Body image or self-image, those kinds of thoughts? [replying to a member of the audience]
Well the way that the whole world was set up as we said, all time and space was set up, as kind of an
identity substitution.
It's like a mask is set up and the mask is very shaky.
No matter how anyone tries to convince themselves or anyone else that they're confident in
their body image, or
confident in their world,
or confident in the state of the world or whatever,
it's a shaky mask that has
very, very shaky underpinnings. Even the deeper you go down, when you start to
like
let the mask fall, and um,
Jesus says in the Course that it's like everyone is kind of like
making, almost like making a list,
counting all the pros and the good things in their life to offset these negative
feelings around many things.
The body, intelligence, and all kinds of different things, so like everyone makes a list of the pros to try to offset the cons.
And
the whole spiritual journey is getting down more and more to the point where
you have to start to see that the, pretty much the irrelevance of this, this mask.
You know regardless of how the mask is, or how the mask was built or whatever, you start to get down to some of those
underpinnings, and
realizing it takes a lot of mind energy to hold this mask up, to
hold this presentation to the world, in terms of a certain way. And
I touched on it briefly when we watched that movie,
"Butterfly Effect," about not trying to change the world. I was asking everybody, "Has anyone had any thoughts of losing weight?"
Which is kind of an overt example of trying to change the form, or gaining weight even.
If the mind is convinced the body is too thin, to gain weight, to lose weight, or whatever. Those are just all
tricks of the ego kind of like saying, "Well if I could just change this thing or that thing I know I would, it would,
be much better.
I would feel much better about myself if I weighed this much."
It's where people come up with concepts like ideal weight, what's your ideal weight, and
then what are you supposed to do, spend your time
watching calories and
dipping like an airplane that's flying, and flying off course, and constantly hoping to try to correct and hit that ideal.
And um,
it's really just, it seems like an endless pursuit,
you know to try to put energy and thought in that way. But the ego is a
genius at trying to keep the mind distracted
away from going in, and this can be a huge, huge distraction.
[member of audience makes a remark]: "It's that the guilt, you know, when it comes to food as well you know the guilt that comes with eating all the bad foods.
[audience continues]: For example, just a huge distraction and for putting on weight and yet therefore feeling bad again when the pants not fit, just a huge distraction."
[David continues]: Yep, yeah I was at the London conference and I was in the speakers' room, this blue room and uh
they'd bring us a meal, and then they'd bring us a tray of
teas and then cookies. And then my friend who was going to be a speaker,
apparently she's really watching, watching, watching, weight and calories because she
looked down, and I took a stack of three chocolate chip cookies,
as I often do. [audience erupts in laughter]
And she just looked, and she went, she looked at the tray,
and she said, "I'm gonna do it," she looked around at all the other speakers and she said,
"I don't ever eat chocolate chip cookies." Almost like that was on her "no-
no" eat list, and she said, "I'm gonna take it," she reached down and she took. They were only like this big, they were little chocolate chip cookies.
And she took one and she said, "I'm gonna have a chocolate chip cookie," almost like, I'm breaking
the pattern. So there had to be something underneath it,
but how the mind can get so rigid with itself down to
taking the cookie and eating it or not, you know based on
everything. Actually, Noel has, we were talking about it when we were in there, Noel has a whole philosophy
about how body weight has
absolutely,
positively, no connection to food intake
whatsoever. Then, what am I hungering for? I mean that was literally starting off with food, weight, and body
concept images, and then taking it, taking the dive down, down, down, deep into what is this thing that's unquenched.
You know, that I really am
deeply desiring and so it's beautiful. And some people do it with terminal illnesses,
or there's so many different ways
where you notice this sense of unfulfillment and a sense of a yearning and quest, and then you just
authentically and honestly start to question, "what is it
that I'm really after?"
and that takes you right into this journey.
member of audience asks]: "What do I really want?"