October 03, 2002 | 10:12 AM

I am on Day 16 of the Cleanse.

Have you ever heard of a healing crisis?

Let me explain.

When you are on a cleanse, you give your body a break from digestion and having to filter out immediate waste products. Thus, energy can be focused on ridding the body of toxins. The healing process usually does not occur without repercussions. During the initial phase of healing, as your body begins to clean house, (detoxify) and your vital energy begins to repair and rebuild internal organs, you may experience headache, uneasiness, flu like symptoms and fatigue. You may break out in acne or a rash or feel achy all over.

This is a called a healing crisis. Sometimes you have to feel worse before you feel better.

A healing crisis is a very good sign.

I had one yesterday.

I broke out into a rash and felt itchy and headachy and awful for about three hours. Then it passed. Now I feel terrific again.

When you have a healing crisis, the worst thing you can do is try to treat the symptoms. If you have a terrible headache during a healing crisis, taking pain medication will only mask the symptoms and get in the way of your body�s natural healing process. If you take pain medication, you�re basically just putting off the headache until some later date instead of allowing your body to move past it naturally.

The whole concept of healing crises can be applied not just to the body, but to the whole human condition. It all came together for me last night while I was feeling itchy and irritable and quite under the weather.

This is going to sound like a huge leap in subject but bare with me because it all ties in.

I�ve been reading this book called Zen Sex which applies Buddhist theory to the sensual, physical world. Meaning that you relish each and every experience for exactly what it is and always stay in the present moment because that is the only true thing that exists. There is no tomorrow or yesterday�there is only now. The past and the future are merely trifles of the imagination. The purpose of life is to experience that endless present to its absolute fullest�to embrace all the contradictions of humankind and nature. To know that many conflicting ideas are true at once. That rules exist as a guidebook to live life but we must live in the spirit of those rules rather than as strict codes. That there is a middle way between asceticism and indulgence and in that middle way is found true enlightenment and harmony with all things.

The key though is to experience each moment as it occurs naturally�allow it be be exactly what it is an becomes rather than attempting to make it something else.

Which brings me back to The Healing Crisis.

I think that in many ways biology is a mirror for the soul�that biological processes are very similar to spiritual processes. That just as people have healing crises physically, they have them emotionally and spiritually. Sometimes you have to feel very very bad before you can feel good. I think that in this culture people freak out when they start to feel awful. When they cry in public or feel long standing grief. And instead of recognizing crying or mourning or rage for what they are�the process of healing and getting better, we doubt the rightness of our feelings and the natural course of our own spiritual evolution. Instead of following the healing process we treat the symptom with something else�alcohol or shopping or bad sex or irony. Taking a drink because you feel depressed and bored or being sarcastic and ironic because you feel insecure is the same thing as popping an Excedrine every time you have a headache; you might feel better in the short term but you�re just putting off the inevitable. When you deny yourself the privilege of a healing crisis, you�re stalling out and getting stuck. Because the symptom is not the same thing as the disease. The symptom is what makes you aware of the disease and lets you get better. When you get rid of the symptom you are not getting rid of the disease. The disease will eat you alive if you ignore it.

And this also brings me back to my whole obsession with addiction lately. I think addiction is actually a process of denying a healing crisis�using one substance (or belief system or person) as a means to obliterate difficult symptoms. Attaching to a substance is to deny its zen nature�its simple existence. Applying it as a means to an end to mask difficult symptoms (i.e. feeling awkward around other people, feeling sad, being bored, scared, etc.) causes addiction. Appreciating the sensual elements of wine and the occasional fun it can bring, enjoying the headiness and the and drunknesss as merely one of life�s many experiences is zen. Using wine as a way to conceal symptoms of a healing crisis causes dependence.

This is all probably fairly obvious. But putting it together in that context was like figuring out the riddle of the Sphynx-�being able to put a name to it and a process and recognizing what it all means is just huge for me. It�s been a weight on my shoulders forever, and now I really get it. I feel um, enlightened or something.