Working With Weight Loss As A Koan

Though all koans seem to be completely unsolvable at first, initiates the world over have found an acceptable answer to the koan given to them from the Master Teacher (be that teacher in the outside world, or within). I, myself, have found a way through my own longstanding suffering over excess weight. Yet this koan cannot be solved without a process of inquiry.

This process is the ultimate spiritual intent behind the koan, and I believe may be the deepest reason we have a weight “problem” in the first place. The problem is there to get you into the process, and it will not let you go until you do. I like to think of it as the “God” within exasperating us long enough to get our attention.

Perhaps the process of actually quitting your job, leaving your family, and going to a mountainside monastery is the right one for you. Perhaps meditation or contemplation in a group is the process for you. Perhaps deep therapy is the process. Or maybe visualization is a process that will be of help. Whatever you choose to follow as a long-term process, in this blog I'll be introducing you to a variety of methods and approaches to begin answering the koan of excess weight. Yet the foundation underlying all of the processes is the idea that this koan is there for a good reason. Our over weight is not only our specific flavor in the human condition of needless suffering. It is suffering for a reason, and that reason is to bring you to your own ultimate enlightenment. Doesn't that idea, alone, provide a bit of relief from your suffering?

But perhaps you need to know a little more about what a koan is to be convinced.

Koans come from the sayings and doings of Zen sages and date back to fifth century. Koans, when correctly answered, reveal the enlightened or awakened state of the initiate. Sometimes the koan is purposefully used to confound the habit of thinking, or to shock the mind into awareness. Initiates concentrate on koans during meditation or contemplation, and teachers probe students about their koan practice in order to see if they are really on track.

Of course, this then begs the question—what is enlightenment? What is awakening? What are we after, anyway?

The answer to these questions can be found in volumes upon volumes of text, and I encourage you to seek out the answer if it causes true curiosity in you. But in a nutshell, we are after nothing. That is, no-thing. No-mind. Empty, open space, the great Void/Womb from which all understanding is birthed. And we are after that because to find it is to stop suffering. You may still have pain—life is painful, no doubt—but you can have pain without suffering. Think of this as having the pain of a debt, but being able to bypass the pain of adding an ever-compounding interest that serves only to deepen the debt, which creates more pain. I suggest you look into the works of Eckhart Tolle to learn more.

I’ll be talking more about the details of this awakening in the next posts, including addressing the ego—what it really is, how it works, and why it’s run amok in contemporary society. It is enlightening in and of itself, but when applied to weight loss, it becomes a huge clue to answering our own personal koan.

At this point, it is important for me to point out that I am not a Zen master, or even a Buddhist. I am someone who was a typical sufferer of life, who then had a sudden experience of spiritual awakening. The experience, which I will describe more in another post, then left me. Yet while the open, expansive state did eventually leave me, it also left me changed. The experience created a curiosity in me, which led me to explore a variety of paths that has led me to further awakening experiences. Today, with several experiences and a way of life that supports them, I am one who experiences far less suffering than most people I meet.

I am also a practicing contemporary shaman (more on that later, too) and a woman, and a seeker, and a lover, and a mother, and far more than that. My spirit name is “Walks In Two Worlds,” and this is a good description of how I live. It is not a matter of having one foot in two different worlds, but more having two layers of a transparency on an overhead projector. The image appears as one, but there are actually two worlds going on simultaneously.

I have heard the saying that the definition of a master is someone who is a little further down the road than you. If I am a little further down this road of awakening than you are (and only you can know that for sure), maybe I can help point the way. I trust you will know if that is so. If so, add this blog to your auto-email or just come back soon...