Life provides its lessons if you try to listen, but attentiveness is not natural. It is easier to pretend, ignore, or distract one’s self from the immensity surrounding every moment. Life is complex and yet what often needs understanding seems simple.
How do you reconcile your desires with your responsibilities? I often think about the ego, my “self”. It presents both a barrier and a window to reality. Most of the time, it’s a barrier. It gets between everything and filters my experience like a gatekeeper against unpleasantness. My mind controls experience so much so that I have to second guess my own impressions. Am I getting the right idea? Am I attentive enough to what is actually going on? What am I missing? You can only experience something through the window of the self, but how do you get beyond it? Is it Buddha who preached detachment and self-denial? That seems like just another form of vanity, the masochistic inversion of egotism.
I think you should give yoga a try. At first it seems like the sort of “escape” you mentioned in the first entry, but you might find that it lets you be more “yourself”–less forced, less indecisive, more comfortable–and thus more in the world than “selfishly” detached from it. As for detachment, it doesn’t mean that one isn’t present in the world; quite the opposite. It simply means that you are willing to experience the bad as well as the good to its utmost, and then letting it pass on, as it always will.
I appreciate your comments. I may try yoga, but it offends my vanity for some reason. I am easily embarrassed.