The Little Hunger Monster
I sit this morning, observing, raw and uprooted. What a powerful, crazy month for all of us. What a hunger we face.
The Buddhists say that attachment is the cause of all suffering, and that the ego and the mind can be problematic. In my January challenge to face my relationship with money, the symbol of all attachments, I had no idea I was hitting on a giant universal spiritual and political nailhead.
I've decided it's about growing ourselves to be bigger than our own greed. We can only do this individually. We can hold the heart of the collective in mind, but we each must deal with ourselves so we can find our way to each other.
When I decided to take on this challenge, I deliberately made it very known. People have different ideas about this. Some say if you make a big deal about a step you take, people's influence can set you back. Perhaps they will somehow undermine you, or perhaps you will be triggered by their efforts to help and "check up" on you. I have tried the quiet route with my goals in the past, and I have found that it permits my sneaky little hunger monster more room to trick me into letting him hijack the show.
I'm so glad I made this process public, even though it meant airing out my dirty laundry. I needed to out that little beast. I needed to own my shit. And the moment I did, angels in the form of humans arrived, guiding me to the bowels of my problems. Literally, Yotam guided and supported me all the way to detoxing my gut, using food, self discipline and self love.
After all, this is about confronting that sneaky little hunger monster that is a universal part of human nature. Why is he there? What is the nature of this beast?
I have my own thoughts about this. He is there to test us, to challenge us to rise up to our own potential. He is potentially also there to destroy us.
Take a look around. At this very point in time, our entire human family is in a major state. Some of us are wondering when our next meal will come, or whether our family will be uprooted. Some of us are fretting about 95% of things that really don't matter because we are lost in a world of money. Some of us are losing our shit, grabbing whatever we want by the pussy, and choking the life out of our gentleness. And of course, there's all the in-between.
We can't change each other. We can love each other, and we can cheer each other on, but every single one of us has our own work cut out.
At one point in the process of growing my business, I heard someone say somewhere that people with a lot of power can be upswept by greed. I noticed a twinge of guilt in myself. Maybe I was working so hard to feed by hungry monster. I didn't want to do all this work for the wrong reasons.
I sang a song to mother Kali for forty days, praying to have my ego wiped. Please help me to clean my karma. Please help me to take responsibility for my victimhood, for my power and for my precious life. Please help me to do right by God, by myself, and especially by others.
At the end of that forty-day cycle, this challenge landed in my lap.
Owning a business has brought me to meet the face of the hungry little monster eye to eye. He's a scraggly little beast and he jumps all over the place. He shape-shifts and pretends to make an innocent request for something beneficial, only to stab me in the back. He sweet-talks me and tells me he's my friend when I'm exhausted and alone at the end of the day. He takes my naive kindness and shits all over it. He has no respect, no boundaries, and no work ethic. He wants what he wants.
He has destroyed relationships with people I thought were my friends. I used to think I had to buy friendship with excessive kindness and generosity. I used to think I could solve people's problems, that I could fix their poverty or their addictions in the same way I had fixed my own. But I didn't fix it. The hungry monster loves that shit. He vampires it deep out of my neck, giving me a high and a false sense of connection. The next day, everything I've worked for is gone.
My choices. My karma. My lack of belief in myself.
This month taught me to be loving and inquisitive about my hunger. To suspend judgment, take my own hands and eyes in the mirror, and grow bigger than the monster.
Grow bigger than the rage and grief inside me, from the things that were taken from me. Hold the ball of life force in my hands that is my karma, the accumulation of all the choices and actions I've made.
There is a moment of deep pain, that taps on my heart like a junkie. And there is a moment when I finally tell him no.
Then there's a gap of time, the gap we all fear. Am I going to lose my shit, without my fix? Will I be alone forever? Will I drown in sadness? Will I ever be able to experience happiness without the surge of dopamine that was whatever vice allowed me to shut the door on my own emotions?
This morning, each morning I rise now to face myself. I sit with yoga and meditation teachers online, and it may always be a challenge to convince myself to do that work. Today I'm grappling with my coffee addiction, and a heart full of sadness because the trust I built in a work relationship has been broken. I wish I could escape.
I wish I could escape the lack of regard my mom takes for the hell I have been through. I wish I could escape the little girl crying alone on the playground, waiting for hours alone after school for a ride. I wish I could escape the years of toxic relations haunting me, and the blame I put on myself in an attempt to tell myself those people were better than they really were.
But I can't.
The pain swims around in there in my heart and gut, and I've removed the stuff I used to chase it down with. Now, I decompress and learn how to be big, how to grow up.
The hungry monster feeds on the repressed pain. I've got to face him, to starve him, and ultimately to love him.
So it's a daily dance. It's a brush with that curious feeling, a mixture of curiosity and fear. It's a rising waterfall of tears that ultimately cleanse me and become the fountain of life. I'm touching it, I'm swimming in it, and I'm gaining faith I won't drown.
And neither will we, the people.
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