YOUR DETOX FUTURE

Show me your palm so I can read your detox future. Are you going to be a cleansing success story who sheds the standard Western diet like old skin to find a regenerated being underneath? Or are you doomed to slog through a painful detox, feeling neither here nor there about your body or your mind?

Okay, I confess, I can’t actually tell by looking at your palm, but I can tell by knowing your worldview—the fundamental perspective you bring to every single decision, action, and interaction in your life. It is rooted deep in the layers of your subconscious and unconscious from years of social conditioning. In the modern age, it takes vision to cultivate a life-generating worldview.

For example, if you think nothing of tossing a piece of garbage on the street rather than in the garbage can, chances are, deep down, you feel pretty disconnected from the world of life around you. Or if you think of detoxing as merely a regimen for your weight-loss goals, you probably think of your body as a burden, something to take into the shop now and again for a tuneup, not as an extraordinary living organism to be honored every day. You can know intellectually that certain things are good or bad for you, but if you don’t cultivate a worldview that supports them, knowing them won’t do you much good. Until you stand up for yourself and make a conscious decision to live for your highest good, you will travel the same old paths that have led you astray before. Until you appreciate the power of true cellular health, and its profound implications for you in the context of your life at large, you will probably just “detox to retox,” forever caught in a cycle of overindulging and fasting.

That’s why the first step to proper detoxing is to review your values, which are at the root of all that you are and do. Ask yourself, do your values support or undermine a life-affirming worldview, one that respects the world as one great, interconnected, living, breathing organism? Take the time to honestly evaluate what you are made of—literally and figuratively—and begin to draw the connections between your choices, your actions, and your experiences. Clearing the clutter, drawing connections, and getting to the heart of your deepest desires for life here on earth is what detoxing is all about.

THE DETOX BEATITUDES

The term beatitude comes from the Latin word beatus, or blessed, and is best known in the context of the teachings from the Sermon on the Mount. I like to think of the beatitudes as three essential attitudes for spiritual growth: love, praise, and gratitude. When we hold these attitudes, even just one of them, for a long enough period, we can take great positive leaps out of our old self-defeating patterns and into new life-affirming experiences.

Similarly, I find there are three “detox attitudes” that will get you far on the cleansing path: reverence for life, self-discipline, and creativity. The first attitude, reverence for life, is the most fundamental to the detox ethos. If we truly appreciate Mother Nature in her all-encompassing glory—in her every micro and macro incarnation—we cannot help but live in a state of perpetual wonder at the energetic flowering of life all around and within us. In this state of wonder, or reverence, we have no desire to take more than we need; rather, we bring a gentle touch to everything we do, and we learn to honor our bodies as we would honor any living creature under the sun. Narrow-minded vanity (“If only I could lose weight and look great in these jeans!”) gives way to far loftier and, quite frankly, more effective goals (“I wish to feel balanced and whole again, so I may radiate positive energy wherever I go.”). We would look upon the human body with compassion and reverence, not as an object to be constantly judged or deemed defective.

Here’s how the first detox beatitude might read: Blessed are the reverent for life, for they will receive knowledge of Natural Law and grow ever more beautiful and joyous.

Next is the attitude of self-discipline. Self-discipline is essential because we live in a culture of excess and separation consciousness. When you begin to detox, it’s common to feel the strong tug and resistance of these forces, for they are set deep within the collective modern consciousness. How we respond to them depends largely on self-discipline. If reverence for life is your off-roading vehicle on your detox journey, you can think of self-discipline as its four-wheel drive, the ability to power through the rocky moments of cultural resistance and self-doubt. Self-discipline requires both stamina and strength of personal conviction. It’s great to glean knowledge and inspiration from other guiding lights, but we must learn to rely on our own inner compass.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, an icon of self-reliance, wrote, “Do not go where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” We’re so conditioned to stay within our cultural comfort zones, our culture’s charted paths, that we become blinkered from greater worlds of possibility. Personally, I delight in finding my bliss outside the mainstream, in trusting my own inner compass above the one my culture provides. Self-reliant, self-disciplined people tend to demand more of themselves, but for good reason.

Here’s how this beatitude might read: Blessed are the self-disciplined, for they shall live to see their own evolution.

Finally, we have the attitude of creativity. It’s the most fun attitude—the “I can innovate at any given moment” attitude; the “I’m gonna find a way even if it hasn’t been done before” attitude. It’s the attitude that keeps recharging you with inspiration and achievement. It fuels your self-discipline with joy and fires up your reverence for life with inspiration.

Here’s how this beatitude might read: Blessed are the creative, for theirs is an ever-growing kingdom of innovation, inspiration, and joy.

When you hold these detox beatitudes—reverence for life, self-discipline, and creativity—you generate a whole new relationship with food and your body. Peer pressure will cease to assert any power over you. You will be free and clear of mind and body to live your dreams. With all that life force energy coursing through you, nothing and nobody will stand in your way.

—NATALIA