Tastes so good

THE ADDICT EATS DIRT

I recently met my addict again...stimulant addict that it. She craves and chases the next high...so that every experience, every meal, every outing becomes an ordeal of expectation to surpass the last high, or in desperate times, to atleast get a high.

Reduced to an example of food, as stimulation hits the tongue, so the tongue celebrates, of course - we are designed to need to feel good - and so the tongue convinces me that I feel good because it is enjoying the taste. But  then, if the next meal can't compete, there is resignation and frustration and sometimes a desperate search for something that will give the same pleasure.

Then I went to a yoga workshop...and am relieved to play in Joy and Feeling Good without a need to chase anything, because it is hard work to get there which on some level eliminates that craving...but also because it is real and infinite...the joy of being in my body, surpasses any externally created experience I can have.

However, an externally created experience is like popping a pill, an immediate high and this instant gratification becomes the temptation that leads even the best of us astray from the more difficult inner journey....to feel good through yoga/meditation is hard work! It is a daily commitment - not just to asanas - but to celebrating the body and life!

A friend recently lost a loved one, and I also watched the birth of another friends baby...death and life.
Being confronted vicariously by Death reminded me that the body is just a vehicle for the Soul, and without the Soul, it is lifeless and empty!
This absolutely tempted me into thinking that well, if it is so separate from the Soul, why not abuse it? Only to realise that it is only separate from the Soul on death. Prior to death it is a temple through which we are here to experience Life. Though the addict in me realises that most of my addiction takes more and more energy away from Life and Living and pushes me closer and closer to death. Over-eating, smoking, drugs, alcohol, not sleeping enough, sleeping too much...all these things that are not in balance with Nature, are speeding us toward death.

Or you can be hit by a bus...but that death is different. Abusing substances, in search of stimulation, is a slower less obvious form of suicide! There is no dignity in that kind of death, and no real celebration for Life.

Yes death passes us onto another life....(depending on how we lived this one)...so what does it matter, this life? I am given custody of this life I think...so perhaps I should cherish living. Take care of the simple things like my health, and open up to grace where the magic of living can really happen.

Observing a most courageous woman give birth struck many chords with me....there is a ritual or sacred process as unnatural as it appears to the observer...that makes birth a rite of passage. If we weren't meant to hold this birth as sacred, it wouldn't be such a sacred experience - the magic of cultivating new life, and delivering it to this world, to give it custody of itself, and learn to let go. Magic!

I realised you also have to be fit for life! This body is loaned to us for some purpose...and we underestimate the magic of this journey...which starts in the womb and is all taken care of by some higher power. Nature so divinely instigates these processes - of birth, of some kinds of death, and on a more simple level of sneezes, or evacuation of the bowls, but we no longer trust in Nature. To live Life...without incurring additional cost to the body or mind in the destruction of addiction, is a sacred journey that might bear zero fruits for the labour...

that is FAITH.