The Search
There is a delicate balance between experimenting with what life has to offer, to using our encounter with life as a search and rescue mission. So often we get caught in the search outside ourselves, looking for purpose, meaning, and self-worth as a means of fulfillment. We buy the latest gadget. We try the newest fad. We date the flavor of the month in hopes he or she is the one. We fall prey to the idea that “New Is Always Better” and it is easy to do so as we are not at a loss of variety or choices, especially in America.
In 2017, I was surprised to see that upon my return from three separate trips abroad, for a distinguishable amount of time, that there was always a plethora of new products at the grocery store and it was starkly noticeable. I had been so accustomed to the limited choices in foreign countries, often because the products were based on the seasons, that when I returned to the United States I was rather overwhelmed by not only the amount of food but also the range of choices we had in each category. For example, there had only been a couple of companies that produced broth (meat, chicken, or veggie) but by the end of 2017 there was an influx in brands and types: Turmeric Chicken Broth, Vietnamese Beef Bone Broth, and Powdered Bone Broth, for example. Some of the brands even touted freshness but that just meant that the expiration date approached faster than the others. I not only noticed expansion in the broth industry but also within the granola bar and fermented drink departments. Some look at such an increase in choices to signify that the market is expanding, making it a good thing, especially in the area of healthy food products, but at what point does a sect expand so much so that variety can become a contagious virus, having us continuously cycling from one new item to the next, which, in the end, is probably what these companies want. We already see this with the launch of a new iPhone every year.
As we attempt to approach life in a more healthy fashion, albeit with food, books, spiritual groups, exercise, meditation, etc, sometimes less is more. We are blessed to live in a time when there is a smorgasbord of choices but sometimes such variety can paralyze us in our ability to discern what is best for us. It can create static in the channel as we endeavor to listen to ourselves. Recently, an acupuncturist shared with me her philosophy in treating patients. She stated that she recommends them to try one thing at a time to see what works. Often her patients will change a lot of things at once in addition to starting acupuncture treatments. She highlights the importance of listening to our bodies and intuition and experimenting with one thing at a time so as to correlate the results. In so many words, she describes the benefit of digesting self-knowledge one bite at time and not getting lost in a sea of flavors, forgetting the original intention of why we were looking for nourishment and healing in the first place.
Yet, there is a benefit of playing with plenty. As we enter the cycle of search and seize, the fact is that in the end the same feeling will come over us again and again; that feeling that whatever it is we were playing with or purchased did not hit the spot and left us wanting more, re-entering the cycle. Eventually, we will wake up from the sequence and begin to search for something real. Thus, playing with plenty can aid in our wake up call.
Whole30 is a nutrition regimen that calls for experimentation. The premise is to avoid food items that create havoc for the body, digestively and hormonally. But like all other nutritional regimens, cleanses, and fasts, it, too, calls for the participants to look at how food can be self-soothing and used as a coping mechanism, rather than feeling into our emotions and hunger, questioning ourselves, “What is it that I truly seek?”
Many spiritual teachers would say that a craving is a call for love, that really what we are in search of is that simple. We mistake love for all the other items on the shelves in the grocery store, “looking for love in all the wrong places.” We get caught up in the “new and improved” and overlook the original. We were created in Love and created as Love, thus what could feed love other than love? In the spiritual text, A Course in Miracles, Jeshua speaks of the search for that which keeps us from love, those blocks we put between ourselves and the Truth. He encourages us to let that search be our plight, to look for the walls we have built and begin to tear them down one by one, coming home to that one source of nourishment that we need not search for because we already have it, ourselves.
“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find the barriers within yourself that you have built against it. It is not necessary to seek for what is true, but it is necessary to seek for what is false”
(ACIM Text Chapter 16, IV, 6:1-2).
The mission, should we choose it, is to be in search of that false nourishment, those empty calories: from the false fulfillment of a Snickers Bar to the false snickers we give ourselves in self-judgment believing we are not good enough. Our journey is to see through the illusion to the original, the love in which we were born. We bring our awareness to the search of oneself, the one who need not be rescued, merely recognized and remembered.
“I was created as the thing I seek” (ACIM Lesson 318 1:5).
It is not to say that we should not enjoy the variety life has to offer. Of course, enjoy all you like, but just be aware that the power lies in your attachment. There is liberation in trying something just to try it, not because it holds some significant outcome or may grant you something in particular, that would be giving your power away. Rather when you give something a go in pure freedom and joy, without any strings attached, now that is real play and a whole new way of participating in life. When we no longer burden the outer world with the mindset of a search and rescue mission, we no longer expect others to heal us, love us, cure us, solve us, figure us out, fulfill us, etc. Only then are we free to experience life fully and be fed from a real source of nourishment. This is a balance worth searching for and worth our time, as we search the walls of separation keeping us from what is already ours. Remember that YOU are always better than anything new, just as you are. What you have been searching for, you already are. Namaste.