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Cleansing
the body of toxins and releasing the muscle of
tension are familiar procedures in holistic
medicine. The need for physical purification
is so obvious that, as a concept, it has become a
dominant goal in self-treatment practices and within
conventional medicine as well.
For
example, many brand-name vitamins and nutritional
supplements found in chain drugstores now are
advertised as purifying and cleansing agents.
Within alternative healing circles, numerous
cleansing procedures such as fasting, high-fiber and
raw-food diets, enemas and high colonics, saltwater
baths, and numerous "therapies" such as
heat, breath, Vitamin C, and water are recommended
and trusted. Within the body-mind-spirit
movement, everything from exorcisms to the burning
of sage is used to cleanse rooms, residences, and
buildings of their negative forces.
In
the mornings, we shower and brush our teeth.
During the day we wash our hands after each visit to
the restroom. We use special antibacterial
products to cleanse "kitchen
surfaces." Our laundry detergents include
disinfectants. Our dishwashers super-heat the
water. Many homes and even some cars now have
air filtering systems. Tap water is out and
purified water is in. A growing number of
people carry liquid "hand sanitizers" to
cleanse their hands of germs after coming out of a
store or restaurant.
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It's
curious that we are so preoccupied with cleansing
our bodies and environment of everything that can
harm our health, beauty, and energy, yet we feel no
real need to cleanse our minds of what can sour our
attitudes, block our intuition, tear apart our
relationships, and undermine the very aim and
purpose of our lives.
Yet what do those who
are physically pristine gain if within their
sparkling habitats they live in a downward spiral of
darkness and misery? What difference does it
make if a body is always scrubbed, detoxified, and
all its surfaces germ-free if no living thing the
body encounters is comforted?
In
our houses of worship, we pay lip service to the
truth that our bodies are mortal but our internal
spirit is everlasting. We sing hymns and
listen to words that denounce the outward and
corruptible and praise the inner and eternal.
We even say that time will end and the world will
pass away but that "within us" is the
kingdom of heaven.
Yet
in daily life, we obviously are not concerned in the
least about what is within. All we care about
is getting the outside clean. Each day we walk
forth with clean clothes, clean hair, clean teeth,
but with a mind stuffed with worthless anxieties,
dull resentments, stale outlooks, toxic prejudices,
and an endless array of shabby self-images. We
haven't even bothered to sweep out the mental junk
we picked up yesterday, not to speak of the debris
we have been hauling around for a lifetime.
Our
mind is not some little unencumbered spirit free to
traverse whatever airy realm it chooses. But
we would like to believe it is. We see movies
and read books about fantastic fantasies and
unfettered thoughts. We talk to children about
the "power of the imagination." We
attend seminars that tell us our minds have immense
reserves of untapped capacity. All in all, we
have done a superb job of kidding ourselves that in
our roomy "attic" all is useful, worth
keeping, and in good repair. But if we observe
our minds closely for just one hour, we see that
instead of a boundless chamber of magic and wonder,
our minds are more like stuffed and stodgy
refrigerators that emit peculiar odors. Pick
any shelf and just one brief expedition reveals
items in the back so old we don't even remember
acquiring them.
Nor
have these containers of leftover and ancient jars
of condiments been sitting quietly in the corners
where they were pushed. They are now so thick
with mold and mildew that they have taken on lives
of their own. Indeed, the back recesses of our
refrigerator mind are in revolt and have set up sour
and stinky kingdoms of their own. It's so
scary a sight that our impulse is to shove all the
front-line items quickly back in place so that now
sunny orange juice, freshly packed mangoes, and
organic celery once again appear to be all that's in
there.
It's
not a small task to clean out our overstuffed
minds. It takes a little time and courage, and
we have to brace ourselves for some unpleasant
discoveries. But when the shelves are once
again clean and orderly, when only fresh edibles and
true nourishment are on the horizon, and when soft
aromas fill the air, we will know we have made a
very small sacrifice for such bounty.
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