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You are either pulled by passion or pushed by pain. Right now you are probably being pushed by your pain. You are seeking to escape your symptoms, weight, fatigue etc. If escaping problems is your main motivation, what happens when the problem is gone? What will motivate you after you have lost weight? Most people think "Oh, I'll never go back to being overweight again." However most people do go back. Seemingly against their wills, and with deep regret. But they do not understand why. It is because their main source of motivation is pain and regret. Without suffering their actions succumb again to their life long habits of poor living. They have not developed a strong daily practice of being inspired into right action by good desire. Within their busy lives they have not developed a strong daily practice that reconnects them with what they passionately love. Without this regular communion with your good desires you are absolutely doomed to pain.
Your first goal is to clarify what you love most, above all else. This exercise is your foundational practice. Remembering what you love most is an act you repeat daily, hourly, moment by moment. Love is passionate desire and desire is the power that causes action. Action produces results, real results like cancer or longevity; results that are bitter with regret or sweet with gratitude. Therefore, choose well what you want and want it with passion. Make wanting/loving your greatest practice.
Through mindless habit you have come to desire what harms you. You must now consciously and deliberately expel these habits by the power of knowing what you genuinely love. You are literally infected with sick wants; possessed by "evil" demons of desire. The only thing that expels them is stronger, more pure desires. And these desires cannot be faked, because you will be tested. Only what is really true for you will endure. Your healing work is to distinguish those desires you truly desire from those that have gradually taken up residence in you through thoughtless habit.
Distinguish what you love from what you crave. I find it helpful to ask myself "Would I wish this habit for my children?" If not, why keep it for yourself? Realize how deeply and genuinely you love Health and everything that produces it: wholesome foods, exercise, rest, Self-reflection etc. What you truly love is eternal. It is woven into your Nature. You will always love it. You cannot not love it even though you may have forgotten it. And when you lose it, you feel great sorrow.
Feel the difference between this love and the cravings you may have for sweets, TV, small talk etc. Craving is temporary. A curse actually. It is something foreign that has been added onto you. It cannot endure. It requires special and unnatural effort to sustain. When craving leaves you will feel wonderfully free again. You will unmistakeably recognize this freedom to be your Natural state.
Possibly you have never even experienced this Natural state of Health and the Natural ways of living that sustain Health. This way of living is almost non-existent in our modern culture. Perhaps you did used to live better and have wandered from these precious ways. In either case you are fortunate to have found this reminder to you. Your suffering has caused you to seek an answer. The answer begins with the questions: What do you really, really want? What do you love? What are you passionate about? Think about, ponder, these simple questions regularly until you feel the spark of desire within you. Then continue to fan this spark until it grows into a burning fire that consumes your weaker "sick" desires.
We begin "The Yoga of Eating" program with this practice and we will end with this practice. This one Self-reflective practice is the central one that will free you from your "illness" and then continue to inspire you to new and ever better action. Your good actions will unfailingly reward you with endlessly
new experiences of Health and happiness.
Charley Cropley, N.D.
Naturopathic Physician
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