I'm not broken.

Ellie and Marley
Not broken. Perfectly content
Pain pushes until vision pulls. Michael Beckwith

In Women, Food and God, author, speaker and coach Geneen Roth serves up a titilatting tale of getting free of food addictions and bad behaviours that keep women stuck in fear and hopelessness.

One of the tools Roth offers up is a process she calls, Inquiry -- the art of challenging the assumptions about ourselves and our experiences we presume to be true, tell ourselves are true because we believe they are real. In the inquiry process you allow yourself to feel whatever is there. Anger. Hatred. Terror. And while you're feeling the emotions, not become them but simply to be the observer; curious, attentive, open and loving -- and non-judgemental too!

Last night we had a special meditation session -- a sort of mid-summer's night eve treat of the collective kind where we gathered together to meditate and then to enjoy each other's company over sushi and tea.

My mind was incredibly busy. A real hornet's nest of thoughts buzzing about, in and out and under and over each other.

Getting quiet was tough.

I'd arrived at the meditation centre after a conversation that had left me disquieted. I carried my disquiet with me. I sat down in the circle and my disquiet was there. I was edgie. Judgmental. Sharp.

We settled into grounding and I kept going back to something I'd said to one of my circle partners just before the session began. It bugged me that I'd acted out the worst of the '3 Cs'. Critical. Complaining. Condemning. It bugged me that I was judging myself so harshly and wouldn't let it go.

What's with that?

I kept sinking into my disquiet. Letting it flow.

I hate being judged and so I judge. It's classic transference. What I tell myself becomes what I believe to be true. When I tell myself I have been 'judged, criticized, discounted, dismissed' -- I not so graciously pass it along.

I'm out of esteem when I'm acting out.

I breathed.

Grounded through my feet into the bedrock beneath me. Let the static electricity flow out into the earth below.

Release.

Let my feelings of disquiet go. They drifted out as I breathed. In. Out. Ebb. Flow. Love. In. Love. Out.

I become part of the continuous outpouring of Love that is my truth when I breathe deeply into the core of who I am and set myself free to be Me without owning my feelings, emotions, reactions, responses, judgements, criticisms, false beliefs and falsehoods.

My feelings are not me. They are not my truth.

"Imagine not being afraid of any feeling," writes Roth in Women, Food and God (p59). "Imagine knowing that nothing will destroy you. That you are beyond any feeling, any state. Better than. Vaster than. That there is no reason to use drugs because anything a drug would do pales in comparison to knowing who you are."

I am a radiant woman.

I am not afraid of feeling 'less than'. Not afraid of knowing I have behaved badly. Not afraid of my darkside. Nor my light.

I am not afraid.

The shape of my body obeys the shape of my beliefs about love, my value in this world, the possibilities of my life, the truth about who I am.

Breathe.

I am a radiant woman.

The world is for me. With me. Of me.

No one determines my worth. My worth is in the statement, I am. I am here. I am worthy. I have value simply through my presence on this planet called Earth.

We all do.

Not one of us needs to prove our worth.

We simply need to live up to our higher good letting go of those things that would have us believe the untruths we tell ourselves about who we are when we're not feeling like we belong or have our own unique place under the sun.

We belong. We each have a place under the sun. We are born perfect. We are perfect. Exactly as we are. In all our imperfect ways of being human. In all our perfect ways of being human. There is no perfect path to take this human journey. There is only the path I take. And right here, right now, is where I'm standing on the path of being Me.

I am not broken.

Life teaches us the meaning of broken. Brokenness is not an innate way of being. It is learned. Our task, our journey, our gift is to come home to the wholeness of who we are when we are not afraid of being, who we truly are. Magnificent beyond belief. Wondrous beyond our imaginings.

I'm ok.

So are you.

Nameste.