6. All That You Can Leave Behind

The drum roll of memory is an insidious beast. Sometimes it brings you back, again and again, to all that you want to leave behind, but one has to proceed on the quest for a shiny, squeaky clean NOW.

 Letting go, then, is about trust. About believing that what is not meant to be held, must be released; and you will survive.

After considering all of these truths, I embarked on an enormous clearing spree. The external house came first. Pots, pans, old vessels, glasses with sediment in their insides, crockery, cutlery, files, papers, old linen, tatty inners, T-shirts that were never going to be possible to get back into, torn jeans, old photographs, letters, gifts, books, papers, bric-a-brac, scent bottles, stale cosmetics, candle stubs, sauces past the due date…. The stuff of life is, if viewed with a certain detachment, an illustration of who we were and the illusion we continue to cling to.

This logjam of things can be seen every time you walk into a home, perhaps your own, where things lie languishing. Even fraying sofa covers and dusty table tops laden with too many objects evoke stuck energy – as if both outer and inner space have frozen, mapping time in the hours and minutes.

Post the clearing of home and workspace, came the inner feng shui.

A friend, a well-known macrobiotics practitioner, suggested weekly doses of triphala and virechan (traditional body cleansers that promote purging) to rid the body of both bloat as well as physical and emotional toxins. (Elizabeth Hurley reportedly resorts to such cleanses.) She also prescribed miso soup. My own simple recipe for an internal clean sweep became: drink about three liters of water a day; one liter spiked with fresh lemon juice.  It makes the body alkaline while cleansing.

In a bid to re-align my body’s balance, my daily routine/diet (on good days, I admit) was as follows: On rising, I would drink water, bathe and meditate. Then eat a fruit, after which I would walk or practice yoga or a dance routine. Post this tea (sans sugar) and a cooked breakfast. At work, I would drink either coconut water or green tea and eat nuts. Lunch comprised salad with seeds, a pulse, veggies and brown rice. Snacks were ginger tea and prunes, figs or puffed rice. Dinner was a bowl of soup made with three or four vegetables and a handful of grains or khichdi (rice and lentils with asafoetida, black pepper and turmeric).

The message my body was receiving was that there was no need to hoard, or hold on to what was unwanted and/or toxic. And it began letting go. Pound by pound.

Love,
Venus

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Read Volume 7, here.

About the author: Born with a silver spoon, golden girl Venus is a bright and witty fifty-something, whose persona matches that of her archetype. A wordsmith by profession, she believes in saying it as it is. Cougar mommy, woman of the world, she is part diva, part agony aunt, who believes that her vulnerability is her strength. Her life’s mantra: Find beauty, purpose shall follow.