Just Be a Foodie
Me enjoying a sunset glass of wine at the River Seine
In no time, I learned to fit in, and before long, I can't remember when was the last time I smelled my food before eating. Years passed, it wasn't only the smelling that I was asked not to do, it was how to sit, how to smile, how much to talk and what to talk about.
And then you hear people telling you - "Be Yourself." I can't remember the self I used to know anymore because I followed the herd long enough, I've "baaa'd and meee'd" my way through life. I started eating grass like everyone else. I've forgotten how much I loved Mangosteen and Aratiles (Muntingia).
"How can I be myself if I don't know myself?"
I had grandiose ideas about who we truly are (I still do!); but they either belonged to the future or the past, but hardly ever the present.
Existentially, the teenagers speak with great confidence when they insist "But this who I am! Take it or leave it." They're far more intuitive than I then thought they were (or I was).
Children, who are always wise with their entire beings, they just Be themselves. They love, they hurt, they have fun or they tire themselves from being all of them in a day! Moment to moment, jumping from one excitement to another.
My daughter who is bored of having her photo taken
And here we are, adults, pound on their heads telling them:
"Think of the future, think of the future! What do you want to become?!" Hardly anyone cares what anyone wants to become now, not later, not even tomorrow, but FAR into the future.
My journey has come full circle, oh thank heavens finally! Yup, about four decades after.
Slowly and patiently, I found peace in the perfection of every moment; it is something that I am still in the process of recalibration, but it has started some "time" ago.
Embrace all and resist nothing, even resistance itself is embraced.
Truly enjoyed this lovely Egyptian breakfast in Giza
All these thoughts are lovely and well, but then, the utilitarian that I am, asks:
Now what?
Books and videos out there can give us volumes of philosophising about things, but hardly anyone can tell us how to do it. There are infinite ways, but the most tangible for me, is what I have already mentioned in some of my previous posts. This resonates more, perhaps to those, like me, who are recalibrating back into Beingness. Unlearning and re-learning, we might say.
I will use food as an example, simply because I love eating!
My daughter's sushi plate in Stockholm
Here it is:
Ways of Being (Body, Mind and Heart)
The Way of the Body
1) Be aware of your physical sensations. We cannot embrace, accept and express parts of ourselves we which are not aware of.
I find it challenging to always be aware of, say, the texture of the food in my mouth, every taste that explodes or gently seeps in my tongue. It is easy, out of habit, to at times, ignore observation of the details (texture, colours, smell) of the food (and its presentation) that I am eating, especially when I'm busy glancing at my phone, taking photos of my food (I still do, it's an artful experience for me that I embrace with excitement) or if I'm busy thinking about something else. Though I've always smelled my food before eating since I was a young girl, perhaps out of social conventions, that practice slowly dissipated over time, and my level of enjoyment of food decreased.
It seems like there are now too many things to pay attention to, and it's overwhelming. In short, I stick with one practice that seem to yield a shortcut. I begin with relaxing into the awareness of feeling my breath (simple, doable, but requires practice to incorporate it into a habit); feeling it as it goes in and out of my nose, moving into watching whether it expands in my chest or my belly, checking if I'm breathing deeply and with ease and/or whether the air inside my body feels cold or warm. When I enter into that experience, I seem to be able to automatically, get to be more aware of the texture, colour, smell and taste of my food, including how the plate highlights or matches the colours of the ingredients and how the light hits which side of the plate; above all, how these all make me feel.
This is the same when we are having a conversation with a partner. Our communication gets convoluted when we are not aware of our and our partner's body language, facial expressions, tone, pauses etc. We find it hard to intuit into the energies or feelings that they are (or we are) projecting, when we are not aware of the details and the whole picture.
Most importantly, our health, psychological and physical, suffers when we do not have the skills to be aware of how our bodies feel moment to moment. It translates into the awareness of our feelings and thoughts. We are hardly there for ourselves, when we cannot hear, see or feel what we are experiencing everyday. We often put band-aids on our feelings (drinking, smoking, stress-eating, burying ourselves in our work, projecting it to others, picking up fights, or any sort of distractions - that would be watching films for me or running into the gym!) Anything, but to be aware of what's going on inside us or the thoughts and feelings that are eating us alive.
When we can physically and emotionally experience us, we can express us - more authentically.
3) The Way of the Mind
We set the mind free. We are under the illusion that we can control it. Well, we can empower it or weaken it, but we can't trap it in the can of our bodies and put a lid on it. And by the way, contrary to popular New Age spiritual beliefs, the mind is not an enemy. Dare we call them monkeys! (with al due respect to monkeys) It is a beautiful part of us. It is a powerful creative force, pretty much like fire, it can cook our food or burn the house down!
