Welcome to Earth.
Choose your addiction, your affliction, because perfection is fiction
delusional wishing
to be free of our grasping and tender humanity.
The intensity of anxiety that can accompany uncertainty
may lure us endlessly into perceived solutions for the lack of ground.
Something to get, to attain, to consume
Something to crave, grasp for.
But there’s never going to be ground. There’s never going to be a destination to relax at.
Relaxation comes when we cease chase the experience that will obliterate this one.
Our addictions, whether debilitating substances, social media, spinning thoughts or endless bickering.
Shopping or sex or work or exhilaration or drama
They all begin with a sensation
As that sensation rises in our bodies, maybe as a flutter or an ache, maybe like a shutter or a sickness
maybe so subtle we don’t even know it’s there before we’re reaching for our vice
But it’s not the vice that we crave.
It’s the relief from the arising sensation.
It’s the escape from the direct experience.
As that sensation rises, so does the impulse to move from here to there
from this place to that one
from a painful state to another state
A state of freedom, bliss, relaxation, wonder, excitement, familiarity, release
Our addictions keep us all wrapped up, entangled in the illusion of release.
Where we may truly find release is right here, face to face with what’s happening
the discomfort of the pain or boredom or anxiety
If we can catch those moments, become so deeply intimate with and compassionate towards our own inner experience
before that sensation propels us into motion towards self soothing
we may truly be soothed by staying
Because the experience will arise and it will pass.
Freedom is found in staying
Freedom is found in being intimately loving and compassionate with what’s arising within our experience