My Missionary Experience

Today is the forth day of my experience as a missionary at OHI, the Optimum Health Institute in San Diego. California, to be exact in Lemon Grove a suburb of San Diego.  It is a sacred place where people from all over the world come to detox and heal.  Some have health issues while others are here simply to cleanse their body, mind and spirit.  It is amazing the many types of people who attend here from the most affluent types to the most laid back, evidenced by the cars in the lot that range from Mercedes to Prius.  Yet every person is on an even plane because here no one is "special" and no one thinks themselves above anyone else.  It feels like an ideal world where people understand that everyone is made of the same elements.  One can come here for a week, two weeks, three weeks or stay as long as you like.  Everyone is here to have their own experience and frankly by the look on some of the faces it is a tough one.  To look at yourself in every aspect and in such a profound way is not easy.  Here one can range the gamete if emotions and you could be crying one minute and laughing loudly the next.

I got here on Saturday and since then I had some training hands on and off.  I have already questioned myself and my motive for being here.  I already had moments of wanting to run out of here with my hair on fire.  I am learning that my dream of serving is just a dream and that now this experience will determine whether I truly have it in me and what I am truly made of.  I know that my commitment to be here for three months was lofty and that being here now is the real deal and the real test.  I cannot help but to think that God has made some much bigger sacrifices for me  than this one little sacrifice I am making by doing this work, his work.  I am serving others and I am serving myself by being here and committing to helping others do their inner work and doing my own.  I did not bank on it being this hard this soon and already I miss my family and my children and my  partner immensely.  I even miss all the comforts of home like a car, which I don't have here.

I keep thinking that there is a message here for me.  I keep asking myself: What am I doing here?  I have uncovered that I will be asked to do basic things like wash dishes or lead an exercise class and when I was washing dishes today for over and hour it felt demeaning and small.  A man with not one but two masters washing dishes?  My ego just started to scream it out to me.  What am I doing here in this place washing dishes of all things.  I thought I was special?  I thought I was better than the people who wash dishes every day or who do laundry for rich people.  I was so sadly mistaken and the truth is that I am not special  because that would make me better than them.  I have been called to do whatever it takes to help others and to help myself.  I have been asked to become one and see myself as a part of every human being regardless of their status or possessions.  I am being asked to become humble and to allow myself to be a part of something bigger.  I am being challenged to let go of my egotistic persona and become what God made of me and more of who I was meant to be.  This experience is going to last me my whole life through.  It requires that I stay in the flow and be guided by love and by spirit.  That I let go of my belief that joy comes from things.

I am humbled perhaps to my knees.  I am likely not there yet and I sense I will be soon.  I must be with this adventure, this journey, fearlessly committed to what I made a commitment to.  I am not yet sure what is ahead of me but I would rather not.  I am unsure of how I will make it for ninety days of my life but I sense it will require me to be in my faith and in my center.  This will be my spiritual awakening, my physical revolution and my emotional healing.  This will be the experience that I won't be able to fake but rather the one I must embrace.