Preferred Indifference

So we learned an indifference to the cold so strong that we eventually came to prefer it.

An interesting perspective, embrace something uncomfortable long enough and you can come to cherish it. If we choose our discomfort carefully it can makes us stronger, distinguish us.

I read earlier in life a suggestion that when training or performing athletically to feel the pain, the discomfort. Embrace it and feel how it ebbs and flows, observe how it interacts with your body. I've on occasion managed to achieve this, and our bodies do it naturally. When I am out of shape it is hard to keep working out, the desire to stop is huge. After I've reached a certain threshold, I crave the burn of well worked muscles (though I'm not sure how I repeatedly loose that craving again).

Then I was suddenly aware that I had been lying there without thought or sensations other than just being.

He mentions that while he was "just being" he was also aware of every sound every movement that happened around him. My wife read a book called "Flow" which (by reading the cover) I believe also describes this heightened focus, a nearly out of body experience. I've felt this sensation on a few occasions, most recently while rock climbing (though recent is very relative).

So what do these insights bring? How does a heightened awareness and at-one-ness factor into our life, our spirituality and our connection with "all-things"?

After seeing the fish he intended to catch for supper, he began his ritual to show his respect and intent, not to kill or hunt, but for sustenance.

Things were as they should be. The woods moved in its complex rhythm, things mated and bread, ate and were eaten. The whole was sustained by the interlocking network of its parts.

We don't often see the interlocking network of parts in modern life. We almost never get to participate so obviously in the cycle of life. We spend our lives avoiding risk and danger. Our own death is one of our greatest fears and the death of another is met with mourning and sadness. Our food has its own lengthy and untraceable network beginning after the "natural" part of the ingredients growing ends. At what handicap does this removed-ness put us when seeking to see the "spirit-that-moves-through-all-things".

Glimpses of the "spirit-that-moves-through-all-things" are amazing. Are the heightened states mentioned above the result of directly connecting with that spirit? Should our life's pursuit be chasing that connection or is that a wonder that will be experienced from time to time along our path of some other pursuit.

For now I will lay this to rest and go in the pursuit of rest.