eating and cooking are her meditations

i haven't started transcribing the session with my editor yet because i want to look at it from an open space of quiet, stillness and brightness. or else i'll be looking at the situation through the lens of i'll get lost, i can't hold it all. so, in the last several days, every meditation reveals, or shall i say illumine, one thing my editor says. today is this. suk wah, you write about food so beautifully, can you put it to a bigger use?

as i chew on this nugget i begin to see that this is where craftsmanship comes in. i really thought i had, through painting pictures of the heroine's relationship with food, that food is her spiritual path, eating and cooking are her spiritual practices. as my writing coach...and that happens to be hwubby...says, she is always hungry. hungry is a spot on descriptive for this character. she is consumed by hunger. the way she was raised and conditioned she understood this hunger as insatiable desires for food. it's how she soothes herself and calms the racing mind. so i thought i didn't have to spell it out in so many words to say that eating and cooking are her communions, her meditations. i say, i don't want to be preachy. editor says, you can do it in a sentence, even a phrase, very light-handed, but you must do it or else you lose the reader, nobody can endure pages after pages of eating lox and bagels and have no idea where you are going with it.

i see. i have to connect dots and i have to reduce.

soup of contentment, whole grains of enthusiasm. 48m + 49m

it never ceases to amaze me what triggers an yogic insight and where and how it comes about.

case in point. there i am watching world news with brian williams, and this soldier taking apart a road side bomb. when asked what does it take to do this he said, without missing a beat, absolute clarity.

aaah. there are so many things i thank my meditation practice for. clarity is one of them. clarity in the body. clarity in the mind.

o yes, and clarity in the senses. i love eating. hwubby says, suk wah gets all crazy around food. he's right. i remember people, events, places by food. when we get an invite for something, the first thought i have is, will there be food? and i don't mean cheese and crackers.

i digress. see, i have enough mental clarity to see the thought train is veering off course.

anyhow, hwubby says, you are much better now, you don't just eat everything in sight.

right now, this moment, as i am typing this, it comes to me that i know i don't need to reach out for that huge slice of cheesecake to pacify the seemingly bottomless hunger that's been hammering me for so long in my life.

it is clear to me what i thought was appetite for more food was actually the yearning for soul nutrients, soup of contentment, whole grains of enthusiasm and the main course of joy.

now my favorite food is meditation. the proof is in the pudding. i am so absorbed that i just sit right through the timer beeps. happy eating, suk wah.