78 the rice diet renewal
very valuable lesson: when she feels like a victim, she can choose to
realize it, feel it, and seek her Creative Source of the Universe (whom
she knows as God) before proceeding with the best choice for her,
rather than reacting out of fear and a victim mentality. Louise learned
on a new level that you get to show up for yourself.
Dig Deeper and Uncover the Root of
Your ProblemMost of us are aware that if we get really stressed out about some-
thing, we often feel the effect in our bodies. Some of us also
realize that being overweight, having high blood pressure, or suf-
fering from pain in the neck are related to stress and unprocessed
feelings and emotional experiences. It is interesting that many
people place certain diseases such as fi bromyalgia or drug - and
food - addiction disorders in the psychosomatic category, assuming
that when individuals suffer from these ailments, “ it ’ s all in their
heads ” or that they are “ emotionally out of control. ” Some may
judge these groups of people to be spiritually affl icted with dis-
eases as punishment because of their sinful or destructive choices;
then there is also the blameless category, where people are judged
to have simply inherited defective genes or been dealt a bad hand
that they had no part in creating. Although we can describe and
defi ne all sorts of diagnoses and theories for the occurrence of
various diseases, the truth is that no one fully knows their causes.
Because we are all so uniquely different, how could we totally
understand our own diseases — much less someone ’ s whom we
barely know? I am sure about one thing, however: remaining stuck
in blame and shame does not serve you or others. It harms them
instead.
We will all improve our health and our chances of fulfi lling our
potential if we approach the concept — or the reality — of any dis-
ease as an opportunity for growth and development. I ’ ve seen hun-
dreds of Ricers experience tremendous healing from this simple
yet profound shift in point of view. I, too, have experienced this