Healing

Anybody got the flu yet this year? One of you sneaky people must have skipped getting the flu, because I got it twice. Twice.

But actually,  this year I don't really mind fevers. I don't know why, but I've not only gotten the flu twice but also had fevers after emotional crises; often it begins with some dream about being cleansed. Once, I dreamt that an intense elderly Japanese woman grabbed me by the throat, told me I was blind, and thrust my head into a pottery kiln. Then I woke up. With a fever.

A good friend recently told me that often, when people go on a diet or a juice fast, they experience a "healing crisis"; their skin breaks out, they get a terrible headache, and generally feel like a piece of crap. Sometimes people feel like a healing crisis is some sort of punishment for trying to be healthy, and often they give up on the diet or fast because it seems like it's not working.

But here's the paradox, which is actually not a paradox if you think about it. Healing often requires us to flush out a whole bunch of garbage. Which does not want to be thrown out. The garbage likes clinging to the corners of our minds and bodies. So in order to so spring cleaning, we have to look under the couch cushions even if it means finding potato chips, a barbie leg, and "is that...gerbil poop"?

If you've seen Spirited Away, Sen cleans the river spirit by pulling out all the junk that has become stuck inside him. There are bicycles, barrels, swing sets and plenty of mud and trash.

Sen rolls up her sleeves and dives into an overwhelming, stinky mess. And then, after all the garbage gets yanked out, what is left? The river spirit, small, clean, and happy. See him down below? He's really happy.

OK that's a weird kind of happy if you're not used to Miyazaki films, but still. Not every cleansing has to be as quick and violent as Sen's cleansing of the river spirit. In fact, sometimes going quickly makes it too difficult to proceed. If you believe that our souls have existed forever and will continue to exist, as I do, then it's possible that we've built up some of our faulty beliefs, hangups, addictions, and illnesses over millennia. And it's completely ok to take a really long time to slowly, gently, start healing. Although every once in a while, don't be surprised if you wake up with a fever to help jumpstart things.