by Lee Green, Perth, Australia
Having worked in the hospitality industry for some 22 years I have seen many things and done many things that have made me who I am today. The choices I have made up until now have made me who I am right in this moment. I get to manage and run three cafes with an amazing team of people. They are everyday hard working people who get to show me many things that amaze, educate and make me wonder?
Hospitality has been sensationalised a lot in the last few years. Food has become a fashion in which people can immerse themselves, indulging is the new black so to speak. When did this all come about, and why are we content to over-indulge in expensive food and wine as if it were OK for our bodies, and YES, I have done this to myself in my past.
The many cooking books that are on the shelves enticing us to make their recipes are matched only by the many restaurants and cafes that abound, that are looking to serve us the ‘best’ food. A trend that I have noticed is in complete contradiction with what the ‘shopping’ public are able to afford and really want to spend. How does it all work? What drives us to feed so much, so often and without any thought on how it affects our daily living.
What would we do if our coffee were not available? Or the chocolate that we crave when things get a bit edgy is not there to fill the ‘gap’, settle us down and comfort us? The real question I am asking is “do we use food, coffee, alcohol, as a distraction from what is really playing out in our everyday lives?”.
How can this all work when illness and disease keep on getting worse? There is, in our everyday living, a lot of emotional hurt that we carry. We could ask ourselves, where is the responsibility of the individual in this?
It keeps coming back to that word, responsibility. It is fascinating really that when I started to feel the ramifications of the many coffees I would consume a day just to stay awake and function, it hurt physically as well as emotionally. I was doing this to me but why?
I kept looking and realised that the alcohol I was consuming was to keep me going after the day at work, a day that was empty when it could have been so full. The recreational drugs and excessive alcohol was an accepted part of the industry when I was growing up, and working in the high end of Sydney this was still very much the case.
Looking back and reviewing that time in my life I can see how desperately alone I was, clutching for any number of stimulants to stop me feeling the pain. The pain of missing me, in truth, of not ever knowing who I was. Where was my responsibility and who was guiding me through the never ending round of coffee, food, alcohol etc. I may have been on my own journey, but my peer group was living and breathing the same way I was. We called it fun and hi-jinx but we were all deeply aware of what we were doing to ourselves, and consequently those that we lived with, our friends and the customers and guests we served. Feels pretty average now, but no responsibility means at least for the moment, no consequences.
The crash for me was pretty hard and everything started un-ravelling. I was fortunate and found my inner resolve and started claiming that this was not the way that I wanted to live. I came across Serge Benhayon and the workshops that he runs through Universal Medicine and realised that I had a choice.
My body was not a thing that I had to drive, drown and crush, but was in fact the marker for where I was at. How I lived in every moment was represented in the very body that came with me everywhere. This was a revelation and is now an understanding that I live by. This revelation has given me the strength and power over my own choices to make fresh ones, ones that are self loving and that consider all of the people that I live with, work with and come into contact with everyday.
The Truth about Universal Medicine 
Building a relationship with our body is super important, to listen to and honour its many messages is a great start, ‘My body was not a thing that I had to drive, drown and crush, but was in fact the marker for where I was at.’
Taking responsibility for one aspect of life, as in what we eat and drink, calls for responsibility and self-care in other aspects of life.
For many, many people coming across Serge Benhayon has changed their lives because as you say, Lee, it seems suddenly everyone was offered a choice this simple choice can be life-changing or not the choice is always ours to make continuously so.
I worked in hospitality for 9 years, I would have said I loved food and was passionate about it. Lately I am starting to see more and more how the majority of what we eat is for distraction, either in the eating or fuel for other distractions, rather than supporting our bodies.
Agree Leigh, the majority of what we eat and drink is to numb and distract ourselves from what we are feeling deep inside.
I can relate to the drinking of coffee, alcohol and indulging on other foods, and I used to sneak chocolate once a week, as it was my form of reward for working hard. And despite thinking I was living a healthy lifestyle, I was constantly constipated and exhausted. My days were governed by how good I felt, the weather, exercise and so forth.
Slowly, I was realising that these foods and drinks were no longer serving me, and since my stop moment in 2010, I started to let go of the these foods or addictions.
I’m loving being able to feel more of me and from time to time, I experience exhaustion, I know it has little to do with what I am eating or drinking.
I feel I have now taken more responsibility of my body and caring for it, just like the way a baby is cared for, with love and care.
What ever is affecting you as an individual, is it worth pondering whether you take the responsibility to do something about it, or continue to ignore it, or continue to expect someone else to fix it?
This is an amazing moment when we can allow a totally different angle to look at what has long been our everyday normal that we would have never questioned before. I like that. It makes me utterly uncomfortable but that is when I feel grown.
It is great that Lee and many people actually do this, ‘ when we can allow a totally different angle to look at what has long been our everyday normal that we would have never questioned before.’
The fact that whole industries dedicate themselves to a particular lifestyle, like hospitality staff being renowned for drug and alcohol use and burnout, shows how powerful reflection actually is. We are very influenced by what we see around us and yes, we always have a choice to say yes or no to what we see, however it’s also very supportive to have someone reflecting a loving and self caring way of living.
It is so supportive to have someone living a loving, nurturing and caring way of living, it inspires people to know that this is a choice that they too could make.
