by Kate Maroney, Melbourne, Australia
For the first time in more years than I can remember, I feel like I am free to choose the life that I want.
Up until recently, I had a problem with sugar. It wouldn’t be exaggerating to say that I was addicted to sugar. I was preoccupied throughout the day with when and how I was next going to be able to eat chocolate, cake, biscuits etc. If I wasn’t thinking about when I would next be able to eat one of these things, I was preoccupied with how much I hated the cycle that I was in. Every time I ate something containing sugar I told myself it would be the last time. That this one would ‘fill up’ the emptiness that I sought relief from and I could move on… but each chocolate, biscuit or cake I ate only made me want more… and more… and more. I actually can’t remember when this cycle started, but it went on for at least 12 years.
I had tried many times before to ‘give up’ sugar but here is how I finally did it…
With some help from Serge Benhayon and some other amazing people I began to examine why sugar was such an integral part of getting through each day. I came to realise that I was using sugar to try and distract myself from feeling that I wasn’t ‘ok’. Up until that point, I hadn’t felt that I really was ‘ok’. It took some time for me to really feel that not only was I ‘ok’, but so much more than that again.
I discovered that the essence of me is truly amazing, but the way that I had been living for so many years (without caring for myself properly) did not confirm that the incredible light I felt inside me could truly be the essence of me. I remember someone summing it up beautifully for me…. they said that I was seeking sugar because I was ‘missing the sweetness of Kate’. Finding my own sweetness opened up the possibility to not need sugar to enjoy my day, because within me was all the sweetness and beauty I needed.
Once I started believing that I, as well as my body, was worth nurturing, I was able to start choosing to not eat a substance that was harming me. I also started supporting myself in other ways so that I was more readily able to say ‘no’ at the times when I most wanted sugar. I started looking at all the things that were leading to my being exhausted during the day, such as going to bed late and frenetically rushing from one thing to another throughout the day. I also started nurturing my body by doing things gently and with grace – rather than stumbling and clunking through daily tasks.
Now, I don’t even want sugar. People can be eating it all around me and I am not remotely moved to have any myself. My body generally vacillated between feeling buzzy and dull when I was eating sugar, whereas now my body feels a lightness and a stillness that I rarely experienced then.
A ‘bonus’ to my choice to give up sugar is that I now feel an incredible potential within myself. My problem with sugar was the most formidable thing in my life. There are so many basic things that I felt were out of my control because of the lack of control I perceived I had over my ability to not eat sugar. Since giving up sugar, I feel for the first time like I am piloting my own star ship (or plane if aviation is more your thing than space travel), and I really can choose for myself the life that I want to live.
The Truth about Serge Benhayon 
Kate I am so glad I read this blog. I totally understand this perpetual cycle we are in, thinking it will be the last time we consume that addiction. But there it appears again!…
So what you have described of feeling or being ‘ok’ is the game at play. So we are using something to make us feel something when it wasn’t an issue in the first play. Such a cunning game at play. It’s a no wonder we are constantly played with. Here sugar just happens to be the source, but there are many other things that hold us in this perpetual cycle.
I use sugar to reward myself because of this constant pressure and forces I am placed under. It is something I now need to place under the microscope. I am more than not being ok, and I don’t need an external stimulant to tell me otherwise.
And thus it is the appreciation of our true worth that is the sweetness of the Soul that we so seek.
There are numerous time I have tried to give certain things up, but have struggled to do so – and I have discovered that if we do not offer ourselves the space to build and then have the foundation of self love, then giving up becomes a simple yo yo game of giving up and then getting back onto the substance, then giving up again and so on and so forth. We cannot will ourselves to give something up, but we can will ourselves to gradually love ourselves more and more as this is really our foundation that we are simply returning to.
I totally agree, it is in the building of the foundation of self-love that is the key to developing any kind of fitness. Not only do we require fitness of the physical body, but there is a fitness, seldom spoken about and that is the Soul’s fitness. We are strong in spiritual fitness, it is the exact thing that attempts us to not connect to the Soul, which is always there, ready, willing and to serve till our next breath, but also the last and the next breath when birthed forth.
Kate, thank you for your sharing – there was one part in particular that made me reflect more deeply on myself and any addictions I have be this to have something sweet or even to overeat with a meal… This part I am talking about is the part where you shared about bringing to focus to confirming you in your essence. We really do not do enough of this in the day and if this is what builds our relationship with ourselves, with our essence and builds our self love and self care, should this not be our focus all day long? Self love is the antidote to bad habits as then they fall away by themselves.
