Although visualizing food is tough for me, from time to time I find the courage to take the challenge. Maybe not so much involving all “juicy details”, but asking myself questions like: “How it would be like to eat to my heart’s content?”, “How does it feel to know that the meal is big enough?” (i.e., more than I would need)
Sometimes I can afford this “thought experiment”, as a form of a last hope, maybe... but today I discovered a new component of that visualization: I’ve realized that having all of that I would need to reserve some part of the order to give it to someone who would be in that kind of a need I myself have experienced before.
Over the time I’ve discovered that some people share food by handing it on: for example, putting some stuff in a bag and hanging on the fence, or placing it in another - relatively comfortable - place. Not anybody has enough imagination needed to figure out what place would suit human dignity, but they have at least some good will.
And tonight I’ve discovered a new need within myself: a need to do a similar thing whenever I can. I need this especially for myself: maybe it sounds a little weird, but I consider this a form of recompense for my own being (in the context of past experiences - from the visualization’s perspective). This way I wouldn’t do it for others - although other people could benefit from it. I would do this for myself, because I’ve begun to clearly perceive it as a form of helping myself. Maybe it is a kind of a symbol, symbolic gestures, anyway. It’s a little surprising - maybe because before I didn’t pay attention to others, the hard circumstances of other beings were only hypothetical for me, they were no more than a plain theory. It seems I needed to experience those hardship by myself in order to empathetically recognize them around.
Now it reached a point in which I couldn’t ignore it being well myself: I would need to do it to feel completely well. The nearest comparison is that it would be like helping myself, this part of me who had suffered.
Moreover, I realize that this behavior (a new habit) could probably give me good feelings, if not excitement. It is interesting to know.
Filed in: blog /55/ | spiritual growth /26/