Like a child, it rebels when we try to force it into submission. And like a child, it blossoms, when it is heard, given the space to speak and allowed its expression with acceptance and without judgment. But because it has been ignored, contained and punished over the years, it's become crippled, limited, confused and upset.
But what happens when we accept, allow and embrace? Let's go back to food. When we have a thousand thoughts running about what we just ate, the server or the restaurant itself - we simply allow our thoughts run! Yes, run Forest, run!
No mind. No Self. We are the mind - and more!
Keep breathing, it'll eventually exhaust itself. It's like a toddler high in sugar, can you force it to sleep? All the best to you! It will exhaust you instead.
So what, if you are plotting to take revenge on the restaurant owner for serving you such food. Plot away! You will be plotting in your dreams tonight and won't get a deep restful sleep, if you don't. If you don't do it now, in return, you'll wake up exhausted the next day, and you could ruin other people's day too with your grumpy mood at the office. Isn't it better to harmlessly have your hyper plot plans for dessert instead? Done. You choose then, whether you respond to it or not, right? Most likely, when you have allowed yourself to feel and let your thoughts run about, by the time you want to execute, you're too present or exhausted, that you are likely to simply want to go home and enjoy the rest of the evening.
The Way of the Heart
3) Love the experience unconditionally.
Let's still stick with food, shall we? It's something that is an inescapable part of our daily reality, something that we obviously all have in common. And it's quite "simple". This may be a bit longer as this is the heart of the matter.
Now that we are aware whether our food is too salty, poorly presented or balanced in flavour with great texture for us - then do an emotional check-in. All these interlap in no time at all.
Ask yourself, "How do I feel about what I'm eating?" or just be aware of your feelings and judgments/ thoughts about your experience of your food, and judge not your judgments about it. Just let it be. Judge it all you want if you wish, but without punishing or praising yourself for it.
Did you feel upset? Really pleased? Or just "iffy" about it and don't really care. Now breathe into that feeling and let it sit in your body.
Now comes the loving part, bring your awareness to your heart area (center of your chest/midrib); you don't really want to be touching your chest in public places although we do that when we feel something intense almost automatically. Breathe a little more slowly and deeply; and tell yourself or your emotions (quietly in your head now) that "It's okay. I am here for you to feel you." (or you may just give a sense of those words to yourself. Sometimes it feels awkward and fake when we are not used to doing this internal self-talk). So, just be okay with the feeling. Accept it, don't push it away. Feel it, really allow yourself to feel it.
The experience may be of disgust, disappointment, pleasure or relief or whatever it is. Just allow and give yourself the permission to dive into that feeling and keep breathing to give energy the momentum to disperse in our body, and transmute itself (yes, it escalates first and then gets transmuted when we give it our awareness and breathe through the experience of it).
In this way, we embrace our experience of physical sensations/experience and emotional responses to, say, our food. I'm not saying we don't ask the restaurant to change our food when it is uncooked or something like that - doing something about it, is a different one altogether. We are free to inform them that it took the food too long to come, yet still, embrace our feelings with love of having to wait long for it. Then we are still loving ourselves, by listening to our feelings and acknowledging it.
So being ourself here is not resisting or manipulating our feelings. When we are upset about our food, we allow ourself to be upset about our food; when we are pleased, we do the same.
We do not think our way out of how we feel. We don't cover our feelings by rationalising that complaining or not being grateful about food, is wrong. We may say, "but people are starving out there in the world, at least I could be grateful that I still have this undercooked, small serving, poorly presented, extra spicy food that took too long to come when I am already starving! Arghhhh!" We are fooling ourselves, aren't we? If you feel grateful, you're grateful, but there's no need to force it, that's just lying to ourselves, isn't it?
Just be okay with being not okay about it. Sort of, let's agree to disagree for now. Peace brother!
We are our bodies, hearts and minds (and more!).
One is not more important than the other. It's a holy trinity of wholeness. But if like me, you are unlearning and re-learning to remember (we all already got this right, when we were kids, you see), you can start with the body or with any one really. Whether we like it or not, it will affect the other anyway.
All I'm saying, is that we are fine as we are. We really are. What's to hate about just being who we are, changing, growing, moment to moment?
Nothing.
So we might as well, enjoy the company of our own thoughts and feelings.
So cheers! Thank you for taking the time to read this and I hope you enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed writing this.
All my love,
Mataji
Stopped by for some masala chai after a lone sunrise walk here in Bangalore
