Sophie's Challenges

Magda wrote: ↑Mon Oct 16, 2023 8:44 am From the very beginning of the challenge I didn’t like the idea of being the Boss, the one who calls the shots.

I felt uncomfortable with it. I also felt that it was not a word that could lead me to accomplish the challenge, or anything else. And it has less to do with my experiences with different kind of superiors in my life, it is rather about my understanding of this term itself.

The boss is someone who knows better what to do and how to do, and that is why is given the right to call the shots. The boss have some important skills like analyzing, structuring, planning, managing. All of this is very helpful, but for me, at least at the context of this challenge, it had a smell of arrogance and abuse. Today I have discovered something in my way of eating that gave me the answer to the questions who I am going to be in relation to myself, the others and this challenge.

I have always been a slow eater, a slow doer of anything, which of course does not mean mindful and present. In this challenge I was permanently catching myself on being impatient, as if I was under the pressure of time, which was not always true. I felt like eating faster than I normally do. The more I was trying to slow down, the more impatient I became and, consequently, less present. Slowing down and being more patient was not the solution.

This morning at breakfast I decided to follow this impatient mode in me that was knocking to my door. And to my surprise it lead me to speed up my chewing! When I started to move my jaw faster, I immediately became much more present, mindful, curious and in control of what is happening in my mouth. I realised that before, being so slow in chewing, I had a mouth full of not entirely broken food mixed with saliva and the urge to swallow it. With the faster mode of chewing, I have in my mouth totally broken food with proper amount of saliva, that doesn’t provoke uncontrolled swallowing or uncomfortable urge to do it. There is no urge, which was the cause of my impatience and running away from being present.

It was the Boss in me, who had an idea that being present is somehow connected with slowing down, not being in a hurry. The Boss who maybe heard about something like that, learned this from someone, or got instructions from somewhere, someone.

The Boss turned out to be conditioned! The Boss have the Boss, and that Boss have the Boss, and somewhere at the top there is The Boss Of All Bossess. Il capo di tutti capi

The Boss in me wanted to dictate to my body what to do and was unable to follow the process, to listen to the signals of my body, that was trying to tell me: Hey Boss, I know how to do it, let me do it! The Boss in me is unable to lead me to the results I am going to have, because he (she) seems to be smarter than Life itself. If I am going to be vibrantly healthy and live to my full potential I need to follow the stream of life, which changes in every second and demands being totally present to be able to catch every signal of changing its direction. Only the Life itself can lead me somewhere.

Given that the boss in me comes from horizontal plane, is prone to be conditioned and abusive, and is forcing the body to act under a pressure I am looking for better word than the Boss. Looking for an inspiration I took a look at the book ‘Sitting in Fire’ of Arnold Mindell, who make a distinction between the Leader and the Elder. Here are some of the differences:

‘The leader seeks a majority, the elder stands for everyone.
The leader sees trouble and tries to stop it, the elder sees the troublemaker as a possible teacher.
The leader strives to be honest; the elder sees the truth in everything.
Leaders try to be better at their jobs; elders try to get others to become elders.
Leaders try to be wise; elders have no mind of their own. They follow the events of nature.
The leader knows; the elder learns.
The leader needs a strategy; the elder studies the moment.
The leader follows a plan; the elder honors a direction of a mysterious and unknown river.’

Yes, this is it! I am not sure about the word ‘Elder’ in the context of this challenge. I am asking for help in finding the term, which meaning, as it is presented in this quotation, could be easy to get for everybody. In Polish, my mother tongue, I am for the word that can be translated into English as ‘Sage’ or ‘Wise Man (Women?)’.

Jodie wrote: ↑Tue Oct 17, 2023 1:12 am I'm thinking again about the conversation FOR action. It seems like stopping in the middle of everything to eat, and to be present to chewing, tasting, breathing, listening, noticing all that there is in the chewing, is slowly showing me how to do it in other areas.

For example, in the same way I used to put off eating and then wolf down my food, I used to put off leaving for somewhere I needed to be and then exceeded the speed limit rushing to get there. Or put off doing something like catching up the business books until the last minute and then rushed through them to get to the end. How I do anything is how I do everything, even in this area.

So it seems to me that the action to take, at least the first action, that is powerful to forward the achievement of better health and becoming an expanding human being, is to continue with the Food Challenge, and with being present to chewing and all of the things that go with it. The second thing to do would be to 'ratchet in' that feeling of being present, to little by little start doing it in other areas, and start noticing when I am and am not being present.

The possibility of doing just this could be life-changing, when I consider that living in a hurry is killing me, and that there's no space to see where I can share and be not ONLY for me without becoming present, and I don't seem to be able to function effectively to make a living without becoming present, and on and on to every area of life...I can't say it better than Baheej did: 'I can’t overstate the value of having a practice that serves as the foundation for all of the growth that I would otherwise daydream about'. That's exactly how I see it.

The opportunity I can see is a life that I love and live powerfully, and expanding to where the light can pass through to others...it's amazing to think that chewing food can be a gateway to becoming what we were meant to be.

Jodie wrote: ↑Wed Oct 18, 2023 12:43 am I am finding something similar to what Trish found...that it's becoming comfortable to sit and listen during a conversation. I used to feel such an urge to jump in and add 2 cents, no matter what the subject was. Now even if I have a story or something that relates, I can sit quietly and determine that even though it relates, I don't need to jump in with it. It is actually more enjoyable NOT to in many cases. When I'm not being present I feel the 'jumpiness' (I don't know how else to word that), but that is becoming a signal that tells me I'm not present. I'm still amazed that something like this comes from practicing chewing.

I'm also finding that I have not been effective at sharing it. I've been mentioning doing this to several people, because so many people talk about health issues they're having or even that they like to find new challenging things to work on. I mention the health benefits that have been experienced by people, and how interesting it is to hear others' experiences with it, and how great you feel after you eat, but only one person has said 'I am going to do it!', and he wanted to do it by himself.

Looking at this as a project for expanding and becoming not only about me, and expanding my view to include everyone, I'm finding that I'm really wanting to share this, because it seems it would benefit anyone who even gave it a try, but I think I'm missing something in sharing it...I don't seem to be inspiring people, even though I find it inspiring. I know I have a default of 'I know and you don't so let me tell you', and I'm consciously sharing in what I think is a way that is NOT that, but I wonder if I'm still doing that.