Watching the Watcher

We began Weight Watchers on Monday.

This is after a weekend of watching a friend interact with her WW app on her iPhone at a Buddhist program in Chicago being lead by Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche. We spent much of the time at the retreat talking about "who is doing the watching?" when we become, or aware, that we are thinking, or have even awareness of our object of meditation - breath, candle, sleepiness.

The sense of balancing watching - watching without judgment, watching with curiosity, watching from a slight distance, after all, if one is watching oneself, one has to be beyond one's own nose to do it - and yet, staying connected - is hard stuff. I appreciate just how difficult these practices I have been doing and teaching for years now actually are in a new way. In the past I've given up on tracking my spending because it always shocked me how little bits of spending add up so quickly. The same can be said for calories, for "spending" energy in output/activity and bringing in nutritious food that can be more easily and efficiently burned.

Which, if we take out the word "food" and just use "energy" could be the same said for yoga, for meditation, for writing practice, for Miksang photography.

Again, back to the "resolution" word for Dylan and myself from the last two New Years - "consumption" - watching our cycles of in and out with regards to money, to energy, to food. Somehow, though, my watcher has changed, is gentler, more curious when the "points" (calories+fat+fiber in WW speak) go over, more motivated to keep at the math than ever before. Maybe now is the time, the right time, to let the watcher watch over me. I watch my watcher and notice her newer personality and feel like I can trust her to do some of the work for me.

That's a nice feeling, to not have to watch the watcher, and let her do her job.