Turning Toward Pleasure

I took a three day workshop recently that was based on turning toward pleasure. We find the range of challenge, perhaps the edge of difficulty and then draw back into pleasure: in a yoga pose, in a discussion, in life. I was shocked. As a woman in recovery I am suspicious of pleasure. What if I get "hooked" ? What if I indeed crave something that isn't good for me? I nearly felt panic as she used that word, pleasure, over and over. I have just gotten used to turning into my pain! (A topic for another day.)

While I counsel students to find the sweet spot of engagement in yoga poses, I am often fall shy of doing this myself. "I can take it" has been my repeated phrase (I won't use "mantra" as that is a healing term, curative not harming.) And in life, I have been finding more opportunity for contentment and compassion, but pleasure? 

Maybe this is semantic, and I want to be sure I am not over stepping my puritanical origins by finding joy and thus surely falling short of maximum effort. Perhaps the word itself has been defiled by past use and is a trigger word for me. Perhaps I need to tough out feeling GOOD as I am already practiced in feeling bad.

So this moment, perhaps all day, I will practice turning toward pleasure. The danger, as Epstein states below, is the clinging. And maybe the craving.

​be well, have pleasure​

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Clinging—not desire—is where we get stuck, and it’s possible to embrace desire without clinging by infusing it with awareness. Desire, in fact, can be a powerful meditative tool on the path to enlightenment.

—Mark Epstein, "In Defense of Desire"

Each moment as it passes

Be in this moment; here, now. That is all that is really real. It is precious, it is beautiful and it is fading away as you become aware of it. This exact moment is all that counts. Awareness of this moment can inform your pleasure.

That is not to say that plans don't matter. That is not to say that our experience, seen clearly and in the proper size and importance, can't inform the present. But the future and the past are not now.

It take so much work to clear that past so that we can mine the real truth that we can use as a choice in this moment. It takes a lot of energy to make a plan and preparation for the upcoming days and weeks. We do this so we have a direction; but the outcome is surely not assured. We can (ineffectively) use more energy in resisting what the future brings when it varies from our concept and we grip to our ideal.

Play. Play with what comes, play with the new you, play in this moment and be awake. Be awake to the beauty of the unknown, unplanned, unattached present. This will become history soon enough.

It is the radical transience of the world that makes it both tragic and beautiful, like the cherry blossom in Japanese aesthetics. The tragedy is that nothing actually exists; it is all passing away the instant it forms. The beauty is that we have the means to be aware of this, a moment to know the profound poignancy of this tiny corner of reality.

—Andrew Olendzki, "This Moment Is Unique"

​- be well​

Kyczy Hawk - ERYT-500. You can pre-order my new book "Yogic Tools For Recovery; A Guide To Working The Twelve Steps". It comes out in November this year!