Locating the Darkness Within

For those of you who are curious, I ended up doing the last juice fast for 7 1/2 days, starting on the evening of October 4th and ending on the afternoon of the 12th. My friend Alex, who was also fasting, went about 5 days on this fast; pretty good for her first major fast 🙂

The experience was a powerful one, as you might imagine, I feel much more connected to everything now. These sorts of experiences have the potential to alter the very core of your being and call into a critical light the habits that we rarely expend any effort to contemplate during the normal course of our day.

I find myself continually confronted with the two polarities, the tree of life and the tree of death: one the one hand we can follow our cravings and desires; living a very pleasurable life which will one day catch up with us (the age-old law of cause and effect), or we can take the more difficult path and learn the discipline necessary to expunge the myriad of egos and emotions that try to control us.

The choice is really easily made, but keeping the right intention, and learning how to truly defeat the dark forces within can be an epic battle, especially if we tend to steer clear of at our own complete selves in a critical light.

I’ve discovered more of the dark truths within myself and, in the process, discovered just how strong the innate will is to learn from this and prevail over these forces. It seems like the fight is best fought when the mind is peaceful and we surround our selves, as much as possible, with people who project a loving intention. Everything beyond that seems to be handled by our higher selves, who are probably handling much more than you will ever consciously know.

I want to thank everyone for their support and encouragement during the experience. I especially want to thank Alex for being so open to new ideas and braving all of the pain and misery that comes along with these kinds of things.