60 Day Juice Feast – Day 32

Wow. Intensity on Day 32, holy guacamole. Yesterday was the most powerful day of my juice feast so far, perhaps one of the most powerful days I’ve ever had. I was hitting a lot of emotional stuff in the earlier part of the day – feeling really distraught and irritable.

While running some errands in a nearby town, I was having, for the first time, some issues with blood sugar dropping and was getting a little dizzy. Luckily, as David has advised me, if one is in that situation on a juice feast and they don’t have access right away to juice, an emergency measure is to get one of those Odwalla juices. 

Yes, they are pasteurized, and one does NOT want to get into the habit of getting those because they don’t feel juices, but they its nice to have that backup. Anyways, I got two of their green juices and felt much better after that. However, I was stilling feeling increasingly burdened emotionally throughout the day. A few hours later at home I started to feel wierd again – both physically, like I needed some juice or food, and also the emotional agitation. So, I ate some bee pollen (a little more than I need for sure) and even ate a few grapes because I felt so panicked for something.

And that’s when I sort of spiraled – a lot of stuff started coming up for me, including things from the past that were triggered from this experience, particularly residual thought patterns from the time of my life when I was suffering from so much food addiction. I started out with a lot of anger at myself – believing that I had just messed up my juice feast, that I had failed, that I was weak. I was ready to quit. I even had the thought, “Who do I think I am to think I can do something like this successfully?”

I went through storms of emotions including anger, sadness, grief, rage, and helplessness. I don’t remember the last time I cried that hard – I knew I was releasing a lot of past energy, so I allowed myself to go deep in it. I was absolutely shaking and heaving. But something interesting happened. I felt so much dissolve and melt away from me. I let myself let it all go. If anyone (and I’m sure most of us have), has gotten to the point that they’ve felt, expressed, and let go of so much to the point of exhaustion that they get to this empty stillness that has totally surrendered and is still with no preferences. And from that stillness, I felt a firm, powerful part of myself that I’ve never felt so strongly, come through and I decided I was absolutely through with settling, I was done with worrying about finances and weight, and I refused to be battling with myself. I was almost angry with the feeling that I was never going to abuse myself with self hate and disapproval anymore. I refused to berate myself for mistakes anymore. I decided with complete conviction that I deserve every bit of success I have the potential of achieving, in all realms. I soon felt incredible relief and strength. It is amazing how I think I understand the importance of compassion for oneself – as I have written about before – loving the process and seeing it as perfect in its unfolding – and then I heal deeper and realize there is even further that I can go with that.

Another epiphany I had was the realization that I have a tendency to sabotage my success. It is reflected, for example, in the behaviors such as the one I have described – I mess up a little and I berate myself for screwing everything up, and in the past, I would give up altogether. I realized that on some level, I have been afraid of how powerful I know I can be. I have, in backwards ways, been behaving in ways that are slowing my progress on the juice feast (eating too much bee pollen, not doing enemas, not exercising). I realized that I haven’t believed I really deserve to transform into an amazingly attractive woman, or to be successful in other ways.

It was truly incredible – just a few bites of grapes and bee pollen which triggered an incredible emotional and spiritual healing. It would not have come up if I wasn’t on a Juice feast and I had the vice of food in my life – even the ‘perfect diet’ of organic raw vegan food. I don’t have to stop my juice feast just because I had a few grapes and too much bee pollen. I didn’t mess it all up and I haven’t nullified all the wonderful cleansing I have done. In fact, what an incredible gift this experience was. I feel lighter and more at peace than I ever have, and I am realizing the incredible opportunity that this juice feast really is. When we talk Juice Feasting, we talk about it being ‘A Hero’s Journey‘ and we talk about ‘Life Transformation‘. I’m realizing just how real those terms are. Things will come up for us when we take on something like a juice feast. I have more of a history of food addiction than most people, but a lot of us do have trouble breaking away from food, and I think we need to be compassionate in our process of doing that on a Juice Feast.

It is not usually our successes which teach us the most, it is our ‘mistakes’. For me, its no longer about drinking juice, doing some cleansing, losing a bit of weight and trying to get to 92 days perfectly without messing up at all. This is truly about life transformation, and sometimes the transformation to radiance of health, mind and spirit is a truly intense and radical one. How can we expect to transform ourselves if we are not challenged, and how do we embrace that challenge if we believe it is wrong to have it and we have failed in encountering it? It is about choosing compassion and love for ourselves, and it is about reclaiming our power, no matter who might feel uncomfortable about us being too successful or too happy. It is about being at peace with ourselves and without inner conflict about our decisions. It’s about finding why we act in contradiction to what we know we want to achieve.

It’s not about pushing ourselves to the ultimate 92 days because we feel like we have to – its about being true to ourselves and making sound, clear choices, whatever that means for each of us. It is about enjoyment and opportunity, taking everything day by day. My view on this whole process of Juice Feasting has totally shifted since last night. This juice feast, everything we are doing in the way of achieving health, is about a much bigger picture. Eating a certain way or cleansing is about creating an environment to heal what we need to and to cultivate love and compassion, so that we can start to feel joy for all these experiences, and using our life’s journey and lessons to help and inspire other people. The work doesn’t stop once we’ve found a great diet or cleansing program – it has just started. It is all about healing and letting go of anything that is holding us back from our fullest joy and potential, and in time, sharing that with others. That’s what this juice feast is now about for me.

Thank you all for being so supportive, and thank you for allowing me to be so transparent and honest with you all – I hope it can be of inspiration. I am glad that this blog can be an honest journal of my inner transformation. We are all on remarkable journeys and I am honored to be able to share some of mine.