To be free of an addiction is not about not having the substance any more, but it is about not even wanting the substance any more. And that freedom can only come when we replace this with something else – preferably a deep self love and self care rather than another bad habit.
Lovely that you can now feel how amazing you are, ‘I discovered that the essence of me is truly amazing, but the way that I had been living for so many years (without caring for myself properly) did not confirm that the incredible light I felt inside me could truly be the essence of me.’
It is important to understand with any addiction, what it is giving you, in this instance why sugar was such an integral part of getting through each day. Many people find they use sugar to distract themselves from what they are feeling.
Nurturing and caring for myself has completely changed my life, as it’s supported me to live connected to my essence. When a food is on offer I know is not good for me it’s easy to say no because there is nothing held greater than being myself.
I always love reading this, it’s a joy that is easily felt when a person is able to give up something harmful simply by making their return to living from their essence. “I discovered that the essence of me is truly amazing, but the way that I had been living for so many years (without caring for myself properly) did not confirm that the incredible light I felt inside me could truly be the essence of me.” This is inspiring me to look at areas of my life that may not be reflecting the love I could be supporting myself with.
Sugar and all the other healthy sweetness certainly are not Soul food, especially with the accessibility to our essences we have today.
I would have thought that being able to do whatever I wanted, eating and drinking however much I wanted, being carefree, knowing full well of its consequences, yet still doing whatever I THOUGHT I wanted – was freedom, but that is not true. We are made to think we are free when we are not. True freedom is about letting our true essence be expressed and honoured with no interference.
Fumiyo this is spot on – we are conditioned to think that we are ‘free’ when we can do anything the mind could possibly want to do. But the reality is that we are only ‘free’ within the confines of the mind. True freedom is totally about the expression of our essence with no interference of the mind, always expressed in the true interest of all.
When I came to understand that “I was seeking sugar because I was ‘missing the sweetness of” Ingrid, it made so much sense of the sugar addiction I had lived with for most of my life. I simply hadn’t known my innate sweetness, as the world around me was set up to keep me from knowing that most important truth. I am slowly re-connecting to that sweetness and as I do the craving for all things sweet is slowly but surely beginning to subside, and my body is definitely appreciating my self-loving, sugar-free choices.
Yes, you are worth more so why would you purposefully eat something that is likely to make you feel less…
When an addiction has dominated you for so many years, it is quite bizarre to notice you don’t need it any more and that is worth appreciating.
Until we understand why we want something we are using will to resist temptation. That is a vicious cycle of will-fail-shame/guilt-will etc. Working out what sugar gives us means that cycle has less of a hold – and that can only be a good thing!
The road to freedom starts with freeing ourselves from the obstacles we have set up for ourselves and from a way of moving in life that reflects our expertise in the creation and avoidance of what we have created to stand in our own way.
It’s amazing what we can experience when we have the right support. We start somewhere with an issue like diet or relationships, we have a certain perspective and tackle it, but end up nowhere and repeating the cycle of temporary success and then failure… it can add a feeling of lack of confidence in ourselves. We don’t often question the approach, like weight loss diets that have been proven to give no long term success, but reflect on the situation by assuming there is something wrong with us. Reaching out to others can bring in an expanded perspective, wisdom and greater understanding of ourselves. As Kate has shown here a change of approach and deeper understanding of herself and her relationship to sugar was all that was needed.
We are so trained that everything comes from the outside that we do not even consider that it could be our own sweetness that we are missing and not honouring and living.
Yes, and we can observe that in little babies and children, they are just content with themselves, but we have made living about life, a life that we have created and thus try to fit in, instead of living our life from this inner contentment and sweetness, because then everything we do will have this sweetness as we do it with our sweet self.
I know how strong it can be when we say yes to an addiction whether it be sugar, drugs, alcohol, tv, gambling, anything which takes us away from the love that we are. As soon as we say yes to it I find myself consumed by it, owned by it in a way that I now own it – it gave me something so its entitled to something back. The more I say yes to love the more without trying I do no delve into the distraction and numbing and this comes back to staying with and living what I know is true and honouring this in full. Then nothing gets in my way.
This is great James and may I add that when Living The Way of The Livingness we understand that what is part of our deepening is to always search for the underlying causes of our addiction otherwise it can silently sneak in the back door when our back is turned so to speak.
Well added Greg, if we do not we keep it hidden and tucked away and then when things get hard we turn to old vices which we have used in the past. Yet when we discard them completely they are no longer there to grab.
There is nothing like the power of our own love!
Yes indeed and it is something we need to see and learn 1st because without this how can we truly help another?