What’s the difference between digesting and consuming?

This question has been on my mind a good deal recently.

If you’re new around here, or in case you missed it, I am totally fascinated, humbled, and inspired by the process of digestion. It’s our most primal, ancient system. It’s fair to say we have plenty to learn from it.

 

 

In a nutshell, Digestion involves:

  • ingesting (that’s taking in)

  • breaking down (both chemically, with enzymes, and mechanically, with chewing and some churning)

  • moving along (it’s a LONG tube!!!)

  • absorbing (once broken down sufficiently, the basic building blocks of our food are now able to cross the digestive lining to be picked up by the bloodstream for distribution throughout the body

  • assimilating (this actually happens in the cells, we’ll get back to this in a moment)

  • eliminating (that which is unused/ remains after the process exits the body as we all know)

 

 

Once those building blocks are liberated through the breakdown process, they travel to cells and then we put them to use. Right now, inside your cells, you’re making energy. Cellular energy that’s required to move muscles, think thoughts, send signals, build things… the list goes on.

From the raw materials we get from food, our cells go to work reassembling them to make something new. Something that is now, fundamentally, US. That’s assimilation: when the nutrients we absorbed are transformed within our cells into something totally new and different.. and uniquely our own.

Digestion involves making use of what’s coming in. For movement, for information, for consciousness. On a micro level, what we took in then becomes an integral part of the community that is us.

 

We all feel the effects of being part of a consumer-oriented culture. It sells us all short by ingraining the message from the get-go that we are born to consume, to spend, to take in. It feeds on the notion that we’re not enough as we are ~ that we need more stuff to be fulfilled, to feel worthy. What a crock. This is not why I am here, friends. It’s not why you’re here either.

The trap is that with all that taking in, we still feel empty. It’s “too much but never enough.” We’re overfed but undernourished. Saturated with input from every angle, yet profoundly disconnected.

A culture that worships consumerism leaves us bereft of meaning and purpose. (Not to mention destroys our health, our communities’ health and that of our planet). This predicament is painful, whether we consciously feel it or not. Did you know that people who have a sense of purpose live on average 8 years longer than people who don’t?

 

I look back to digestion for guidance. What is to come of the raw materials you’ve taken in? What life has dished out? What you’ve learned and experienced? What is uniquely yours to express and share, in this stage of your life?

It’s so easy to miss the mark and think the answers come from the outside world ~ taking in something else to cure what ails us. But when we don’t turn inwards, we miss the boat. You are the medicine! You are here to do something unique with these raw materials. We have the phenomenal capacity to transform and create with the material we’ve taken in. To digest what’s on our proverbial plate. To make something of what’s already there.

 

Digesting involves layers and layers of transformation, discernment, and integration. It’s a superpower. And it’s yours. It’s ours. These powers are an inherent part of us all.

It’s also true that, unfortunately, whatever we don’t process becomes a liability. Perhaps in subtle ways at first… more and more so as time goes on.

 

I’ve come to appreciate that the more involved we become with the process; the more ownership we take; the more interested we become in tending that fire of transformation, in setting our systems up for success with spaciousness, care, and appreciation, the more we are rewarded. Consuming doesn’t tend to offer the same rewards.

 

This isn’t just about food. It’s a major part of it, but there is A LOT that is coming in through the senses these days. There’s a lot to take in. Sometimes we forget we have a choice. It’s good to pause periodically and ask ourselves: what’s coming in, and how? Is this what we truly want? 

 

I don’t believe I was put here to consume. I don’t believe you were either. I believe we are here to connect and collaborate, to participate, and to create. To share our gifts and express what is uniquely ours to express. To inspire and be inspired. To learn, grow, and evolve. To digest.

 

 

If you want to get fired up about your capacity to digest and connect with your inner gifts, hop on my schedule and let’s talk.