“Loneliness does not come from having no people about one, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself, or from holding certain views which others find inadmissible.” - Carl Jung
“It’s loneliness! Of course it is.” I woke at approximately 6am on Friday morning, with crystal clarity on the answer to a mystery that’d recently arisen inside of me. In the week since completing another sixty day juice fast, I was forced to question my entire way of being. It’s something I’ve done to varying degrees since my first sixty day juice fast, six and a half years earlier. I had just broken new ground in my self-analysis, getting to a root cause of many of my unconscious needs and behaviours.
Over half a decade spent stripping back the layers of my psyche, I’m better able to understand why I do the things I do. The journey to uncover what motivates my actions has simultaneously been the most challenging and the most worthwhile experience of my life. Through insights gained by occasionally choosing the acute stress of a fast, or cold temperatures (amongst other tools), I’ve alleviated much of the chronic stress that arose from self-destructive, unconscious patterns.
IGNORANCE
Ignorance is not bliss. If a part of your psyche remains unconscious and you are unaware of it’s needs, then this shadowy part will move you to act in an unconscious way to have it’s needs fulfilled. A common example of this is the chronic over eater who desperately wants to lose weight but keeps finding themselves ordering fast food and avoiding exercise. It can leave a person feeling like a victim because of the lack of control in the way that they’re acting, wondering why they do it.
“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” - Carl Jung
In the past ten days, I’ve shone the light of awareness onto a dark part of my psyche that was causing all kinds of undesirable behaviour. It helped me tie together a tendency to over-work, desire to over-eat, compulsion to binge listen to podcasts or audio books, suffer the chronic inflammation I’ve experienced and more. I had managed to cut myself off from many of these behaviours through denial and rejection over the past six years, until the fast pushed much of it back to the surface.
The reemergence of old patterns has helped me reconnect with my younger, troubled self. I’ve spent years hiding from him, lacking any compassion and love for an important part of my past. I had failed to acknowledge and integrate this part of my being into a whole and complete self. Truth is, that overweight, chronically ill guy was a total badass. Recently doing the same sixty day juice fast as him has made me appreciate how tough it was, and I have a new found respect for that guy.
This internal shift was prompted by the carefully made plan to reintroduce solid food to my diet after the fast. Despite being Spartan-strict during the fast and sticking to it militantly, I really struggled to maintain the same discipline on the other side of it. The type of food I planned wasn’t an issue, but I struggled over portion control. When eating carrots and hummus, I wanted to smash through the whole tub. Instead of a small handful of organic, mixed nuts, I wanted to eat half the bag.
AWARENESS
The process of getting to the bottom of why I had strong desire to overeat was a tough and scary week or so. On Jan’ 2nd, I was revisited by chronic pain and inflammation for half a day, for the first time in six and a half years. With the help of a great friend who was there to help me unpack what was going on, the pain I suffered went as quickly as it came and within a day I was back to doing a full yoga practice no problem. It stands as the most bizarre thing to have ever happened in my life.
Four hours of full blown arthritic pain coming and going from seemingly nowhere, I was forced to sit up and take notice. My body was speaking a violent language that it hadn’t needed to resort to for many, many years. I knew it wouldn’t have spoken up like this unless it was serious, and I believe my willingness to pay attention and listen was what caused the pain to recede so quickly. The first revelation that I’d come to was that this pain was screaming in protest against my plan to continue strict discipline.
It was essential for me to relax and let go. I had been putting pressure on myself with the fast and writing my book as quickly as possible while trying to juggle life’s other obligations and pressures. I was reminded of a favourite book of mine, “When the Body Says No” by Dr. Gabor Maté. Old pain reemerging alongside a desire to overeat, as well as a continued pattern of overworking and compulsively listening to audiobooks or podcasts were pointers towards something much deeper.
ACTION
I wasn’t immediately clear as to what the root of my discomfort was, or why these patterns had reemerged after my fast, but the mystery unraveled over the next week of synchronous events. The right conversations with the right people firstly lead me down a path of total relaxation. I let go of my disciplined routine that more often than not was filled with actions loaded by ulterior motive. My original plan involved lot of ‘doing’ things as a means of getting to a greater end goal. I needed more ‘being’.
