https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=xpJVTkwPHF0
Let’s say, what do you see as the connection between your experience and the wounds, for example? Well, I’ve been trying to be less controlling, less domineering, less, you know, with all the things that we do that we blame and we get angry and all of these things when we come from a place of fear, usually, you know, or a place. I see it as my younger self, you know, coming to help me out when I when I run into something that makes me uncomfortable. And then I end up, well, so I had an experience just this week that was really new. And I was hungry and, you know, I was so sick, right? I was so sick. And for a long time, the doctors told me I couldn’t eat because all I eat is meat. And they said, oh, you can’t have all that protein because the markers in your kidneys are so high that that’s going to ruin your other kidney. So they terrified me. So then I ate less than a pound of meat a day for months and months. I was just starving. I was just not eating enough. So I was always hungry. But I had myself trained not to eat anything. And so and then they came back a year later and said, well, no, they did a check of my kidneys as if I was going to give one of my kidneys away. So they did a thorough check to see that it was a healthy kidney in every way. They said it’s healthy in every way. You can eat whatever you want. And so but now but now I’ve changed. I’ve trained myself not to eat. And I’ve never had this problem before. I imagine someone with an eating disorder might have had this this kind of problem where you’ve trained yourself not to eat. Yeah. So one night we were going out to do a show and we were eating on the bus and what I was eating was kind of dry and not very palatable. And I decided to in the middle of dinner to go and get changed for the show and come back and finish it. In the meantime, Jordan decided to clean the kitchen and he threw my dinner away. He was just trying to be helpful. He misunderstood what I was doing anyway. That doesn’t matter. So I didn’t eat. And then later that night, after the show was over, there were carnivore crisps. You know, we buy these carnivore crisps that are really, really salty, dried meat. They’re good, but they make you drink a gallon of water afterwards because they’re so salty. Anyway, I looked at this bag of crisps and I said no to myself. No. So I denied myself that food for some reason. So the next morning we were in hotels and I didn’t have any food in the hotel, but we were going to get on the bus at 1030 and I thought, well, then I’m going to eat. And it was 10 o’clock and I’d been up at seven doing Pilates because I have to do Pilates twice a week to keep the scar tissue all organized in my body so I don’t have chronic pain from all the surgery I went through. So, you know, I have a pretty regimented life and so I did all this thing, but now I was hungry. And Jordan called me at 10 and said, do you think we could leave at noon? I’d like to sleep two hours more. And I said, could you sleep on the bus? I’m really hungry. And he goes, no, he said, I’d like to sleep. And he didn’t understand exactly. He didn’t. He didn’t. No, no, no, he didn’t. He was kind of sleepy. And I thought for a minute and I thought, well, you know, he’s the guy and he needs to sleep. And so I said, OK. And so I hung up the phone and this rage was when, oh, I was like, hunger will make you feel. Yeah, I was like, what’s that? It was really rage. And so I prayed. I thought, oh, this isn’t a good thing to have domineering my thoughts right now. So I prayed. I prayed the serenity prayer. And as soon as I was done praying the serenity prayer, which is helpful, right? Because you accept the things you cannot change and you have the courage to change the things you can and the wisdom to know the difference. And so it kind of starts to humble you. And then I got a text from one of our assistants who said, oh, Tammy, can I go to the bus and cook you some lamb and bring it to you? And I thought, Jordan contacted the assistants after he spoke to me and I can trust him. You know, I can trust him. And, you know, for some reason, I wasn’t trusting him. Those are long stories, but it makes no difference. It’s that this prayer bringing me back to a humble place allowed me to be grateful when the assistant to notice the assistant had contacted me because I’m trying to be present. I’m getting myself back into a normal frame of mind. And I said, no, no, no. I said, I’m ready to go. I’ll just get I’ll just go down to the lobby and wait for the bus. I go down to the lobby and the bus just pulls up. And I said, is that our bus? I mean, it just really, there was a big black bus and it came and I thought, is that our bus? And I looked and yeah, I think that’s the driver. Wow. What’s it doing here? Because the theater is quite a ways away and that’s where it parks in the morning. But he was on his way to pick us up and then heard that Jordan wants to sleep for two hours. And he thought it was just simpler to park in front of the hotel without anybody saying anything to him. He pulled up and I walked outside and he was there. And I