A few years ago, I was having lunch with my friend Harmony. We were musing over a long time pattern in my life that goes something like this:  I set an intention, do a whole bunch of work, scramble around, and then get tired and frustrated and sometimes resentful that the outcome just isn’t coming around quickly enough to suit me.

Her smiling response was something to the tune of, “If you call in to order a pizza, you’re not going to phone them back  in 5 minutes to ask why your pizza isn’t ready yet.” Regardless of how much I want the pizza to show up even before I ask for it, it’s just not gonna. I need to set the intention, by knowing I want it, take the time to pick up the phone and request it (spinach and broccoli, please) and then ever so patiently wait until I walk up to the counter, pay the person, and voila!  I am in pizza heaven~ No difference in the brick oven world of manna-festing my heart’s desires. To the Universe, the equivalent of the 20 minute turn around time for hot, bubbly ooey gooey cheese, sauce and veggies could be years in the making. It took 20 years to cosmically arrange the interview with the Dalai Lama. It is about doing the dough rolling, tossing, stretching, spooning, sprinkling and scattering the other assorted ingredients before placing the unfinished product in the oven to bake. Maybe that is part of the challenge as well. While I am doing the action pieces, I feel a sense of accomplishment, like I’m engaged in something meaningful. It is when I step back and let the baking-heat do its work and the pizza is out of sight, I feel that sense of powerlessness and my ‘creation’ is in the metaphorical hands of another force. No difference between that experience and letting go of attachment to when something comes to fruition in my life. Seems also to be about several pizzas in the works at once, so that while one is baking, the others  are in production stage.

While we are on a food kick, there another metaphor I used recently in a counseling session. The person sitting in front of me was having major issues with knowing what he wanted in life. I asked him about his favorite dessert and his response was “chocolate cheesecake.” I felt a sense of yum moving through me since chocolate happens to be my drug of choice.. I inquired if he knew the ingredients in the decadent delight. He did and then rattled them off. I then added that he wouldn’t likely put spaghetti sauce on the cheesecake, no matter how much he might like it on other foods. He laughed and said “Guess not.” Just as he clearly knew what he wanted and did not want in terms of  therapeutic treatment, so too would he benefit from setting a clear deliniation between which attitudes, beliefs and behaviors serve him and which didn’t. Whenever he would lapse into worn out mind mechanics, we used those two words as a reminder to slow down and breathe and know that he will have the patience to wait for his own metaphorical cheescake, sans sauce.

There are times when I blend ingredients in my own symbolic culinary creations that are not compatible and give the Head Chef mixed messages. I may say I want one thing, but brewing beneath the surface is a belief that I’m not worthy of receiving what it is I say I want or that it will never happen or that someone else who is experiencing whatever it might be, has some secret in with the maitre’ d that I don’t have. If I put an order in with the server who is patiently waiting, pen in hand and don’t ask for what I want, fully expecting that I will receive it, he or she can’t possibly deliver it.

So, for today, I will peruse the expansive menu, choose from column A and B, place my order with the kitchen from which all manner of delights emit wondrously wafting aromas and ease back, enjoying the ambience and the company that sits around the table with me as I wait for the glorious creations to arrive.

Mangia!

http://youtu.be/O2Zwvyhms8c  I Am A Pizza by Charlotte Diamond