A misogi is an event that pushes you to your limits, forcing you to confront your fears and weaknesses. Michael Easter says it is so difficult that you’re only 50% sure that you can complete it, and you can’t die.
In my book, Purposeful Living, I wrote about challenges making us feel alive. I experienced it doing R2R2R! It is the most difficult single day physical adventure in my life. It took over 18 hours, covering almost 50 miles and 12,000 ft of climbing in a single day. We started at midnight, and I finished at 6:20 p.m. The temperature range was from 35 F to 106 F. There’s lots of time to think, lots of time alone with nature and God, and lots of time with friends. There’s something amazing just being in nature for that long. It is incredibly therapeutic and wonderful for the soul and spirit to see and feel the beauty all around. Feeling the breeze and the hot sun and the cold water when I lay in the river were just as much a part of it as seeing the beauty. I was smiling spontaneously most of that time until I wasn’t.
It’s always the last few hours when it’s extremely tough, and this was no exception. Climbing 4,000 feet up on Bright Angel trail my stomach is so upset and I don’t want to put anything else in it, but my muscles need carbohydrates to climb. This is when will has to take over. I can’t do it an think, and then I take one step and another. Pushing myself beyond my limits brings a flood of feelings all at once, tears, joy, laughter, crying, fatigue. Again, and again. Still there is part of me that wants to give up the part of me that wants to push. The ego that wants to make a name for myself and beat the other people in my group. All this comes right to the surface when it’s on this raw edge of what I can do and what I can’t do. This edge is where I face my fears, weakness, and limits, and it is so good for my soul. It’s hard. Yes, it’s very hard. But this difficulty also brings me to life in the moment. Of course, I hate it. And I say I will never do it again. But already the next day, I was thinking this was so spiritually transformational for me, helping me grow and expand who I am in all areas of my life. Many great insights happening along the way. So of course I love it, too.
Life is like the area inside a circle. If we have one challenge that’s outside that circle, pushing through the barrier to overcome that challenge expands our whole circle, increasing the area of our life and making other things that earlier seemed impossible, possible. It makes difficult conversations we want to have with our spouse or our colleagues possible and makes starting the business possible. When we push past our comfort zones, it grows our whole.
What have been some of the best days in your life? I bet they were the days you did something you didn’t know if you could, whether it was getting married, becoming a parent, or doing some physical challenge or work challenge that you didn’t know was possible. It scared you and you did it anyway, expanding your whole life.
When I asked my 20-year-old son, his favorite experience in his 1st 20 years, he said it was the 12-day backpacking journey we made in New Mexico when he was quite overweight and that was a misogi for him. He didn’t know if he could do it and he pushed himself and found that he could.
Look at the year ahead. If you want to feel expansion and growth, plan a misogi, something challenging for you. It will be hard, and that is the point. If you want to join me on another rim to rim to rim or something similar, I will be doing one every year going forward and the more the merrier.
Have a great weekend planning your masogi!
Art
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