A Movable Horizon

April 29, 2023

It’s weird, not shopping for sugar. Don’t get me wrong, I still eat it. But it started losing its allure, its addictive pull, a couple of years ago, and such treats are mostly beyond my horizon these days.

It seems I’ve always been addicted to sweets. Growing up in a middle-class American household, I ate the boring green beans, mashed potatoes, and meatloaf, but my eyes always strayed to the aluminum-domed cake keeper where freshly made chocolate cake lurked.

And why not? That cake was incredibly tasty. My mom was an excellent baker, having learned as a child on the farm in Nebraska, making cakes and cookies for the family and for the farmhands’ noon dinner. 

Life is short. Eat dessert first. That aphorism has been my motto, all my sixty-some years. But, as if swapped out by a slow-motion magician’s sleight-of-hand, compulsion shifted to affectionate indifference toward such indulgences. 

I don’t feel addicted to anything. There’s an empty space the size of the Milky Way where that sugar-need dwelt in my inner being. What am I supposed to do now?

*****

The most intriguing aspect of this change is that it came upon me like a slow tide creeping in, nibbling away at the shoreline in front of the house of sugar. Before I knew it, largely letting go of super-sweet foods in favor of other flavors had eaten at the foundation of sugar’s hold upon me, diluted it, leached it away in a cleansing outgoing tide.

I first became aware that this was happening when Dr. Peebles noted in a reading last fall, “We are very proud of you for your work with sugar.“ Mystified, I replied, “What work?“ Spirit notices every shift, and is delighted to compliment us even when we are blind to our own advancements.

*****

Over the last six months, I’ve been conscious of the shift, marveling that a change I’ve wished to make since I read Sugar Blues by Willam Dufty in the 1970s is finally occurring. I don’t regretfully deny myself a piece of chocolate or a coffeehouse pastry, if I really want it, but the point is, I want such things far less frequently than previously. This enormous gift was presented so stealthily, I almost didn’t see it.

I wonder if this nearly automatic process of change resulted from the rising planetary vibrations, or the shifting toward crystalline structure within my own self? I wonder if there are other surprise gifts peeking around the edge of the curtain, waiting to make their way on stage in due course?

Perhaps I will sidle over to the edge of the stage and twitch the curtain aside, peering at what’s waiting in the wings. Will it be completely pain-free, excellent good health? Remarkable emotional equilibrium, accepting highs and lows, holding on to neither and allowing both?

I think I will leave the curtain in place for now, and allow the changes that await to occur in their own time, in their own way. I can marvel after the fact, or perhaps notice while the changes occur, feeling the certainty and the rightness when Spirit is at the helm.