This is a timely reflection about the way we use, function and numb our body and how doing that is considered ‘funny’ and ‘normal’. I can relate of what you shared about drinking plenty of alcohol to be ‘alive’ at the end of the day, it was a distraction that kept me away of my sensitivity and left me more exhausted the day after but was what everyone else was doing so I accepted it. Till I started to feel very anxious I didn’t question that perhaps the way I was living was not working. I appreciate very much the day that I came accross Universal Medicine, for I could started to heal the pain for not being me, for trying to fit in, for hurting and numbing my body with substances that actually I couldn’t digest anymore…My relationship with food have changed, now is more loving and warm but also an ongoing process, without perfection and rules, but a learning to listen closer and deeper what my body needs in each moment. The more I heal my hurts, thanks to receive Sacred Esoteric Healing sessions, the less I need to escape with food and distractions, and the more vitality, real fun and joy I feel in my life.
How exhausting and crazy it is trying to live against our nature and try to compensate that with foods, drinks and things that overstimulates us in the same opposite direction
“How I lived in every moment was represented in the very body that came with me everywhere.” If we have questions as to why we are the way we are in any given moment our bodies are an amazing register of every step and choice made. It can be confronting but it’s the best straight to the truth place we can connect to when we are ready to change our lives. It’s far better to connect to the body than to live in the thoughts of the headspace.
Food is just one face of indulgence. A classic one but perhaps not the most important.
‘No responsibility means at least for the moment, no consequences’, but we all know in our hearts we have to eventually face the music of our past choices and resolve what we have accumulated.
Is it supply and demand or demand and supply? We feel we are at the mercy of marketing but actually marketing has studied how influenced we are and is simply taking advantage of that… so are we not equally responsible?
It is really very interesting this point that you raise about the expensiveness of dining out, and how there seems to be this pressure (mainly generated by the media) to consume costly meals.
We so know we’re abusing our bodies and yet we do it anyway, there’s a part of us that arrogantly thinks we can get away with until of course we don’t and then reality intrudes and shows us exactly where we are at. We take our body with us everyone and everything it’s been through and living life with this understanding brings a whole new level of honesty and responsibility, for the truth is the body shows us the truth of our lived ways always.
We can fight against responsibility, possibly in search for happiness and as a result live a life where we are miserable and living irresponsibly. When you consider this, responsibility does not seem a bad option at all.
Searching for happiness in irresponsibility…sounds like an oxymoron.
Yes the body is a friend we most often forget we have and too often treat as if it was our worst enemy.
What if we started treating our body as our most precious asset…’How I lived in every moment was represented in the very body that came with me everywhere.’
Our own self loving choices affect not only ourselves but those around us. People do notice and some ask what and why we do what we do. Listening to our body and honouring its messages is all about taking responsibility. Our overburdened health services are testament to how few of us do so.
Absolutely Sue, the choices we make have an impact on those around us as well as ourselves, ‘my own choices to make fresh ones, ones that are self loving and that consider all of the people that I live with, work with and come into contact with everyday.’
I have experimented when I am feeling super-sensitive, awkward, vulnerable, and basically in lots of pain so to speak that I do not want to feel, I have instead gone for a walk and / or not eaten. This supports me to move through the awkwardness and pain, and it does not take that long too. When I have eaten to numb it is more painful on a deeper level i.e. at least I feel more of me when I feel raw. When I have eaten to numb I’m not feeling me.
Just imagine what a different world we would live in – a much healthier one for a start – if as children we were raised to know that our body is our responsibility, as are the choices we make on a daily basis. If we care lovingly and respectfully for our body the more steadily it can support us. Conversely if we neglect our body our well-being and vitality will drop and the chances are we will get sick. It is really quite simple but some how we seem to make it complicated and our body suffers.
We tend to glorify the choices we have made because they got us to this point. Yet, that conceals the fact that the choices we have made have had consequences we carry in our body that when we get to the present point, could make our lives unnecessarily hard.
Lee, this is a great question and from my experience I would say yes. ‘The real question I am asking is “do we use food, coffee, alcohol, as a distraction from what is really playing out in our everyday lives?”. I know with myself if something has upset me then I am more likely to eat something straight after the upset, it never helps of course, but I have noticed this pattern many times.
With coffee, alcohol, drugs and indulging in foods so massively prevalent throughout all societies in one way or another – if these are used to escape the pain or tension that a person is feeling, then it’s safe to say that there is a lot of hurt in the world that isn’t being exposed or brought into the open air to clear and heal. Buried under “I love my coffee'” and other such phrases. Thank God for Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine for living and presenting how life can be when we start to address and heal those hurts.
Yes well said Leigh. Your logic makes sense to me because I am more aware of the consequences of my decisions on my body, but I can see that the body needs to be ready and willing to see the connection between pain / tension and coping mechanisms to change the movements in the body so there is an awareness of what is a coping mechanism and what is not.
I’d say it’s more the being in the body that needs to be willing to see the connection. Because the body is showing it very clearly but if it goes on for too long with the being ignoring the signs then it can feel nigh impossible to decipher what is being communicated.
We may be able to convince ourselves that by over eating and drinking that we are having “fun and hi-jinx” but if we were to ask our body if it was feeling the same, I am sure the answer will be ‘no way’. The truth is, we cannot go on treating our body in such a disregarding way and not expect physical consequences eventually.
As I become more aware of my livingness and that includes everything… every choice, the ‘good’, ‘bad’ and everything in between, it greatly enhances my awareness of the impact I have on everything around me. I often find myself pausing to reflect in one way or another the effect I am having on people and situations either as a confirmation/celebration or as a learning.
We are all connected, so how we live always has an effect on other people, ‘we were all deeply aware of what we were doing to ourselves, and consequently those that we lived with, our friends and the customers and guests we served.’