Spiritual Belly

I love to eat. I really do. Give me some chips and dip, and I’m happy—until I’m not. Because sometimes it feels like I’m not eating because I love food. I’m eating because I’m trying to fill some kind of hole. A sense of restlessness. A gnawing emptiness I can’t quite name. And in those moments, I’m not even tasting the food. I’m just… consuming. Shoveling in salt and crunch and comfort as if something in me believes that maybe, just maybe, this next bite will finally make me feel whole. But it doesn’t. And I’m left with a full stomach and a deeper question: What am I really hungry for? The Landscape of Desire Desire is a natural part of being human. We’re wired to want—connection, pleasure, affirmation, safety. There’s nothing wrong with desire itself. It’s what drives us to grow, to create, to reach out, to become. But somewhere along the way, desire can shift into something else. It becomes craving. Compulsion. Addiction. A need so sharp it clouds our clarity. It can show up in obv...

“The dream you are living is your creation. It is your perception of reality.” —Don Miguel Ruiz Not long ago, I had a dream that stayed with me—not just because of its vividness, but because of what it revealed about the nature of identity, patterns, and waking up. In the dream, I was investigating a cold case. I’m not sure what the crime was or who the victim might have been. What I remember most clearly was a screen in front of me, something like a spreadsheet. On each row was a string of words, repeating over and over again: Cornthwaite > CJ   Cornthwaite > CJ > PhD   Cornthwaite > CJ   Cornthwaite > CJ > PhD > husband The lines kept scrolling. Some got longer, adding new titles and identifiers. Others dropped pieces off, returning to a simpler form. Over and over again, the name “CJ” appeared, framed by shifting patterns—like data strings encoding a personality. What struck me wasn’t the content—it wasn’t really about CJ, who I vagu...

“Why do you stay in prison when the door is so wide open?” —Rumi For me, the prison wasn't made of iron bars or locked gates. It was made of certainty, rules, and expectations—well-meaning, perhaps, but confining all the same. I was raised inside a religious framework that gave me answers, belonging, and structure. But it also came with unspoken walls: this is how God works, these are the correct beliefs, this is the only path. About ten years ago, I stepped away from the institution of church. I left to find air, to listen, to seek. To find comfort that started eluding me in the church machine. What I found outside the boundaries of tradition was not emptiness or chaos, but a deeper, vaster Presence—one I could not name or contain. I read widely, wandered through texts from Christian mystics, Sufi poets, Daoist teachings. I sat in silence, let go of answers, and found a God far bigger than the religion I was raised in. This God didn’t fit into the categories I’d been taught. This ...

This journey was not a failure. It was a teacher. I have about 100 pounds to lose. That number feels big—like standing at the base of a mountain, staring up at something that will take every ounce of patience, endurance, and heart I have. When I try to grasp the whole climb at once, it feels overwhelming. But when I break it down—one to two pounds a week, slow and steady, over the course of a year—it becomes something else entirely. Something I can face. Something I can walk toward. Still, it’s not just the size of the task that makes it heavy. It’s the emotional weight I’ve carried along with it. Some of it, I didn’t choose—genetics, medications, biological reactions to stress. But then there’s the part that came from how I coped. From numbing. From food as comfort when life felt too raw to feel. And that’s where the shame likes to whisper. “You should be stronger than this.” “You should have known better.” “You let yourself go.” But I’m learning to meet that voice with a de...