pleasure

Anything we enjoy, experienced through one of the five senses, is recorded into the brain as memory. Recalling this memory itself may bring temporary gratification, but many of us are accustomed to habits created through repetition of a pleasurable experience. Have you noticed yourself, without reading a book or listening to an expert on the topic, what your relationship is to pleasure in your own life? Many of us are constantly seeking pleasure and avoiding pain mechanically, living completely through past experience and unconsciously manifesting the same outcomes without meeting the present moment with its uncertainty. Pleasure and gratification may have a numbing effect, it may provide a feeling of security for some time, but if not understood, your thoughts and similar behaviors will return. To clarify- pleasure itself is not “bad”. It is our clinging to the past experience of it that generates conflict. Seek to understand what this looks like with others- you may say you love your partner, but do you seek to fulfill your own desires or avoid the potential of being hurt at their expense? Do you create an environment of spacious freedom in your relationships, or one of possessive bondage? Pleasure and avoidance of pain are one in the same, and when living within this domain, there cannot possibly be freedom or love. The first step is to observe, to witness your relationships. Avoid trying to change anything voluntarily- otherwise you will create the opposite problem. Observe fully and carefully with your full being, and perhaps then a change will take place without your volition.

-S.L