Archive for April, 2010

Avarice

Seeds XII, 18

Seed: Avarice

These next several weeks of Seeds are based on a mystical interpretation of the seven deadly sins of Catholic fame. Let us consider them upgraded …

Avarice—another old-fashioned word. The traditional meaning of avarice is the vice of excessive greed. Greed, as seen by the church, is applied to a very excessive or rapacious desire and pursuit of wealth, status, and power. The etymology of the word is from Latin roots meaning cupidity, or eagerly desiring.

Because there are seven of these spiritual warnings, I couldn’t help but think of the seven chakras. I think avarice corresponds to the seventh chakra, that of issues around connection to the Divine. This energy center deals with your Divine Spark, the perfect self of you.

What really causes excessive greed? Once again, fear, fear that we will never be content. The feeling of contentment seems elusive often. What does it take really to feel content? Acceptance of what is.

Many years ago, I had a Yentl opportunity to ask a magical rabbi one question. I decided in the elevator on the way up to see the man what to ask. “What, Rabbi, does manna mean?” His eyes twinkled at me from behind his bifocals. “A good question, Yentl,” he said. “Manna? Manna means what is.” Contentment arises from accepting what is all the while knowing that what is can change as we change ourselves.

Let us upgrade avarice to contentment with what is in life, fuller experience, greater fulfillment, more Spirit.

Contentment in life is a virtue.

Be passion,

Susan Corso

Dr. Susan Corso

Seeds are remarkable gifts. Sown in consciousness, they bring you to the most important part of your being—your Divine Spark.

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Coming Home (and Out) to Peace

I have been a reader of Utne Reader for many, many years. It always makes me appreciate the alternative press.

In the April issue, there was a remarkable article by Jonathan Odell called Coming Home: A gay Christian speaks to fundamentalists. Read it and weep. Mr. Odell’s article was originally published in Commonweal.

So, to cut to the chase. Mr. Odell is a Christian. Mr. Odell is also gay. Mr. Odell had to remove himself from Christianity as he knew it in order to be who he is. Then came the phone call from “an administrator at a Midwestern seminary with a reputation for its take-no-prisoners conservative theology.”

Mr. Odell breathes deeply. He knows what is coming. “We want you to take the pro side on homosexuality.”

He writes, “Yippee, I thought, I get to argue for Satan.”

Mr. Odell waffles. He doesn’t want to go. He does want to go. He has an agenda. He lets his agenda go. Finally, a poignant letter from a gay Christian at that very seminary makes the decision for him. He has to go.

A participant in a workshop of his says, basically, just go and tell your story. And let them tell theirs.

He starts with a terrible blurt (read the article, I won’t give it away.) Then he gets to the deeper truth, “I’m here because, whether I like it or not, you are iin my life and I need to somehow make peace with that part of my life.”

Peace. Did you see that? Peace is the ghost that haunts everything we reject in ourselves and in our world. And those things will not let us go until we let them bless us.

Mr. Odell writes, “Then I told them that peace is the last word I would use to describe such forums.” Oh that makes me sad. And I’m sure the man was absolutely right. Peace? There?

The rest of the story is breath-taking. He comes home to himself in the face of hostility. Go find Utne or go online and read his remarkable story about story and its power to heal.

Jonathan Odell is a hero to me. In the face of likely blatant rejection, he stood as who he is because he knew he needed peace. I can think of no better motivator.

For spiritual nourishment, visit Dr. Susan Corso’s website and blog, Seeds for Sanctuary. Follow her on Twitter @PeaceCorso and Friend her on Facebook. And discover your own Inner Peace at, To Me Peace Is … What is Peace to You?

Geneen Roth’s Women Food and God

Geneen Roth is a conscious foodie and I’ve admired her work for many years.

Actually, it’s because of Geneen that I realized in my mid-twenties that I was allowing three numbers in a small metal box to tell me how to feel about myself every day. That was the day I threw my scale out the eleventh-story window of my New York City apartment. [Full disclosure: into an alley.]

It’s also to Geneen’s credit that I can eat just a few Oreos and leave the rest for later, but that’s another story. It’s been years since I read a book by Geneen Roth. Enter Women Food and God. C’est magnifique!

Geneen Roth has done her homework from the beginning and over the years. This brilliant book supplies hope for anyone and everyone who has ever had any sort of issue with food. Enter all North American females. This way, please.

Sit down at a table. Look at your meal. Appreciate it. Appreciate those who grew it. Appreciate yourself for choosing it. Be conscious. Be conscious. Be conscious. Interestingly, the word conscious means with knowledge.

Are you hungry?

Stunned silence. Stunned into silence within, even. I had not been hungry in 25 years when I first heard that question. No idea, I thought. Not even a clue. What’s hungry? Be conscious.

The weight game is a devastating one. “Failure is built in to [it.]” Geneen’s right. We who play it “fit in by hating” ourselves. Dang. Right again.

Food , and our relationship to it, can be a spiritual path. All spiritual paths lead—ideally—to being more conscious. All paths lead to Rome—uh, God. Why not food? Geneen is doing her blessed best to get us into the moment. Now. With the food on our plates. Here. Present. Accounted for. Not in story, but in the moment.

Have you ever sat down to eat as a meditation? It works. “It’s not life in the present moment that is intolerable; the pain we are avoiding has already happened. We are living in reverse.”

Dear ones, it’s our stories about our pain that keep us there. Having been a therapist for 28 years, I’ve learned that people tell their stories until they themselves hear the learning in them. Then, those stories are dropped. Geneen quotes Stephen Levine, a Buddhist teacher, “Hell is wanting to be somewhere different from where you are.” Amen.

A major part of the difficulty here is that we who struggle with weight have a fixation with fixing. We are broken, we say, and we need to be fixed. Says Geneen, “It’s not about the weight and it’s not not about the weight.” I didn’t even have to read that sentence twice. Got it in one, and she is so right.

“Brokenness is learned,” writes Geneen. Is it ever! What’s “hidden in plain sight” is our wholeness, and we need to be willing to see it. When we are “yoked to disordered eating,” we are arguing for our brokenness. Says Geneen, “You can’t be stuck if you’re not trying to get anywhere.”

The second half of her book is practices anyone can use to be conscious about food.

“All any feeling wants is to be welcomed with tenderness.”

“The medicine for the pain is in the pain.”

“Show up where you already are.”

“The problem isn’t that we have bodies; the problem is that we’re not living in them.”

“—God has been here. She is you.”

And then, TADA! The last page. Seven guidelines for eating. So simple. So clear. So kind. So real. So tender. So now. They are worth the price of the book.

If you are a woman, or a person, who struggles with weight, or is waiting for your life to begin once you lose the weight, hie thyself to the bookstore. Geneen Roth’s book, Women Food and God, will set you firmly on the road to freedom.

Geneen, thanks for staying with it.

For spiritual nourishment, visit Dr. Susan Corso’s website and blog, Seeds for Sanctuary. Follow her on Twitter @PeaceCorso and Friend her on Facebook. And discover your own Inner Peace at, To Me Peace Is … What is Peace to You?