If I stopped fighting, I would surely disappear into the black hole of the addiction.  The idea of forgiving myself for the awful behavior that I was likely to continue repeating made no sense to me.  I hated myself for my weakness and gluttony. I knew I would be a repeat offender. I was filled with self-loathing and shame.  So what was the sense of forgiving myself and giving up the struggle?
It seemed so hypocritical...even nonsensical.   But eventually, I realized that I had tried everything else...
and none of it had worked.
There wasn't much more to lose.  I had run out of ideas.  I was giving up on myself anyway.
By this time, I was desperately tired of the struggle.
I started to apply the advice...   I 'forgave myself'.  At first, it was a kind of make believe statement.
The best I could do was to just mouth the words "I forgive myself for eating the pie" or whatever.
It was hollow and without conviction.  But I kept on doing it.  Each and every time.  I was, in effect, turning my back on my negative behavior. Trying to love myself a little.  It still made no sense to me, but i practiced it anyway.  
The strangest thing happened as I continued to forgive myself over the next weeks and months.
The compulsions to eat began to diminish.  I didn't understand it, but I could feel it. I could observe a change in my behavior.  It took an unfamiliar form.  Whereas I might have felt compelled to buy and eat a box of doughnuts, I watched my behavior shift.  I would buy the doughnuts, but I would leave them on the kitchen counter instead.  There was strangely no compulsion to eat them.  After a few days, i would discard them. 
The compulsions were coming less often and with less strength.  That pattern was experienced with each and every binging food.  After discarding them 2 or 3 times, that particular food had very little meaning to me.  I began to realize that once I reached that stage,  I was near the end.  Just having it in the house was somehow enough.  I did not need to eat it for some reason.  In the past, just having the food in the house was enough to trigger an eating binge.
This was a strange new experience.  Over the course of about a year, I could see that I was emerging from the pit.  It was as if the forgiveness had put some traction underfoot and I was able to climb a little higher most days.   Finally, I found that I was largely free of temptation and compulsion.  I reached a stage where I was eating normally for the 1st time in many years. 
There was a little holdover from the past that I could never quite eradicate, however...  3 or 4 times a year, I was inexplicably 'seized' for a day or so and I found myself back in that precarious state.
But each time, I was reminded to forgive myself, the same as before, and to put it behind me.  And that continued to help.  I thought to myself that I could live with the remnant.  I still puzzled over how this had happened to me, but I was happy to have distanced myself from the worst of it.
I continued like that for several years....a small struggle now, but manageable. 

Then another piece of the puzzle came to me...

Anatomy of an eating disorder 

The year I turned 50, I had a dream experience that put a final end to a decades-long eating addiction...

In this dream I was visited by a figure from the past... someone that I had rarely thought of in 35 years.

The visitor was my first boss, a fearsome Catholic nun.   She was also the first person in my life to die.

Let’s start at the beginning  of this story…

When I was 16,  I found a job at a local Catholic hospital.  I worked in the kitchen, serving food

and delivering it to the patients.

My boss was, as I said, a fearsome  Catholic nun.  She was always in a bitter,sour, angry mood.  
The feeling around her was almost evil...but I wouldn't allow such an idea...
After all,  she was a nun...a holy person...and I was supposed to be a good Catholic girl. 
I couldn't allow such a wicked thought, for heaven's sake!

She was also the first morbidly obese person I had ever seen.

She was literally bigger around than she was tall. 

On the pretense of tasting the food before it was served, she was always sampling each dish.

She was constantly eating.   I never saw her without a plate of food in her chubby hands.

When I arrived for work each day she was seated in her customary corner eating and glaring at us kids. 

When I left for the day she was still there…still eating. 

She seemed to stare at me, in particular, the only girl on staff.
We stayed out of her way as best we could, though we found her strangely fascinating.

One day I came to work and sister was gone.  She had died suddenly. 
We were a bit shaken.  She was not very old.

But life went on after her passing.  We all felt a sense of relief as her angry presence dissipated.
 

Then, suddenly, things took an ugly turn for me. 
Just 72 hrs after her passing, I woke up with a full blown eating disorder. 
Literally....It happened in my sleep.

From that morning on, ALL I could think about was food.  My mind was completely invaded. 
It was as if I had been taken over by something horrible and unyielding.  
Suddenly, I found that I couldn't concentrate on my studies, my job, friends and family. 

Only food.    It had such an overpowering quality that everything else was blocked from my mind.

I fought the compulsion in every way I could think of, but I could never win.

This was 1967, long before anyone spoke of such things. 
I felt sure that I was the only one in the world experiencing this.

It was a terrifying experience and it impacted my life in many ways... 
For example...relationships were out of the question unless they allowed for a lot of secret time.
I found that I had to have a stash of food with me at all times.  I was frantic.
I acted like a starving person. 
This secretive aspect made no sense in the context of my life, but that knowledge did not make
any difference.  There seemed to be no way to reason my way out of this!
I was afraid to be around people for fear they would discover my problem.

I would eat with friends, only to go home, purge and eat again.  The vicious cycle escalated.
Nothing made sense anymore.

