I thought I'd share a post I'd made on another journal. Philosophically and spiritually I believe that what we go through in our life is for the purpose of our learning and spiritual evolution. Since having this breakthrough and another related one, eating has been better for me... but it will take much practice to make second nature the changes I realize I want for myself. One author I know has people go into a meditation and ask an illness what it does for a person; what is its' purpose? What does it do to protect or to teach. I'd tried that and my meditation skills were not near honed enough to get me the answer but I believe I stumbled upon it anyway below:

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A while before I'd mentioned what appeared to be my impatience and lack of compassion regarding certain people. It surfaced again with a co-worker. She has a lot of fear and defensiveness, but after knowing her for a while, I just got impatient with her, I mean, why can't she just BE SENSIBLE??!!! I see her screwing up at work and it is just dumb how she's creating problems for herself. I don't get why people do that when the answer is so simple and easy.

Then I was reading a forum for eating disorders on curezone. Although I never went as far as having a full out eating disorder, I started down that road and my self esteem and self awareness made me pull back. It is annoying and obvious when someone responds who does not understand food issues. Some understand completely, others have actually responded to another gal telling her about gluttony and that she is just selfish. It was awful! They don't understand. Some just say, "just eat fruits & veggies" or "don't eat that junk" as if it is as simple as that. It is for some people and *yay* for them but still, I don't understand why I am where I am with food, why it has been so difficult for me to do something that in my very practical head makes such perfect sense! I don't know why but I have to be in a different place and I can't just BE another person and in another place until I evolve there, you know??? And then it hit me... I AM THAT PERSON INSISTING OTHERS BE MORE EVOLVED THAN THEY ARE.

I look at my coworker and insist that she be stronger, sensible, not give in weakly to her fears and issues. Just BE someone else, be better! Maybe it all makes sense to her but she has not evolved, has not developed whatever quality it takes to handle things better. I am so sensible and practical at most of my life that I've gotten impatient when I see people persistently messing up. Yet, I looked at this food thing and know that while it makes sense to be something else, I struggle and I don't understand why. But I have been that non-understanding person to insist that other people are more evolved on their issues than they are. From the food thing I know that either you understand from experience, or you suspend disbelief and have a lot of compassion for something that doesn't make sense to you. For those few people that can be understanding in spite of how illogical it is, I had a special gratitude for. But those people are less common. And I realized - that's who I have to be. I have to remember how incredibly difficult it can be, that I can't just "BE" someone else and somewhere else in my spiritual development, I must learn it and at times that is painstakingly slow. And that is the perspective I can use to transform my attitude towards people who haven't been able to make progress up to my standards! My standards are just where I'm at - not where they are, so they should not be standards. I should be able to use where I'm at as a source of wisdom while still retaining understanding that the path may be long and hard, just as mine has been with food issues. Even if it doesn't make sense, compassion helps people along they way as they struggle to figure things out for themselves.

This has been very important for me to understand. I wonder honestly if this particular issue was given to me purposely, to help me learn to suspend my insistence that people are better than they are at something and to allow them that illogical place where they have a weakness and where they need to grow; this gives me reference to relate. And now I need to learn to be more understanding and it needs to become habit. I tend to be less understanding with people I know because watching them cause themselves problems, I become impatient with their actions. This needs to change in order for me to be the therapist I want to be. And it all starts with this.