Food, chakras and 7 Logical Levels of Thinking
Last night, a small group of women gathered, talking… about food and its relationship to more of who we are than just a physical body.
To know what that might mean; and to get a sense of that experience at more than just the Environment level of the 7 Logical Levels, we absolutely must denominalize the notion of ‘food’ (see Fully Alive for background on denominalizing and the 7 Logical Levels of Thinking). That proved to be a tough one for everyone!
We are rigorously taught to believe that ‘food’ is real… just like we’re taught to believe that an organization is real… and yet, it is nothing more than a code word for the many other beliefs/values/attitudes/expectations/desires/wants/needs, etc. that are occurring at much higher orders of thought. If we can’t get past the notion of ‘food’ as real, we can’t ever get ‘unstuck’ for our relationship to and with it.
Last night, this small but merry band of women persisted – and succeeded! – in discovering what happens whe we come to acknowledge that ‘food’ is a code word for other things. And when we engage those other things, we begin to notice where the leverage is in our own lives.
We also concluded that, given this exploration of ‘food’ at multiple levels of thinking (with each level associated with a chakra – see my article Levels of Thinking and the Chakras), it would become a wise and useful idea to develop the approach of reaching for ‘food’ (i.e. an apple, steak or lemon pie, etc) and taking a moment to pause (Environment level event) and ask ourselves: what hunger am I feeding? For those people for whom ‘food’ is an issue, it is more likely than not that the hunger in question has nothing to do with nourishing the physical body! However, if we think ‘food’ is real, we’ll never get there….
As the evening passed, I shared with those present my awareness that I, personally, have been aware of the ‘issues’ around women and food since I was 8 years old – and I’m about to turn 58. That’s 50 years of witnessing and being part of this conversation about women, bodies and food – and seeing that it goes nowhere! All the things that were an issue when I was 8, still are for far too many women. It seems to me that we have to find a new way of having the conversation, don’t you think?
I now have almost 15 hours of recorded conversation on this topic. I can hardly wait to get to it and identify the most relevant and potent elements that can generalize to a larger collective and its struggles. There will be a new CD set from this material; and my belief is that it will profoundly shift what we pay attention to and, subsequently, the results we get.
This new CD, coupled with the big picture context that is laid out in Fully Alive: Awakening Health, Humor, Compassion and Truth will, I believe, offer more than hope for those whose lives are twisted by this issue, and will offer a pathway to living differently. Now THAT I can live with!
If this conversation is meaningful for you, stay tuned. Watch for the new CD’s – they’ll be mentioned here. If you have comments or questions, feel free to connect anytime.
Life is good!