I put writing my book to one side. I just expressed for the joy of expression itself. I wrote poetry and blog entries like this. I sang and an icaro medicine song came to me, which I may well record and share in a future blog entry if I can pick up enough courage. Sometimes I ate too much. I let days go here and there without much physical exercise. I really relaxed. I reached out to some of my friends and shared what I was going through with a real open heart and it was so good to feel truly understood.
It was one of these conversations with a friend that helped me get to the root of these seemingly disparate old patterns causing my discomfort since the start of the year. Specifically focusing on this insatiable hunger, my friend suggested that perhaps I was trying to fill a hole that food could never be the solution to. It had crossed my mind that I had been eating as a form of self-soothing for some unconscious sore spot, but I didn’t realise exactly what I was trying to soothe until the next day: loneliness.
I’ve built a whole business that centres around human connection, and spent the last year living alone in my apartment through subsequent national lockdowns. This time last year I had just started a new series of workshops called, “Giant Awakening”. A new focus and different outdoor activities each month, all with the ultimate aim of helping people awaken to who they really are deep down, and live a life in alignment with that. I got three months in before gathering in groups became illegal.
“Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” - George Santayana
I had forgotten what had happened in the past when I became totally isolated during the time of my illness. For years, I would see my parents once each week for dinner out of a sense of obligation, and spent the entire remainder of the week alone. I went so far as to only go to the local supermarket ten minutes from closing time and use the self-service checkout to avoid any human contact. It lead to a horrendous loneliness in my heart and a disconnection that left me suicidally depressed.
RECONNECTION
It was during my stay in Peru at SpiritQuest Sanctuary, where I was living exactly six years ago at the time of writing, that I found the tonic of time spent with like-minded others. This was as life changing as anything else I experienced in the Amazon, and that’s saying something. I came home and over the next few years, built a large community of ‘The Others’ through Dash & Splash; a community event getting people active outdoors and into the sea. I found good friends through my physical training as well.
It seems like a healthy enough approach toward curing loneliness; to find like-minded others and enjoy spending time with them. In hindsight, maybe it was just a healthier crutch than the over eating and other patterns that have been wanting to push their way back into my life recently. Perhaps I never really healed the core loneliness within my heart, and that’s what I’m really taking time to look at now through spiritual practice, self acceptance and just ‘being’ instead of my need to constantly ‘do’.
The absence of community and denying myself other forms of self-soothing like food was enough to cause a serious bout of physical pain and I’m not going back there. I know it’s important to heal this and not just keep searching for new and better crutches. When the time comes that I meet the right woman, I don’t want to have to depend on her to feel whole. I don’t wish to end up in another co-dependent relationship and be condemned to repeat that part of my past as well. I know I’m on the right track; keep ‘being’ without an ulterior motive. Keep openly expressing my truth like in this blog post.
RELEVANCE
The relevance that I’m on a healing journey connected to faith, being, connection and self acceptance in a time of global cynicism, doing, disconnection and self loathing feels meaningful. I’m walking the path of the wounded healer. In gaining lived experience of healing these parts of my psyche, I’ll be enabled to help others heal similar issues in a time when these things have never been more prevalent in society. Never has the world been more disconnected, and not only due to the pandemic.
Even before the lockdowns and social distancing created more barriers between people, the lack of connection that people had to each other, to nature, and to their spirituality were real issues in our society. Family units don’t live together like they used to. Screens and social media have now stunted multiple generations’ growth in developing simple social skills and means of physical interaction. The irony isn't lost on me that you’re reading this on a screen, but often real change starts from within.
Morpheus had to plug into the Matrix to awaken Neo, taking him from the unconscious dream state into the harsh, conscious reality behind the veil. So what will you choose now, Neo? The blue pill and continue self soothing inner issues through food, Netflix, coffee, porn, alcohol, whatever vice your subconscious has found to care for the wounded parts of your psyche? Or are you going to take the red pill? Begin looking at uncomfortable truths, truly healing and reprogramming your subconscious patters.
At this point in time, I’m not currently taking on more 1-to-1 coaching clients, but if that’s something that you know is the next step on your journey, then send an email to scott@causewayliving.com and let me know. Please do not take the decision to add your name to this list lightly. This is the deepest work that I’m aware of; bypassing who you think you are and getting to the truth of who you really are. Whether we walk together on this path or not, max respect to those of you who choose follow it.
Much love and thanks for reading this entry,
