We have come to this planet with so much beauty and opportunity.

There is an abundance of experiences for us to taste, this is planet Earth - we can experience so many things in so many forms. From what I have observed, the modern human is tending to craft a life geared toward pursuing these experiences, accumulating them and comparing them. I think it would be insightful to understand our relationship to pleasures and experiences - What is it all about? Why are we given these great pleasures?

It has become an important investigation for me to understand what role these experiences have, and what I can learn by tasting the fruits of life (or potentially choosing to not taste them).

Enjoyment is fundamentally a life affirming thing, and I have heard people say that bliss is our natural state. This seems optimistic, but my experience leads me to believe that there is truth in that statement. My experience has also shown me that enjoyment must be tempered, and that being attached to the various tastes of life will definitely bring suffering.

This is one of the big messages that most spiritual traditions teach, that fulfillment through the senses can only go so far. It ultimately proves to be a distraction, and we could miss this valuable opportunity to find out who we are - if we live our whole life on the sensual animal level.

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Observing My Chocolate Smoothie Compulsion

Not everyone is a sage though, I am certainly not. We have to honor where we are. We have to be realistic and honest about who we are and what habits we are living out. I am not going to give up banana and cacao smoothies tomorrow, I really like them. I am probably going to drink one before work.

I do contemplate my attachments though, and it can be a practice to pay great attention to the whole process of making the smoothie and drinking it. It's a rich and subtle journey with various emotions. There's the anticipation beforehand - the highly specific method - the first taste which opens the flood gates of pleasure - and the satisfaction afterwards.

Did I enjoy the smoothie? Did I make space for the experience to happen in? Or did I just rush into it looking for a pleasure to distract me? It's different every time. The experience will be forgotten quickly, and perhaps that is where the longing to repeat it arises from.

What Drives The Behaviour?

There is a spectrum here where the same physical act can come from a completely different place. If you smoked some marijuana, it could be done in so many ways. It could be done habitiually, without thinking and in a highly distracted state. Or it could be done with the utmost attention, keeping the mind out of it - and by saying a prayer of gratitude before partaking.

There are different approaches to partaking in what life offers, and it creates a different 'contract' with each substance or activity. Some times we enjoy, and it opens us up, sometimes we intoxicate and it shuts us down. It's all about what we do with our attention and intention.

Intoxication reduces our ability to sense and feel life. When i say intoxication I don't just mean alcohol and marijuana - I am describing a way of being and an attitude. It could be reading Facebook messages, spending money, sex, or eating salted caramel cookies. Intoxication is a hastiness, which seeks to be somewhere else. It doesn't want to know about the current experience and would rather be elsewhere. It seeks to block, and it seeks to distract.

Equanimity

We seem to mostly be drawn to intoxication through the desire to avoid our thoughts, emotions, and experiences. A simplistic explanation is that we walk around with two categories in our head of 'good things' and 'bad things'. When we seem to be running into a lot of 'bad things' then we will seek to experience more 'good things'. Therefore we seek intoxication in some way through stimulating the senses.

It's about our connection to life, ourselves, and other people. Does partaking in something enhance that connection or does it diminish it? I also want to ask whether or not things are truly good or bad. They can be pleasant or unpleasant, but it's more just our story about it that gives it that category of good or bad. Coming back to the idea of the sage, this individual adopts an approach which is to not judge any experience one way or another. Without good and bad - all experience is received in equanimity.

I have some sense of this equanimity, and it seems like a great thing to cultivate. Surely it is liberating to not be thrown by anything, to be steady and unable to be manipulated. That kind of clarity is a rare and valuable thing. Like I said though, I am not a sage yet and I certainly enjoy my banana and cacao smoothies on most days of the week :)

Spectrum of Enjoyment

The breatharian initiator and You Tuber Ray Maor talks about his relationship with the pleasures of life. Ray practices and trains people in pranic living (not eating), so it makes sense that this is a central theme of his life. According to Ray, there are different levels of enjoyment. We have the very gross levels of stuffing out face with food, pursuing sexual release, and using all kinds of distractions and intoxicants. There is also a more subtle end of the spectrum, where we can enjoy just the aroma or the idea of something. He calls this a kind of 'foreplay' where we can enjoy without having to physically consumate the act.

I am sure that many of you will understand the enjoyment of subtle sexual energy that exchanges between people, it can be done in a way that there it never becomes too 'hot' and remains at a warm enjoyable level. Enlivening without becoming consuming or distracting. We can stay fully present and not get sucked into it. I guess this is what flirting is in essence - sharing energy without having to bite into the apple so to speak.

There is also the consideration that a lot of intoxicants have a life negative outcome for the body. The obvious ones are things that are literally poisons - drugs and certain foods fall into this category. Things like inhaling smoke are damaging for the body, because our respiratory systems are not designed to inhale smoke. Yet there are definitely medicinal benefits from inhaling certain herbs and medicines.

I think a lot about the bodily effects of everything I do. Reflecting on my life, I can see that my well being is much lower on the list than my pursuit of pleasure. This has definitely changed over time, yet it remains true that the pursuit of pleasure is a strong drive, for me at least.

Body Mind Connection

An interesting point here is the psycho somatic effect of being in a good mood. Being happy has a very positive effect on the body and mind, so there is a potentially life affirming affect from enjoyment or intoxication. This has to be balanced against the negative impact of which ever substance that is. If it's a joint then it might be a congested respiratory system, if it's a chocolate cookie then it might be all kinds of internal changes and imbalances.

There is a game here in balancing the accounts of how enlivening and depleting something is in the body. For most of us enjoying the pleasures of life is a way of keep that good mood going, it's our standard way of feeling good and alive. The good mood does good things for our body and mind, Yet it's the consequences of the habit that over time create imbalances in the body. On an energetic level there is also a different contract, and a different vibration for each kind of enjoyment.

Enjoying the effects of three stout beers is of a particular consciousness, and enjoying the effects of closing your eyes and inhaling fresh air is of another consciousness. They can both be enjoyed, but they have vastly different consequences and are on different levels of subtlety. The beer is very gross and in a sense 'forces' you to have the relaxation by drugging the body. Breathing the air takes some level of awareness to be present, yet it has no negative consequence for the body. It is momentary and you won't be regretting taking a deep breath the next morning.

Conclusion

Ultimately there seems to be a balance to be struck, in honoring who we are and what habits we bring forward. And also in honoring the ways in which we could be intoxicating ourselves out of a deeper connection with life. Many of us are also potentially dying too young from our habits - the proverbial 'here for a good time, not a long one'.

Life is to be enjoyed, but don't just go along with the crowd who get a minimum of pleasure from what I perceive as very extreme things. Realize that there is many ways to enjoy, and that as human beings we have the capacity to move our enjoyment into more and more subtle realms. In these subtle realms we need less and less, and we have no need to damage the body to enjoy ourselves.

This is the potential for the human being, we can have a great level of enjoyment without pursuing so many things we don't really need. We can enjoy connection, we can enjoy giving, we can enjoy just being for no particular reason at all.

Much Love