Cooking With Rita

Why is it that when I cut celery into tiny parts, my hands start to shake? Honestly more than a half hour in the kitchen breaks me into a smelly sweat. I want to lash out at the innocent zucchini. I want to burn the payaya. I want to never eat again.

I have avoided learning to cook for thirty years. I have been a happy take out queen. Having meals prepared for me where I don’t have to know what work went into them. But I wasn’t nourished by these meals. I was fed, but not nourished.

What is it about the kitchen that puts me into such a shaking rage? Will I be able to overcome it? Will I heal from the fear? What really went on in the kitchen anyway?

My mother painstakingly prepared steaks and broccoli and potatoes for four kids and a distant husband, everyday, three meals a day for at least 24 years. We never gave her an award. We never helped with dishes.

Why should I be surprised that my mother became depressed over the broccoli? She was quite alone. Nobody to help her. No one to cheer her on. I mean, I tried, but I guess my believability, as an authority figure was low at five years old.

I tried to convince my mom to be happy. It was a fairly simple argument. I didn’t really have a reason. It just seemed like a better idea than being depressed and wanting to die.

I guess I didn’t really understand her desire to die until I was much older. I didn’t feel that misery that invades every pore. I didn’t have those dark voices whispering horrible things to me. You’re worthless. End it all. There’s no reason for you to be alive.

Now, I would recognize this pain…it means you are off your path. That’s right. Spiritual or not, every person has a path that is for their highest good and usually feels incredible. The happiness path. Where you are fulfilling your life purpose, where you feel the joys of interconnection, where there is so much to look forward to and experience each day.

I would have told my mom she needed to make serious changes in her life. But at five, I simply said, “Be happy. You don’t want to die.” Now, I could recommend meditation, retreats, spa visits, poetry, and self-acknowledgement.

But then, all I could do was go to bed crying and hope that tomorrow wasn’t the day she ended the pain.

I feel the fear as I cut the zucchini and the rage, as I taste the vinaigrette dressing. I want to leave the room. I want to throw out the food or at least let it rot until it grows new limbs and colors. Until it stands up on it’s own and reenacts my fear of losing my mother.

Yet I stay and let Rita guide me through how much salt to add, how to cut the celery. I am so grateful to have a fearless, loving person mixing and boiling and broiling and sataying in my kitchen. I am afraid she will leave me. That I will mess up and she will refuse to teach me. I try to be good, stay positive. Be grateful. But I am quaking.

I know this is the last step. This is the letting go. I’ve worked on this issue a million times. Meditated and therapized. But here is the real work. I need to be in the place, feel the fear and let it pass through me. I need to let my hands shake while washing the zucchini. And I need to cry after Rita is gone. The final step to overcoming a life long fear. Going back to the place it started.

Please don’t leave me mommy. Please don’t die while the potatoes are cooking. Please don’t tell me again how horrible life is. I might start to believe you.

Once again I am crying, but this time I am not alone. I have my ancestors with me. I have my angels supporting me. I have my animal guide protecting me. I have God cheering me on, to release and let go. I am filled, surrounded and protected with the white light of spirit. I am safe. And I am loved.

Getting off The Money Train

LACK OF MONEY

I spent a lot of my life in survival mode. I didn’t need to, but somehow I was there. I thought resources were limited. Love was limited. Food and jobs were limited. My family motto was, “Eat fast or someone else will get the food.” I worried about money constantly. I held tightly to it and could rarely spend it without the aim of making more from my purchase.

As a kid my folks told us the old depression era story that we didn’t have enough money. True, there were four kids, and true, we were in private schools, but my Dad made a good living as a doctor and yet I was always begging for lunch money and being called “mooch” by my classmates.

The strange thing was that I always found plenty of money in Dad’s wallet when he was in the bathroom showering. And my mom always had a limitless Visa to buy my sister clothes in exchange for her good behavior and allegiance (I used to call it “selling her soul”, but I’ve learned about projections since then).

I never recognized the contradiction between the great neighborhood I lived in and my parents claim that we had no money. Later in life, when one executive called me “privileged” I was entirely baffled by what she was referring to. I see it now, but it was a long road of bounced checks, low paying jobs and feeling like “I never had enough” before I saw it.

That’s about the time “The Secret” came out and I realized that residing in a “feeling of lacking” was attracting “a state of lacking.” Immediately, I changed my thoughts to positive thoughts about money.

LOVING MONEY

Then I got on the positive side of the hamster wheel…. thinking about an abundance of money flowing to me. Plotting how to get it, producing more and more things in order to create it, visualizing its different beautiful forms: A check with Laurence Walsh and $350,000 underneath it. Oh, I interspersed a few other thoughts in there too: about love, sex and making the world a better place, but mostly I was obsessed with thoughts of how to make money doing what I love, which is writing.

My new belief was that money would only come if I loved it, envisioned it or thanked it for coming. That’s when I realized I had made money a God. I was worshipping money, bowing down to money, singing money’s praises. I realized that this was the other side of the survival thinking coin that no longer served me. I had to let go of my focus on money.

REALIZATION OF ABUNDANCE

That’s when my friend Mike Baker said to me, “Have you ever gone a night without food? Or without a roof over your head?”
To which I had to respond, “No.”
This was a tremendous shift.
I had what I was looking for all along.
I just didn’t recognize it.
With this higher perspective, I saw how thoroughly taken care of and provided for I was.
I saw the abundance in my life.
Food, shelter, friends, family, help.
I realized I didn’t have to focus on money at all.

I began to shift my thinking. If I thought about money or how to get it, I let go of that thought and choose a new one. Sometimes I choose a “grounding” thought -- observing something beautiful around me – the vibrant shade of yellow on the ginkgo tree. Sometimes I refocus my thoughts to the next scene I am writing in my movie. Sometimes I take the thought and let it sink from my head into my heart and there dissipate into a joyful feeling. Sometimes, I randomly choose to contemplate a value instead: courage, sweetness, joy. It gives me a glorious burst of energy to contemplate values and it’s fantastic at shifting my survival mindset to free my heart and mind for more important things like the awareness of love. The point for me is to find balance, to neither villainize nor glorify money, but appreciate it for what it is: part of our exchange and value system.

THE FLOW

I’d love to end this story saying that the moment I made the transition in focus, money naturally started pouring in, but actually the money flow has been about the same. It comes when it’s needed. The difference is I don’t waste my time and energy worrying about when that will be because my focus is on the abundance that I already have.

The incredible, healthy food.
The soft, warm place to lay my head.
The excellent company of two lively fluff balls.
The opportunity to enjoy music, films and books.
The endless love and support from my family.
The sharing of conversation, meals and movies with friends.

My heart is open to be where I am and enjoy what I have rather than remain trapped by a single, endlessly reoccurring thought.

And I trust that the next time I need something, it will be there.