as we go up, we go down

Master Cleanse Day 6:  this is my fourth time fasting using the Master Cleanse system.  At the end of this stretch, I will have completed four 10 day fasts, for a total of forty days, but hey, who's counting?

Who is counting?

The Master Cleanse is often marketed as a quick fix diet, an exercise in scientific starvation that will allow those desperate to lose weight to do so in 7-10 days.  It isn't weight that is designed to stay off, just weight that you want to disappear for a wedding, Prom, or any event that you gotta lose weight for, to pretend to folks that you aren't the fat ass you think you are.  If this is what you want, it will do this, but if you go into it with a "lust of result" I doubt that you're going to find much success adhering to the prescribed discipline.  This not eating food thing is not easy.

I went into the MC for the first time five years ago.  I had recently stopped drinking and had quit smoking, and was interested in finding some sort of "cleanse" to rid myself of "toxins".  I happened to have a conversation with an extended family member who recommended the MC, and she said it was an incredibly satisfying experience.  Now, I had first heard of the MC, also known as "the lemonade diet," on the Howard Stern show.  Robin Quivers claimed to have lost a ton of weight drinking this new-agey hippy concoction of lemon juice, maple syrup, cayenne pepper, and water.  I thought it was a bullshit hoax, but now, when I'm thinking of doing a cleanse,  someone I trust and respect was telling me that the MC was legit.  I started the next day.

I wasn't going into it for the quick fix diet angle, and to be honest, I wasn't really going into it for the "cleanse".  I was really looking for Enlightenment.  I was already feeling high and mighty because I was able to stop drinking for five months, and I had quit smoking for seven.  I figured a ten day fast could only heighten my discipline and reveal some subtle occult truth embedded in the universe.  Mystics of the past fasted all the time, right?  I was in it for Glory.

I lost over 25 pounds over the next ten days.  I didn't achieve Enlightenment.  I didn't find Glory.  I did find some sort of twisted respect from friends and family, as in the "wow, I could never do that, but then again, you're out of your fuckin' mind" kind of respect.

I proceeded to gain all 25 pounds back over the next four months, and then all of sudden, I found that I weighed more than I ever had.  I then decided to do the MC a second time,  but this time, to be honest, simply to lose the weight.  I did it for the quick-fix.

What I found during this second MC was the overwhelming power and volume of the inner voice of my own Ego.  A very sly son of a bitch, who tried every trick to get me to cheat and abandon the MC after the third day.  Days four, five, and six were as difficult as anything I have ever tried to not do.  My Ego would build me up, telling me just how great I was doing, and how disciplined I was, how no one else could ever be so STRONG.  And because I was so STRONG, I deserved to have a Gatorade, just one, because having one Gatorade would not be cheating, it would be a REWARD, and hey, I fuckin' deserve a REWARD.

I almost, but never did, drink that Gatorade.  I made it the whole ten days, and afterward, I really did transform my lifestyle.  I rededicated myself to physical fitness, did more yoga, became more aware of the foods I ate…it was re-imprinting at its finest.

Then slowly but surely, the effects of the second MC slowly dissipated, and old habits started to creep in….

I did my third MC right before my final year of Nursing School, three years after my second MC.   This time I understood the MC as a way to prepare myself for the challenge ahead of me, to re-imprint the changes I had made before, and to see if I still had it in me to do actually go ten days without eating food.  I wasn't looking for Enlightenment, and I wasn't looking to lose weight, I simply wanted to focus.

Once again, I met up with my Ego and wrestled with it.   I noticed the core aspect of this battle, which had something to do with punishment and reward.  Somehow it was my Ego that had gotten me into the MC, as a way to prove to myself and others that I was capable of completing a Heroic Dose of self-discipline (for the Average American, a ten day fast IS a Heroic Dose.   I believe this because most people around me say they could never do it and would never do it.   Others said they had tried but could only stay on for three to five days).

 The MC Punishes the Ego without any explicit Reward.  Fasting works on the Body and the Mind, and slowly I realized that my Ego is actually separate from these two.  It is a parasite.  Parasites aren't necessarily bad, and they aren't necessarily good.  They are both and neither.  They are Quantum companions.

This begs the question:  why would my Ego throw me into this mess?  During the MC my Ego becomes very confused.  Just when it gets excited about the success, it realizes there will be no reward.  Just when it gets very depressed, it remembers that the Body it is a part of is repairing and resting itself.  The Ego no longer controls the game, it isn't the Paddle, it is the Ball, and like a game of Ping-Pong, it bounces back and forth and back and forth and back and forth.


"When the student has acquired sufficient detachment from first-circuit anxieties, second-circuit emotions and third-circuit reality maps, by way of asana, pranayama, and dharana or mantra, Patanjali recommends the practice of yama.  This includes, but is not limited to, celibacy.  The ultimate of yama is to lose all interest in both the social and sexual aspects of the fourth-circuit; to cease to care at all about family, tribal, or societal matters.  This is accomplished by self-denial, which is easier for those skilled in asana, pranayama and dharana, but still requires intense determination."

Robert Anton Wilson, Prometheus Rising

I will never forget the seventh day of my third MC.  The seventh day was a day where I fell in love with the Universe.  All of my senses were pushed to 11.  I could feel the sunshine penetrating every molecule of every form around me.  I was bathing in the Light.  Sound and smell exploded around me like fireworks.  Regardless of whether you believe me or not, you have to recognize that the experience was subject to the relativity of the six day reality that had proceeded that day.  Or maybe the 34 year reality that had proceeded that day.  Or maybe from the Big Bang until that day.

The experience of the seventh day was simply an opportunity to notice a particular dimension of reality, one that is always there.  I can't LIVE in IT,  but the MC provides a path one can follow to RETURN to IT.  What was odd was that in this experience, I uncovered a memory that I had forgotten:  the seventh day of my second MC was exactly like this.  I had simply forgotten it.   How?

All this being said, the day after day seven, day eight, was enjoyable, but not as intense as day seven.  While I spent day eight in the afterglow of realization and wonder, days 9 and ten were excruciatingly dull and painful.  As I limped across the final hours of my third MC, I made a very disturbing decision, a decision that in retrospect was not an all too crazy decision:  I got absolutely hammered.

DRUNK.  Real drunk.  I had finished the MC, but for health and safety reasons, I wasn't able to eat solid food for another 24 hours.  My Ego commanded my attention and suggested that I drink beer, as a Reward for my outstanding achievement.  In reality, and in hindsight, all I was doing was trying to get back to the feeling I had on that seventh day.  I was in fact grieving.  So I started with beer, and finished with whisky, and, for a while, I felt AMAZING.  But I woke up the next day and I felt death swimming inside every cell of my body.  I could actually feel my liver weeping actual liver tears.  The horror, the horror…..

I started MC #4 this Monday.  There is more to learn here….