So my three week cleanse is officially over. Right in time for Easter Friday tomorrow. I hadn't even planned this as a lent thing, but it feels like part of a natural cycle. Maybe I'll repeat this same time next year.
I've lost a few pounds and I'm motivated to continue avoiding sugar, caffeine and white bread. I feel significantly less compulsive about food now.
But the journey is far from over. Without this built in cycle of physical hunger, I'm confronted with the different kinds of hunger I avoid: emotional, spiritual and a feeling that I'm still not connected to the world.
Next weekend I do a mini-retreat at the Tergar center on the subject of boredom. So much of the root of boredom is hunger. The hunger for things to happen, for love and affection. And what I'm noticing this morning, a kind of numbness around that hunger. I don't want to feel it. I want to pretend it's not there. But if I don't feel it, I can't start to address it with the kind of life and kind of habits that will eventually satisfy it.
The healthy cycle that will keep it well fed starts today.
