Quote:
Originally Posted by Locke
I was listening to an Alan Watts lecture via youtube today. He was an interesting man who married zen buddhism with Western philosophy. He was a spiritual teacher of much influence, especially in the place where I now live and work. He was talking about drugs and alcohol but he said something that I thought applied to IE. Unfortunately I have to paraphrase as I don't have the transcript:
"You don't consider someone to have control of automobile driving if they keep their car locked in the garage. You don't consider a person to be in control of their dancing if they don't dance, so why would you consider someone who abstains from (x,y,z) to be in control?"
His point was that if you abstain from those things which you have problems controlling then you aren't truly in control. If you can't keep chocolate in your house because you will binge on it if you do then you are still out of control. If you can't eat food at parties or have a small slice of birthday cake without having problems then you haven't got ahold of your problems with food. This sums up exactly what I've been feeling lately.
If you must meticulously control your external environment in order to do what you need to do then you haven't conquered your problem. You are focused externally rather than where the heart of the problem is- your psychological relationship with food.
I realize this may be controversial to many of the people on this board and I don't mean to offend. This just resonated with me personally as I have been in a constant battle to control myself for years. Your struggles are your own and mine are mine.
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Agreed that what he says is probably true.
But I am not living a philosopher's life and therefore find it necessary to pick my battles. I know this May sound defensive but really some of it is all part of surrender and making choices about where I am going to spend my non-renewable resources called time and energy.
I think there is also wisdom in acknowledging that every battle is not one that needs to be fought/conquered.
You and Allan have got me thinking!
best, Annik