So what’s going on?

Being moved all the time by sensual overload and emotional upheavals. Hoping to stay amused and diverted enough to avoid being left alone with ourselves. Maybe that’s our greatest fear—to be at home with ourselves and not connected. The curse of the contemporary age: existing virtually, connected to everywhere and everybody all the time, but not sensing and feeling the who. How do we get back to the who? The who that is comfortable with itself in time and space. The who that isn’t lost, befuddled and overwhelmed by experience. The who that is aware of experience. To feel it purely in its emptiness/fullness—not moving in or out of “e-motion”—requires fearless patience and profound hope, both of which are in short supply at the moment.

We have transitioned from a sense of innocent hope and desire into an almost desperate fear, driving us on an endless quest for new, exciting experiences to assure our existence. We’ve tried almost every possible experience many times. At 30 maybe a baby is the answer. That will certainly take up 20 years, more or less. How could so much time, creativity and freedom come to this? Was it misplaced emotional entitlement? Was it a promise of happiness on the cheap? Does endless experimentation with new identities and relationships lose its ability to inspire? It is a time of lots of questions and few solid answers.

So what to do?

To get back home to that confident mental spaciousness where everything is okay, from which we can observe our sensations, thoughts and emotions, may be a bit overwhelming for our current chaotic mind. We will most likely have to detox slowly, so that we are not overcome by deeper emotions of loss, longing, and clinging that have been running this show on a deeper level. The deeper tones and moods driving our emotions must be approached stealthily. Vulnerability and primordial fear can send paralyzing anxiety through us, reigniting the secondary emotions that have been behind all our feverish pursuits of avoidance and hyperactivity. We must have some compassion for ourselves and understand ourselves emotion by emotion, neither fearing nor being lured by each vibration as they pass habitually through our consciousness. If we are patient, we will gradually peer through the haze of our emotional patterns and feel our primordial awareness come alive again.