Detox is big business. For years, there has been well-marketed enthusiasm about detoxifying the body. “So-and-so’s (insert name of famous person) marvellous 7, 14 or 28 day detox plan will make you feel so much younger, vital, radiant etc. etc.” Bookshops abound with titles on the subject and, inevitably, celebrity-endorsed products are available in shops and pharmacies for us all to spend our cash on.
Perhaps we have moved on a little from one-food fasts and the fashion of colonic irrigation. Instead, now we can buy gadgets that liquidise vegetable matter that no-one would normally eat so that we can pour various green or brown concoctions down our throats without having to chew or taste anything. Who knew paradise would be like this? Call me old-fashioned, but what some people swallow as super-food looks too much to me like the slurry farmers spread on the fields around here.
No doubt some of these plans, diets and so forth work well. Whether it is due to laziness or denial I’m not sure, but this form of self-torture doesn’t appeal to me. I still have my own teeth and I’d like to keep on using them for as long as possible. And if I choose to eat kale now and again, it will be cooked and chewed before I swallow it.
For some folk this strange way of ingesting food as liquid is the bees knees. In the meantime, the makers of the various high-speed blenders, bullets and whatever else are no doubt very grateful. .And in all fairness, it has been proved beyond any doubt that filling the body with toxins and junk food can make us feel pretty awful, so there must be benefits. Please don’t get me wrong – a detox may well do a lot of good.
Detox the mind as well as the body
But life isn’t ruled by the body and we are not just a body, so if we are going to detoxify ourselves, wouldn’t it be good to find something that detoxifies the mind and emotions as well? After all, it is the mind and emotions that govern our thinking, our speech and our behaviour – which includes the act of putting food into our bodies.
If we can look after the mind and emotions, the body will follow suit. It never ceases to amaze me that we humans are quite happy to spend time in the bathroom in the morning so that we look presentable and our bodies don’t get whiffy but very few people are prepared to spend a few minutes preparing the mind for the day ahead.
Some spiritual teachers with considerable insight have said that if we could see the polluting effects of our minds and emotions on the world, we would be shocked to see how devastating they are – far worse than what we normally term pollution.
Love is the greatest detox
Love purifies because it uplifts our mind. The “rate of vibration” of the mind is raised when we express or feel 
love. In old spiritual parlance, the mind is quickened.
As the mind becomes lighter, so do the emotions and our vitality – we are happier and have more energy. We know this from our own experience. As these aspects of our being become lighter, dross or impurities are thrown off.
Imagine a plate or a turntable that is spinning slowly. Objects on it stay where they are purely from their inertia; their own weight keeps them where they are. Now imagine the spinning action speeding up. The objects start to move towards the edge through centrifugal force. The faster the rate of spin, the closer to the edge they go and eventually they are thrown off.
Something similar happens to our system. Negative thinking and negative emotions start to get thrown off by the lighter, positive energy that starts to flow through us as we love more and become happier. This effect on mental, emotional and vital levels of our being also carries through to the physical level. Those who have a deep love for all around them build up fewer toxins from the environment because the body throws them off far more readily.
So love is a great purifier. No, it’s the greatest purifier we can have. We don’t go around trying to love in order to have a “grand detox”, of course, but it is helpful to understand that love is hugely transforming and has only positive benefits. And it’s free.
Based on an extract from The Great Little Book of Happiness available here.
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