What made this even stranger was that prior to this, I was always thin, as was everyone in my family.  
I didn't have a lot of time for food...I was active in my studies, volunteer work, physical activities. 
Food was just a necessary interruption to keep me going. 
I even had to go on a diet now and then in an effort to GAIN weight.
So this state of affairs was incomprehensible to me!

Eating became more frenzied as I lost ground.  I would resist with all my strength, but my will
seemed to be disabled.  This was not like me...but there was little I could do about it.
In one terrifying moment, I remember my tongue writhing uncontrollably in my mouth as I tried
to resist the compulsion.

I felt possessed.  But no one believed in such things anymore. 

There was no place to turn for help.   No books, no people, no support groups. 
It was a solitary and bitterly cruel and confusing experience.

Years were ‘lost’ to eating.  Thousands of dollars spent on binges. 
No amount of chiding myself helped. 

I wracked my brain for years wondering what could have triggered this. 
There were many possibilities…going hungry for a time as a child, molestation attempts growing up, extreme anxiety in an unhappy, stressed family...many of the markers that affect all of us who struggle with such things.

They all made sense…but none of them felt like a ‘fit’. 

More importantly, none of that information and reasoning effected any change in my behavior.
Even though those things might have been contributing factors, the information just seemed to tangle things up further. It seemed to dig the hole deeper until it became a pit from which I would never emerge.

My life was soon to become completely organized around eating, dieting and exercise….

Sound familiar?

Now this is not to say that you are 'possessed'  or troubled in the sense that I was, but DO read on... 

There are many reasons for interference and many degrees of struggle. 
This is one piece of the puzzle....
  
People can be interfered with on a family level, a cultural level (work, church, the culture at large), emotional levels and others.  Each story is unique. 

But the clues are what is important here...

Hello again...

If you are new to this blog, I invite you to start with the earlier posts. 
This information builds upon the earlier material . 
Treat yourself with kindness and acceptance...
Read  them slowly...take some notes as memories surface....

Welcome to eating disorders untangled...

The Stomach...Your Emotional Brain

Trusting Your Gut

Compassion for Ourselves

Compassion for Ourselves

Because we are so often in conflict with our knowing, our gut instincts, our built-in guidance system,
we experience distress signals from our stomach region. It is our body's way of signaling us that
something is amiss.  Nature will turn up the volume over time so that we can hear it over all the
commotion of life.  If only we had been taught to read those distress signals for what they are...
Instead we are taught to wage war against the symptoms. 

Now, consider this....from the time we were born, our parents would respond to our disturbances
by putting something in our mouths...often a pacifier or bottle.  In some other cultures a child is soothed by massage...touch.  But, in our culture, it is usually a bottle...usually administered
to stop crying.   So there is a double message there.  'Let's 'bottle it up!'

Is it any wonder that we instinctively respond to upset by stuffing something in our mouths to stop
our uncomfortable emotions? 

Let's forgive ourselves for this response...it is natural.  It's all we have ever known... 

If our parents were impatient with us, we also imbibed that emotion.  We then go on to treat ourselves with impatience, frustration, anger, upset.

Let's separate ourselves a little from those early influences.  There was a glitch in your parenting.

We can reverse that sort of thing.  How?  By backing up a little and re-parenting ourselves...
making some better history.  Taking the time to hear our upsets and respond to them with a little
gentleness and compassion.   It is OK to cry a little...or a lot.  There are tears from way back that
simply need to be cried...released.    Treat yourself as you would a tender child.  As you do that
sort of thing, there is a steady lessening of internal pressure, unhappiness, fear and pain. 
You begin to normalize in many ways..  It will take a lot of compassion and some time...
Remember...you are deserving of and worth that time.  You need it....  Life has been difficult...

Trusting Your Gut

Throughout our lives,we have been taught to manage everything by way of the brain in our head...
never knowing that we had another brain...the one in our stomachs!
A very capable and smart brain at that!
If you think about various events in your life, you can recall many times that you wrestled
with yourself over choices that needed to be made. 
Let's take an example...Let's say that a salesman shows up at the door. You go to answer and the family dog trots along at your side. You find a smiling face and you smile back , but your dog begins to growl and snarl at the stranger. 
Do you listen to your dog ?   Probably not ...Instead you override your dog's warning and continue on.  The same thing might happen with a child who reacts negatively to one person's touch and not anothers. 
Have you noticed that kids and animals tend to be right about their instincts? 
Have you noticed that when we ignore the warning signs, that we get ourselves into all sorts of hurtful
situations?   
Don't feel bad...it happens to all of us. 
We were taught from an early age to 'be nice', to act in certain ways, and to ignore our feelings and our gut instincts. 

We were raised 'upside-down', as I like to say.

Some years ago, I had a striking realization that EVERYTHING that had ever gone wrong in my life could be traced back to one thing...my failure to trust myself....to trust my gut.   That's right!  

It takes a while to learn all this, so again, do not feel bad. 
We just have a lot of unlearning to do, especially if you are a woman.

As we look back on life,  we think to ourselves: "I should have known there was
something wrong with that man...or that friend...or that business deal!"  
"Why am I always such a push-over?"  "Why do I keep making these mistakes?

Tomorrow's topic:  How this relates to eating disorders.