Soulful Detox

As nasty a pill as it is to swallow, my biggest challenge in life is…myself.

I get in my own way. You get in your own way. We all get in our own way, every single time. When I find myself feeling pretty crappy, my go-to is to blame the person that was involved in whatever event that I was feeling crappy about. But if I dig deep enough, I realize that it is either because I simply lacked tolerance toward the behavior or attitude because it fell short of my personal expectations, OR, that behavior or attitude left me feeling insignificant.

Dr. Wayne Dyer said, “When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” Such simple yet profound wisdom. I used to let everything outside of me (the way people looked at me, talked to me, didn’t talk to me, treated me, didn’t treat me, the job I got, the job I didn’t get, etc.) suck all the energy out of me and define my value (and mood!). Now let’s be honest; putting that much power into something that is completely out of my control is…frankly…stupid. REALLY, REALLY stupid.

One of the main reasons I started Soulful Detox was precisely because of this idea that, maybe, I needed a total makeover- a “soul” detox- something to clear out and transform all of those unhelpful beliefs that kept me feeling so…bad.  Through a lot of inner reflection and work, I have come to narrow the biggest challenges I personally had to face, to 3 things. And here they are:

CHALLENGE #1: Thinking that who I am is limited to my body: “Your body is but a vessel,” said someone (I don’t know who). If that’s true, what is it that is being carried inside? Yeah… think about that for a moment. Most people would say something like, “my soul.” The Earth is approximately 4.54 ± 0.05 billion years and some change… I’m 35 years old. That means that compared to our cumulative existence, my life and everything I hold dear to me is not even a fraction of a second long, and yet it seems that I spend copious amounts of time thinking I’m too fat, too ugly, too wrinkly, my teeth are crooked, I’m not pretty enough, I’m not sexy enough, my hair isn’t perfect… All that shit is “shallow” shit. Why spend so much energy rowing a boat in shallow water? By doing so I ended up creating meaningless, shallow relationships that reinforce and remind me that I need to constantly try harder to decorate my “vessel” so that I can feel good about myself. What sucks about this way of thinking, is not only that people end up using you and leaving you regardless of what you look like, you don’t have any control over it. We age, shit happens, and we are constantly required to “fix” what other people aren’t embracing at the moment. Non-stop madness… So if my body is nothing but a vessel, then what if I spent all my time and energy beautifying the soul within instead? That is much more empowering. My point? Take care of the vessel, it’s how you get from one place to another on this short, short journey in life, but YOU ARE NOT the vessel.

CHALLENGE #2: Thinking that my thoughts and feelings are not important or flawed: When I was young, I used to run from anything that didn’t feel “positive”. If I was angry or felt rejected, I would internalize all of it and either blame the other person for being “horrible” or I would blame myself and think I was unworthy. When something positive happened, I would give the credit to everyone but myself, and downplay my excitement and pride in my accomplishments, afraid that I would be coming off as a pompous b*tch. As I got older, I picked and chose which thoughts and feelings were “acceptable” and which ones I felt I had to ignore. Feelings of love and compassion were ok, and feelings of insecurity and anger were not ok. This left me feeling like a fake- an imposter. Instead of recognizing that the bad thoughts are just as important, profound, and useful as the good ones, I only wanted others (and myself) to see the good and not the “bad”. Shame at its worse. Now that I’m “old”, I realize that hatred, anger, jealousy, sadness, grief, insecurity… ALL of these feelings, in addition to the wondrous good feelings, are here to teach me more about myself. When I’m feeling angry or insecure, I am no longer afraid to sit with that and do some serious inner reflection… WHY am I feeling so angry? What is going on inside me that is making me feel so insecure and unimportant? Going back to the vessel metaphor, ALL of this is what is in my vessel, and ALL of it needs tended to.

CHALLENGE #3: Thinking that motivation is something that comes to me, and not something that I’m personally responsible for creating on my own: It’s hella hard to stay committed to something we decided we wanted to do when that rush of  motivation we had at the time we decided to commit to it is nowhere to be found. There was a position in the office I’d had my eyes on for a while, and it required a specific certification that I tested for twice and failed. Why did I fail? I didn’t read or study for the test. I just glanced over the material, winged it, and hoped I could get ‘close enough’ and pass. A year went by and I vowed that I would study for the test this time and pass. I definitely wanted the job! Months went by and my motivation to pick up that 3-inch thick book on federal regulations was still not appealing to me… It sat on my desk, for months, opened to Chapter 1… Life got busy. That was my excuse. Now I realize, it was simply a choice. I didn’t want it bad enough and I was waiting for something outside me to motivate me enough to pick up the book and read it. Motivation doesn’t come to you. That’s inspiration. Inspiration comes to you. Motivation, the drive to stay committed to something long after the feelings we had at the time we decided to pursue it have dissipated, is born and grown through action. When obstacles get in the way and our feelings are saying, “let’s start from tomorrow….today, let’s party” is when that thing inside your vessel (your soul) can come to the front and center, or you can continue ignoring it.

