If I just followed my pleasure drive, I would play games all day and get nothing done. Nope. You would get hungry, and you would get tired, and you would get bored. You would get curious and your mind would wander, but you do have a very valid point. Why does any single pleasure have such compulsive power?

Though you can actually die from playing a game too long. A Korean kid did. Indeed, this is true. He was sick, and I am not making a moral judgment. I mean it was disease.

Perhaps escaping problems. Actually, pleasure denied leads to compulsion. It’s the same reflex. If I deny you air, you will do anything to get air. You will risk your life for air. This risk even has the potential to make people drown themselves. Many drowning victims in that state will begin swimming in a random direction, not being able to sense their direction, and they will fail to reach the air at all. The same happens even with supposedly less vital needs, psychological pleasure/well being. So when presented with the prospect, the hint or scent of this deep seated need of the brain, they can proceed to drown themselves in it. This is what addiction is, drowning the self. Addicts even say things like they don’t know themselves anymore. They deny that they personally choose any of it, or even know how to choose after a while. How is it we choose something?

I think you do change and you don’t recognize yourself. I think you do submerge and hurt yourself, but injury is not fundamental change. That persons self remains present, even to the point of trying to drown a would be rescuer. Those who seek to save addicts often develop addictions, typically coffee and often cigarettes. If not, the same drug as the addict they are trying to rescue, like alcohol. So how can we come to forget how to choose something for ourselves?

I recently heard of an addiction counsellor who got hooked on Oxycontin. I have heard many are also addicted to methadone, and doctors are not uncommonly prescription drug addicts as well. All these disciplined people.

Our need to satisfy the pleasure centre takes over. Self controlled people, didn’t they know better? Is knowing better enough?

We think that ‘discipline’ is enough but it’s not. It never is.

We loose our ability to choose for ourselves because we replace a need to satisfy the pleasure centre with a need to satisfy rules, satisfy ideas, to remain self consistent. Discipline is in fact too much. It’s the disease taken to a far extreme. The outcome of that is quite natural. It’s quite common for people to be dependant on anti depressants these days, so much so that it even works its way into our memes. We describe natural pleasures as if their purpose was to treat depression. The disease manifestation of depression shouldn’t even exist. It’s an over exaggeration of another natural biological feeling state we are capable of. It’s natural purpose is to moderate goal seeking until the person heals from the trauma.

I need to perhaps clarify this, and keep to today’s topic…

I’m reminded of a couple of things our tai chi instructor said recently. “You know your body. You’re the one who got it here.” and “We’re here to recover the body we started with.” I think our body is what we’ve made with our ideas and created self image.

May I be blunt? We have painted our self image with our own psycho spiritual feces and vomit. Everything I have talked about so far is to explain what is happening and why. Why we are upsetting our own spiritual constitution. Why life seems to beat the shit out of us, or if you prefer the piss out of us. For some reason the latter phrase seems to be seen as more polite. I have no idea why.

Urine is sterile. Indeed, and so are the thoughts of most so called honest citizens.

Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.

Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~