The great gift of life, these bodies full of the five senses intertwined nerves and emotions. We are living bundles of impulses and sensations. Miracles of complex systems of interwoven thoughts, feelings, and tactile receptors. Our experiences become encoded in our flesh and blood, forgotten until they one day return to us as memories sparked by tastes and smells. Pictures that form in our “mind’s eye” can be memories or vision created with the power of our imaginations. Dreams that launch from depths of our insides, revealing emotions and treasures of desire, which are hidden from our conscious awareness when we are awake. A rich tapestry of conscious thought and dreamworlds, woven into a record of the movie of our life. The gateway to our maturity and growth. Episodes of joy and trial are the alchemy of our personal evolution and growth.
Yet’ so many of us are desperately trying to distract ourselves from the intensity of life through media, food, drugs, alcohol. Whatever we can find that helps us avoid the discomfort of our challenging emotional experiences and the sensations that go with them. Some of us do this more than others, and all of us in myriad different ways. Often, we don’t even know what we are avoiding. The distractions are just habitual patterns born out of some trauma or difficulty in our distant past we might not even recall.
What if our fear and avoidance of these emotions, sensations and experiences are fueling an illusion? What if the feeling of avoidance and distraction is actually worse than the emotions and sensations we might have if we stopped resisting, and just let ourselves feel more? What are we losing in our attempts to avoid unpleasantness? What about the possibilities for joy and happiness that can come from breaking through the resistance old discomforts? What about the wisdom and maturity that we could have instead? How would it feel to allow all the fullness of the joy and pain instead, holding it sacred, relishing it as the gateway to personal evolution?
Right now, take a deep breath and feel your body, all the aches, and pains, joys, and pleasures. Take a moment to realize all of that sensation is a gift. This experience, this life, this bundle of emotions, sensations sights, and smells is the real treasure. Take another deep breath, and recognize your desire, your longing for life and what it has to offer. What is it you keep denying yourself? What else could you feel if you could clear away all the distractions and the fear? What would be possible for you? There is more beauty, more adventure, more wonder, tastes, smells, and visions that await you beyond the limiting beliefs holding you back. Yes, and a little more discomfort. However, If you’re willing…. what could you feel?
Take another deep slow breath and recognize the legacy our ancestors left us. What would they do for just one more day in these miracles we call bodies? What would their desire be? Where would they go? Who would they kiss? What gratitude they would have just to breathe and feel again. Just for today?
It’s right there for you to connect with, waiting just beyond the veil of distraction.
You can do this! Go get some adventure today!
The Adventure of Life
