Are Gurus Good?!?I was watching ‘Extreme Makeover: Weight Loss Edition’ last night and had some thoughts… This extremely fat woman (355 lbs) wrote this fitness guru asking for his help in losing weight. So he shows up and takes her on. She has to do *everything* he tells her to do. 1500 kcal per day. Lots and lots of exercise. He brings in someone who teaches her to cook and teaches her portioning as well He completely remodels her house and removes all of the old triggers for food, installs a garden, puts fitness machines all over the place (this while she wasn’t home so she didn’t even know/couldn’t complain). She starts ‘working’ with him and immediately hits her wall. She is in tears. She is crying. No, she is wailing! “I can’t do it! I can’t do it!” All the emotional stuff comes up (it was after a rape at age 14 that she began gaining weight). And he brings her back to 1) Her commitment 2) Her motivations for her commitment. He pushes her. He motivates her. He screams at her when necessary. Not too much comforting, but he does give her a hug when she is brave enough to look at her weight for the first time. Well *WE*, my dear friends, are that 355 lb woman. We aren’t happy. Everything in our lives is not going as we want. Everything around us is coddling us and selling us more junk food to temporarily ease the pain without confronting what is really going on inside of us. We need someone to show us the way out. We know someone who has confronted reality, been there, and gone the journey. Someone who knows when to kick our butts and when to give us a pat on the butt. This, my friends, is the guru of the eastern tradition. For our emotional and spiritual pain it is just as intelligent and legitimate to take a guide through the process of healing as it is for this woman to use this guy. Could she have done it alone? No. She didn’t have the knowledge, the energy, the resources, the motivation. She had tried with abysmal results for 20 years. There is nothing wrong with that. There is nothing wrong with asking for help. There is nothing wrong with admitting our weakness, our powerlessness, our helplessness. There is nothing wrong with needing someone else or with trusting someone else to show us through the darkness of the path we have never trod.  |
