Awareness is learning to keep yourself company. And then learn to be more compassionate company, as if you were somebody you are fond of and wish to encourage.

Staying requires being curious about who you actually are when you don't take yourself to be a collection of memories.When you don't infer your existence from replaying what happened to you, when you don't take yourself to be the girl your mother/father/brother/teacher/lover didn't see or adore. When you sense yourself directly, immediately, right now, without preconception, who are you?

If you decided to reteach yourself your own loveliness today, what would you do? How would you speak to yourself? Can you allow yourself that much?

Imagine not being frightened by any feeling. Imagine knowing that nothing will destroy you. That you are beyond any feeling, and state. Bigger than. Vaster than. That there is no reason to use drugs because anything a drug could do would pale in comparison to knowing who you are.

It's not life in the present moment that is intolerable; the pain we are avoiding has already happened. We are living in reverse.

Awareness is a way you keep yourself company. When you are aware you are being compulsive, you are no longer locked in the behavior. You have a choice to stop. That choice--and therefore awareness itself--is freedom.

You are lovable, you are loving; your choices about food will reflect that, if you give yourself a chance.