Spiritual Detox, Part I

Fear floated around in my body for days. I decided to chill-out on the energy healing because of the full-on war raging inside my mind and body. At least that’s what it felt like to me.

I awoke in the middle of the night a few days ago, scared as fuck. This heavy feeling of suffocation caused me to throw off the covers and gasp for air. Monkey Mind was in full effect, throwing out everything that was wrong with my life. Business is at a standstill, but bills are still due, it reminded me. To stay positive, I focused on the excitement I felt earlier in the week about collaborating with my daughter on a photography project. But that tonight, all I can see was everything that could go wrong with it. Spiraling further, I began to focus on my life completely falling apart and questioning if my spirituality was just madness. Has Elaine completely lost touch with reality? Soon, disappointment set in as I was so damn tired and pretty much sick of dealing with — me. It’s like I’ve been given the tools to build a better life, but I still can’t figure out how to use them. There’s like this part of me that refuses to move forward. I don’t know what else to do to feel better. When the monkey mind is this bad, it’s hard to reign it in. I feel paralyzed like there is so much I need to do, fix, read, learn, and be grateful for, so shutting down out of sheer exhaustion, seemed to be the best option. I reminded myself that old emotion and thought patterns are just working through me and that during any detox, shit gets worse before it gets better.

The rollercoaster wasn’t over yet. I think about my wounded inner child, and now I’m angry that I’ve been bound up in fear and unworthiness all my life with only the occasional shards of confidence cutting through all the bullshit. Hell, I have to teach myself to relax and have fun without feeling anxious or regretful afterward. When I’m like this, I eat shitty foods and drink more wine; mimicking me of the past. I’m bored and shut-in, and even if I got another shitty job, we only have one car. Writing out these feelings scare me too. It’s like doing so is admitting all the progress that I’ve made is null and void because I felt like a hot mess and dared to write it down. My higher and more rational self knows better, but hell, crazy-train is navigating the ship tonight.

Daybreak brought with it more gray skies and off and on rain. I felt like a flower deficient of the sun’s nourishment. Is this temporary? Is it just passing through me? How did I not kill myself all those years before when feeling like this was an everyday occurrence? Then I remind myself, I am not my emotions; I am not my thoughts. Peeling myself out of bed, I go straight into meditation, and it hurts. Fuck! I cry out as I can’t sit still; all I can do is cry and try not to loath myself. Instead of meditating, I somehow ended up sitting in that corner of my room, arting with oil pastels, my least favorite medium, by the way. I was so mad and over it all; I scribble each letter in different colors. Then I layered with other elements, color pencils and finally, acrylic paint. My hands are dirty, and I’m bleeding my frustration all over this poor piece of art paper. When I could do no more, I gazed at it, sneered, and flicked it aside. TRASH! I dry my color stained hands with a rag, curled up on my folded meditation comforter and pillow, pull a throw atop my body, and close my eyes.

This ends the first half of my latest spiritual detox story. I will complete my tale next week. As I mentioned above, writing those feelings down and now sharing them with you is scary. But I asked myself, how am I serving humanity by hiding my low points? We are human, and being on a spiritual journey doesn’t change that. We are merely ascending into a better version of ourselves. We are waking up to who we are so we can figure out our life’s purpose(s). It’s a rollercoaster of fun synchronicities and positive changes. However, it’s also shitty when purging old stuff and getting emotional or experiencing physical symptoms like fatigue, intense heat/sweating, aches/pains, and this weird rash that appeared on my arm three months ago — sigh.

Stay tuned!