Marianne Williamson is an internationally acclaimed lecturer and the author of many bestselling books. For information on her projects, lectures, and events visit her website www.marianne.com. She is also featured as one of Spirituality & Practice's Living Spiritual Teachers.
In this ambitious work, Williamson presents 21 lessons that ensue from what she calls "conscious weight loss." Her "course" is designed for compulsive overeaters and those whose addiction to food has been self-destructive. What sets this tome apart from others on the same subject is Williamson's accent on a spiritual perspective to losing weight and becoming more healthy.
The author says that obesity is caused by the mind, especially fear which leads to bad eating habits and resistance to proper exercise. Love liberates us from enslavement to fear and comes to us when we get in touch with our own Divine truth and our own Divine identity. Williamson ends each chapter with a prayer. Here is the one of them:
Dear God,
Please free me
from false appetites
and take away my pain.
Take from me my compulsive self,
and show me who I am.
Dear God,
Please give me a new beginning.
Unchain my heart
so I might live
a freer life at last.
Amen
Williamson presents 21 spiritual steps for moving from dysfunctional eating to a healthy and wholesome relationship to food and your body. Among them are removing the wall we have built to separate ourselves from others, building an altar and thinking more about God, establishing a relationship with good food, consecrating our body, ritualizing the change in us by working with an Inspirer, committing to yourself, feeling your feelings, forgiving yourself and others, and birthing who you really are. The author concludes:
"Every moment you ate food in quality or quantity that was not nourishing, you were denying yourself self-care. But according to A Course in Miracles, the love you withheld from yourself in such a moment is held in trust for you until you're ready to receive it."
Those who are attuned to Spirit will want to consider this spiritual curriculum for weight loss.
