How is it that the greatest gifts that we can give to ourselves is to temporarily (and hopefully temporarily) expose ourselves to a plethora of toxicity?
Yes, really. Toxic and greatest gift in the same sentence. I am referring to detox. Mental, physical, emotional, spiritual, what have you. The purging introduces so many foul toxins that you can feel so sick in every conceivable way.
I guess it is easy for me to wanna talk or think about detox. For years I have always been fascinated by additions, regardless of the addiction. It is truly fascinating how powerful addictions are, both in their capacity to destroy and in the capacity of selective humans with addictions to recover. By recovery, I mean a stable, authentic recovery. These are recoveries that make those addicts leaders and mentors. Indeed, the recovering addicts say the detox was the most painful thing that they went through but also the best thing that they did for themselves.
It is truly remarkable how easy it was to gradually acquire the habit, the toxic habits, the toxic way of thinking which can leave a person's lives torn at the seams, a fabric of life torn to shreads. It doesn't even have to be the most destructive of addictions, heroin, cocaine, meth, opiates, anorexia, bulimia, the list goes on and on.
Sometimes the most destructive addictions allow us to not realize other addictions not as intense because the drama is not as present. These addictions aren't flourescent, but they are still toxic to be the person. What of the addiction to fear, of self hatred, of not being able to trust, really any toxic emotion or feeling that brings us down as people, that prevents us from being what we can be?
I went to a seminar from Dani Johnson, a self made millionairess. Among the many things that I learned, it was that 98% of the population will be dead or dead broke by 65. 2% will flourish and prosper. Many of us stay in the 98% because we are full of fear and don't want to make that transition.
One of the things that I have discovered is that detox is what separates those two populations. The people who will transition from that 98% and be in that 2% will undergo detox. They have to look at all the pain in their lives, how it caused them to do what they did and how they treated that pain in a way that didn't allow them to grow. They hide their pain in television shows, in partying, in drinking, in one night stands, in never committing to anybody, whatever it is...it's still destructive.
Detox in this content means opening yourself to failures of your past and forgiving yourself for them. You have to accept yourself for your failures and draw courage from God inside of you to fight back. There is so much toxicity and hurt that has to come out in order to do that. You cannot accept being the person you once were, immersed in your own selfish and unhealthy escapes.
Indeed, detox is the most painful, with its explosions of toxins, and yet in the long distance ahead, with persistance, courage and in the infalliable presence of the father, the son and the holy spirit, the intercession of Mary, now at the end of our death, it can be the greatest thing we can do for ourselves.
