I felt this thing. It was a confusion, and a turning, and caused me to view the world in a strange way. And THEN, I felt like having a drink.
And it hit me that for all addicts this is likely the process. The feeling hits, and so fast they can’t see it happen they say: I need drink, or a hit, or a fuck, or whatever their thing is. Nobody craves being high, I don’t think. They simply know from long experience that the anticipation of it, and the experience of it, is sufficient to silence whatever that initial, infinitesimally small, micro-feeling was, which of course is the root of the whole thing. That is where it starts. I felt this clearly tonight. I certainly have within my consciousness the Buddhist notion of causal chains.
And yesterday, driving to a job site, I also felt an odd feeling. It was fear, but it was wandering, uncertain, primal, primary. It was a child seeking a breast. It was a tentacle seeking something to grab.
And then some worry popped in my head, and the whole feeling vanished and was replaced by the thought. And it hit me that thoughts, when they are not relevant, not needed for the task at hand, are really the crystalizations of sensory impressions which seek resolution. These feelings don’t want to wander: they want to land, and the way they land is in a thought.
I felt all this. I saw all this. And it was instantly obvious to me that the people who meditate trying not to think, to let thoughts be, or to drive them from their minds, are existing at a level a layer or two abstracted from true reality, which is in the body. If you want to stop thinking, then calm the body, calm the sensations. They are all children: let them rest, let them sleep. And when they sleep, you know peace.
Do less and do more. This has always been true, but I am seeing it with my own eyes, feeling it with my own heart.