I’ve learned that ignoring my soul only leads to suffering, and I kinda don’t like suffering. Especially for shallow things. Adopting this kind of self-empowerment has made a world of difference to me, and has helped me navigate through some pretty shitty and rough waters as I ride this vessel. The deeper the water, the smoother the ride. Go Deep.

The Price of Dreams:

To fulfill your purpose and achieve your dreams, you must be willing to do whatever it takes, and there’s always a price.

Those who fulfill their purpose know that there are three forces that will either motivate people to achieve or give up. The first two forces: Avoiding pain and seeking pleasure are fueled by desperation. The third force is inspiration, which transcends everything.

-Bits taken from Dr. John F. Demartini (The Breakthrough Experience: A Revolutionary New Approach to Personal Transformation)

About a block away from my home is an orange field run by local farmers that sells a huge bag of oranges for $5. The look of the oranges is hideous. Even after washing, the oranges come off dirty, with uneven skin, and flawed. But when I eat the inside… it’s the sweetest orange I’ve ever tasted. What’s funny is that I’ve gone to farmer’s markets, organic markets, and even non-organic markets to find the sweetest fruit, and no matter what they look like on the outside, I can never tell (without cutting it open and tasting it) if it’s going to be sweet or not… Have you ever got stuck buying a bunch of fruit that looked delicious and none of it tasting any good?

That famous cliche “it’s not what’s outside, but what’s inside that counts”. We all know it and say it, but do we really “know” it? When we talk about what’s “inside” what are we actually talking about? Our character? Our values? If we’re nice or not? If it’s not our bodies that matter, but what’s inside us that matters, what exactly is that thing inside us that matters? Let’s be honest. Is anyone’s “insides” truly perfectly wonderful and sweet? Sadly, I don’t think I’m alone when I say that more often than not what we often find on the inside is NOT a kind, humble, generous, compassionate amazing human being, but an insecure person in some way- a person who suffers and struggles and, like all human beings, makes tons of mistakes. So if that’s what matters, then I’m not sure either of the two are an ideal “thing” to put all our attention on.

What if what matters, isn’t either of those (neither or body or mind), but something we totally overlooked? We get so distracted with what we look and feel like inside and outside that we completely forget about the possibility that…maybe…we’re still just picking at the surface. We’re obsessing about the peel of the fruit, and totally missing the real sweetness…

Yesterday, a good friend of mine sent me a video of Sadhguru, who spoke of life as we know it as simply the peel of the fruit. He spoke of the surface of life being our body and mind, and the basis of our life being something beyond our immediate five senses. Take for example when we die: Our body and mind are gone, yet our loved ones are grieving us. What is it they were grieving? No one cares about the dead body or the dead organs inside. Yes, while on Earth we have to feed our body and take care of it, but the only reason the peel of the fruit means anything to anyone is because of the fruit it carries inside of it. And so it goes with our own lives, we get so obsessed with the peel that we completely forget about the fruit!

Sadhguru said, “If you are eating the peel of life, how would life be? It would be bitter! The problem with the peel is that it has spots of sweetness in it.” The little chunks of sweetness in the peel are only because of the fruit, but if you go beyond the peel, and taste the fruit, how sweet our life must be!

We spend ridiculous amounts of time looking for joy only within what our immediate five senses can grasp: touch, smell, taste, hear, see… We cling to temporary satisfactions like food, drugs, sex, alcohol, and shallow relationships wishing, hoping, preying that they will keep us satisfied long enough that we won’t realize we’re wasting our life away nibbling at a bitter peel. Those things are not the fruit! It is all the peel…just fleeting moments of temporary satiation that only drop us back into that emptiness…that feeling of…something missing…

What if every day was spent eating the fruit and not the peel? How sweet would life be? Sadhguru said that living our life eating the peel is like living life only with the intention of eat, sleep, reproduce, and die. If that was our only purpose on this Earth, then what is the point of our intelligence? What is the point? The fact is, that “something missing” in all of us is a desperate search for connection, love, meaningful relationship, a sense of purpose. If our only purpose is to eat, sleep, have sex and die, we don’t need this kind of human body to do such primal things. We are better off being a dog, or a cockroach.

We are humans on this Earth, with an AMAZING potential and purpose. Our intelligence has brought us so far and so quickly, but we are currently at a stand-still because we have gotten so used to eating pith and peel, happy when we’ve managed to find a sweet spot, and disappointed when the rest of it is bitter nastiness. Yet we still eat it! We’ve totally lost sight that fruit even exists.

So with that my wish for you, me, and all of us is that when we come across the sweet and the bitter parts of the peel, we recognize it as simply the peel. May we remember that life is not what’s outside, but what’s inside. Life is what is contained within the peel. Life IS the fruit inside all the bitter and sweet spots. The real lasting, juicy, wholesome, unchanging sweetness is…YOU.