Does suffering while on MC have a use? I used to think there was no use to it, but now I think there is. Suffering can be good medicine. While on a fast we use poison, our difficulties, as medicine. It’s as if there’s a moment of suffering that occurs over and over and over again in every human life. What usually happens in that moment is that it hardens us; it hardens the heart because we don’t want any more pain. But it will help while on MC if you can take that very moment and flip it. The very thing that causes us to harden and our suffering to intensify can soften us and allow us to have a better day.
This takes a lot of courage. Fasting is a program for people who are willing to cultivate their courage. What’s wonderful about it is that MC will give you plenty of material to work with. If you’re waiting for only the high points to work with, you might give up, but there’s an endless succession of suffering while cleansing the body. Dissatisfaction is inherent in being human; it’s not some mistake that you or I have made as individuals. Therefore, if we can learn to catch that moment, to relax with it, dissatisfaction doesn’t need to keep escalating. In fact it can become the seed of self compassion, the seed of loving kindness towards one's process on MC.
The heart literally responds to this practice. You can feel it responding physically. As you breathe in what is difficult to bear, there is initial resistance, which is the fear, the constriction. That’s the time when you really have to be brave. But if you keep going and keep practicing, your heart will relax. This is quite amazing to feel.
When we fast we often have ideals we think we’re supposed to live up to. We feel we’re supposed to be better than we are in some way. But on MC you take yourself completely as you are. Your dissatisfactions of yourself that you bring to the cleanse, and the pain you endure during the process, will heighten your awareness of exactly where you’re stuck in your life, or with your body. Instead of feeling you need some magic makeover so you can suddenly become some great person, there’s much more emotional honesty about where you’re stuck the fast can teach you.
You begin to see as each day passes on the cleanse, that your work is right ahead of you all the time. Then a kind of unstuckness starts to happen. You develop lovingkindness and compassion for this self that is stuck, with your fifty pounds of overweight, or your candida infection that will not go away. You have a sense of all the other people on the forum here who are stuck just like you, and this fast begins to awaken your compassion. We are not connected here on this forum because of our perfection, but because of our flaws. Knowing this is such relief.
All the darkness of human beings is a shared thing from the beginning of time. Let this understanding open up your heart, let it open up your world on your cleanse today. Let this fast help you to think bigger. Rather than letting it depress you, allow it to make you feel part of the whole.
_________________ In a moment of consciousness, change can occur.
Last edited by shivabliss on Fri Dec 11, 2009 12:01 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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