said, I am so overjoyed to see you. I said, you know, I was just, it was like a miracle. I was going to get some food, you know, and I got on the bus and I sat down and I put something in the air fryer and I was just so grateful. It was like, it was like a spiritual experience for me because I was so hungry. And I thought I was, you know, completely out of luck. And then as it turned out, the calmness and then everything just transpired. Like it just unfolded for me. And this is like in a five minute window. So it was pretty intense. Yeah. And so I wonder, so this is what I’ve been trying to do. I’ve been trying to stay as present as I can to be there when things align for me and to notice them and to be, you know, to be grateful for it because you can always, something can happen and you don’t see it because you’re thinking of other things. You’re not present. And so that happened recently, but two weeks ago, when I had this thought about Christ and his wounds and how important that must be for me, I’m finding, I’m trying to find my humility in a big way and to stay there. And I need more and more understanding of what it means to be humble and what an necessity for humility. But that really, the idea of the wounds of Christ related to this, it’s something that you find all in Western Christianity. And it’s actually a little bit, it’s been put aside from a lot of people because the vision of it, it looks so weird to modern people. It looks like a kind of masochism or a kind of a strange, gory, because you have very extreme images of that, like people drinking from the wounds of Christ or people, you know, being this kind of mystical imagery of being poured, like the blood of Christ kind of pour over you. And it seems very strange to people, but when you understand what it is that’s going on and you realize what it is, how it’s related to the mystery of suffering, to the problem of suffering, and how, at least in Christianity, there isn’t this, there’s not at all the sense, except for this kind of rather superficial, you know, God, what do they call it, prosperity gospel types, which are just horrid. That’s not what Christianity is. Christianity doesn’t tell you you’re going to stop suffering if you become a Christian. Then it doesn’t tell you you’re going to stop lacking your, all these things. There’s a sense in which it’s actually going to be transformed. Your suffering can be transformed, not just into a nice, happy, regular life, but into something which is far more glorious, right? Like that little experience you had of seeing the bus come and suddenly it’s as if when you’re telling me that story, I feel like you’re Alice in Wonderland and it’s like, oh, these magical things happen. But if you describe the phenomenon of people, it’s just a regular, it’s like, what, why are you so excited about this? It’s just, it’s just something that’s going on. But, you know, you’re the one that’s right because wouldn’t you like to live in that moment all the time? Wouldn’t you love to be able to see the world in these glorious eyes? And it came through this, it came through your acceptance of your own suffering, where you said, okay, I’m not going to eat, basically. Like I really am so, I’m, I have this rage, I’m angry, I want to eat. And you realize I’m going to accept that it’s not going to happen. And then suddenly, yeah. Yeah. Because it’s not going to happen the way I thought it should happen. Yeah. It was not going to happen that way. I was wrong. And I was trying to control how things were going to go on. I was, I was, but you know, and I said to Jordan, I accept this, but I hadn’t accepted it. That’s why the rage came, right? It seemed like it was something I could accept, but I couldn’t. So I was missing something. I was missing some understanding. My body was saying, no. And then what you experience, it can help you also kind of understand what aesthetics, why aesthetics do what they do and why monks will fast, why there’s all these types of behaviors that exist, you know, because it does, it actually does transform the world into a magical place. You know, it’s almost like a, it’s a funny joke because who more enjoys their meal, like a rich guy that goes to a five-star, like a four-star restaurant and has, you know, this amazing service or someone who’s been fasting for three weeks and eats a piece of bread, who actually finds more joy and more like astound, you know, who has the best experience. And it’s going to be the monk that’s just fasting for three weeks and just eats a piece of bread. So it’s, and so there’s a, there’s a reality, which is that if we accept suffering and we accept to kind of willfully die to ourselves, the world actually becomes fuller. And that’s hard for people to understand, but I mean, your little experience is a good, is a good version of that. And so you can see why monks would fast, for example, just for that, just to live in a, in a, in a kind of magical world where everything that you end up receiving is like a gift from heaven because, because it’s little and it’s precious and it has that, it has a, it has everything in it, you know, it appears more like a, like a gift, let’s say.