The last blog about «purifying the mind» asked if there was an alternative popular word for "purify". There is: it is "detox". But do you detox your mind or your body?
A few blogs ago I talked about the Mind v Body debate and other dialectics in developing a personal identity. I promised to tell you how mind (thesis) and body (antithesis) are synthesized.
The recent blog on purifying yourself has reminded me of that promise because to detox your mind is a different kettle of fish to detoxing your body.
Body v Mind is generated by an Identity Approach named "Emotional Being". If you combine «Body + Mind», the synthesis is «The Self». Do you agree that your Self is both your mind and your body? I hope so, because you can't have a Self without having both of these. This higher level Identity Approach is named "Individual Being". What then catalyzes personal development of The Self? The answer is «The Other». Can «Self + Other» be synthesized? Yes: in "Relational Being", and so on upwards.
However I want to go downwards.
If «Body» is the ground state of Emotional Being, what was fused to produce it? That's hard without knowing the Identity Approaches. The approach at the level below is called «Vital Being» because it bases personal existence in bodily feelings and activities (e.g. via sport).
The ground state of Vital Being is found in Instinctual functioning, and the development catalyst is provided by Symbolic functioning. These are both spontaneous biological functions. Let me a give an example using a popular favorite: sex.
Sexuality is an instinct. Just releasing and gratifying the sex drive creates a sense of personal existence. It may be animal-like, but it's great fun, compulsively gratifying and sustains well-being.
A personal identity using the sexual instinct can be developed with suitable symbols. So sexual activity might symbolize freedom, or depravity, or affectionate attachment. Each symbolization takes you and your social ife, your identity, in a different direction.
Notice that the symbolic function can do amazing things. When it operates, it produces an equation. So sexual activity is not abstract or metaphorical, no, it is a direct expression of experience: Sex = Freedom (or Sex = Depravity &c.) You have sex = you experience freedom = you are free. It's as simple and direct and unambiguous as that. And you are 100% convinced … but only if you fully and primarily identify yourself via Vital Being. If you operate with a different mentality for self-development, then you are too sophisticated and the equation won't work so well. Sorry about that.
Have you got the hang of how this works? Great. Let's get to the heart of this blog—the way that self-purification relates to the instinctual aspects of eating/drinking and excretion of waste.
Ingestion and excretion all happen as part of normal physiology. There are psychological aspects, but these processes do not have to be related intimately to personal identity. But, if you are a Vital Being, then these bodily processes automatically define your existence as a person. They are part of the instinctual functioning that grounds your identity. That is the way it is.
So far, so good.
The next step is to see what happens when you want to develop your identity. Personal growth for a Vital Being-type person involves symbolization and it is easy for eating and drinking to equate to taking in goodness, and excretion to become symbolically equivalent to removing badness. You want to feel good? Just eat and drink good, fresh (clean) food. You are feeling bad? It must be a toxin, perhaps something you ate. You should purify yourself and, because you are a Vital Being, that means taking action on the body. A detox is called for.
To repeat: As a vital being, you want to purify your mind? Good—do it by detoxing your body.
Here's how.
First step: absorb fantastical beliefs. Then go on a diet. It may be weird and dangerous, but it is often simple diet advice dressed up to cash in on the fad. Always drink a lot of water—preferably purified and distilled. Cleansing toxins from your tissues is harder but colonic irrigation will come to the rescue. When you see the faecal irrigation fluid (and many therapists wish to show you), you just know badness is being washed out of you.
Medical experts are unequivocal that there is no scientific basis for any of this. But, of course, they do not focus on psychosocial reality or recognize human identity. So what do they know? The goal to remove inner badness is definitely worthwhile: the problem is that a "detox" is based on believing and knowing that personal badness is a body matter.
Do people get benefit? Because there is a symbolic equation, the person who undergoes detox will almost certainly feel much better. And feeling better is worthwhile—I'm a great believer here. But the detox process hardly enables empathic intuition and spiritual progress.
Self-deception and egocentric urges also make you feel better, which is precisely why they are so hard to handle. Clean water and enemas won't do the trick. If you want to purify yourself, to detox your mind, so as to enable a better world for you or anyone else, you must reflect, think and discuss with someone you trust. That's work: but it wasn't my idea—it's just the way it is.
Time to move up a level.
WK
About
Warren Kinston