I'm learning and struggling as I start and restart a post that runs away with me, and which I believe you would stop reading quickly. So I thought I would pause and share with you my dilemma.  It's the dilemma that faces all of us with a past or present eating disorder.  Maybe it's a human dilemma.  I hope you'll write and share your responses.

I thought I could go through Baltasar Gracian's 300 maxims, one by one with a brief commentary on how they relate to a person with an eating disorder.  The maxims are so short, sometimes only four words, that I find myself stunned at the depths to which they lead. One maxim can be too much for a blog post or even an article.  These things are meant to be meditated upon for long periods of time.

When you have an eating disorder you are accustomed to bouts of erupting passions and bewildering emotional pain.  That's part of living with bulimia or anorexia or binge eating or any combination of the three.  You reach slowly or in a rush or in horrible desperation for your eating disorder to get you through your experience.  You want relief from the eating disorder and from the situations that bring up these powerful emotions. And, you want that relief fast.

I understand that.  You want relief to come in fast so you don't have to use the eating disorder.  You don't want that terrible pain.  You need many sparks of support and healing experiences to awaken and clear your mind, not one big fire that is intolerable.

When you meditate on a profound wisdom statement you go at the right pace for you.  Your consciousness will not have it any other way.  When painful truths come through, they come through because you are ready for them.  Those revelations don't appear on a page or web screen - even if they are written there.  The revelations appear in your own mind.

Before you are ready to see them you will not see them.  Your eyes will pass over the words or you will be distracted and move to another activity. That's not just true for people with eating disorders.  That's human.

So, my eagerness to hop into this wisdom quickly shows my own lack of appreciation for the depths of the wisdom in these words and the patience and courage required to meditate on them.

My question to you is, what helps you the most in terms of gaining insight that influences your actions for for the better?  I think Gracian has brought me most humbly back to the AA slogan of "easy does it."