Dr. Anderson made a list combining the seven or eight deadly sins with ten personality disorders and came up with what he calls the Eight Deadly Defects of Character:

1. Dishonesty/lack of authenticity/wearing a "mask".
2. Pride/vanity/need for things to be "my way/need to always be "in control"
3. Pessimism/gloomy disposition/being stuck in a "victim role" (this is closely associated with anger, bitterness and resentment).
4. Social, emotional and spiritual isolation
5. Sloth/laziness/passivity/living the unexamined life
6. Gluttony/unwillingness to self-discipline/need for the "quick fix"
7. Self-debasement/excessive self-denial and self-sacrifice
8. Greed/lust/envy/materialism

We can use his list as a starting place to think about what may apply to us (in different degrees at different times, of course). Contemplation two invites us to think about what virtues and defects are in ascendance in the moment. Any "defects" on the list above will influence how we plan to eat, what we eat, where we eat, how we relate to ourselves and others while we eat, how we feel, think and communicate before, during and after we eat.

Possible considerations:

One way of eating involves receiving with grace, humility, respect and gratitude an offering of life from life forms on the planet that nourish our body and soul.

We may eat well, thoughtfully and with care because we are preparing for a physically or emotionally stressful time and need extra resources in our body.

We may eat well with particular care and consume particular various nutrients even if we don't feel like eating them because we are nursing a child and want to give our baby the most nourishing milk our bodies can produce.

We may eat thoughtfully and with care because we want to keep ourselves well and healthy for our own pleasure and delight and for the pleasure and delight of the people who love us and count on us to be a stable and reliable presence in the world.

Another way of eating involves using food, thinking of it as a device to manipulate feelings (ours or someone else's), to act out feelings or control feelings or change feelings and completely disregard all the value and meaning of the food we are using: e.g. the life that is being offered up, the people and animals who worked to bring the food to us, earth and sky and rain and sun that helped the food come into being, etc.

Another way of eating involves mindless bingeing that could relate to many of the character defects on Dr. Anderson's list, including flight from all of them.

Yet another way of eating is non-eating, using self-sacrificial means to control others and to make up for lack of control in other areas of life. It's using food by wasting it to waste away a body. It's attempting to create a body that is desired because of almost all of the defects listed above. Plus, non-eating is a way to disregard the gifts of life supporting life including the life within one's own physicality.

When a person is bingeing mindlessly does he or she "deserve" the offering from the earth? These are the kinds of thoughts and questions we develop when we contemplate the contemplations.

Contrary to what people seem to believe when they write me about this article, contemplations are designed to remove guilt. Guilt arrives when a person with an eating disorder thinks he or she is doing something wrong and must stop, should stop, could stop but can't stop.

Instead, the philosophy expressed here involves contemplating our behavior and internal experience. The willingness to contemplate, the generosity of spirit that allows room to contemplate, can open our minds, hearts and bodies so that positive changes occur, not from self punishing acts of control, but naturally, organically and at the pace that is just right for individual healing.

Giving thoughtful and regular attention to the ancient contemplations can help us release ourselves from stray remnants of our character defects. When we can maintain a healthy and personal alert awareness of what nourishes life we can we appreciate how we are part of all life and how, by living our lives well, we in turn nourish others. Then we can get through our days, nights, meals, snack times not only with strength and serenity, but also with grace and a vibrant internal joy.

References

next: Eating Disorder Education: Benefits for Parents and Teens