EXISTENTIAL DISCOMFORT - SCRATCH IT OR LEAVE IT?

I know all about existential discomfort, having experienced it most of my life.

It started during my teenage years, after the initial honeymoon period of life came to an abrupt end.

And it got worse from there.

It was exacerbated by copious amounts of psychedelic drugs. It wasn’t helped by being an alcoholic. My family imploded so there was no ground to walk on. And the music I listened and played fed this angst.

I have tried to numb it, avoid it, drug it, obliterate it, deny it, change it, therapize it, spiritualize it, understand it and heal it.

Everything helped, but nothing actually worked. Still it returned like an old friend I didn’t want to see.

I know about the sheer discomfort of existence itself, a discomfort that wants to attach itself to things, yet moves seamlessly from one thing to another always evading the final dissolution.

And then it dawned on me (and this took some time) that it wasn’t things that caused it. And when I looked closer I saw that my own thoughts and feelings were things, ephemeral and subject to change for no reason (that I could find).

That put me it into a tail spin of falling into the abyss of the unknown. Suppose existential discomfort, the experience of discomfort of existence itself, is utterly causeless and perfectly normal for those that feel it (not everyone does) and there is an exquisite and powerful gift in it, but only…

IF YOU ACCEPT IT.

The key I discovered, and continue to discover every day, is that all desire to be rid of discomfort creates discomfort, and the deepest acceptance of discomfort, without making any story out of it, whilst it may not get rid of it, somehow allows it just to be there. In other words, I don’t have to touch it or try and change it, I don’t have to give it my attention.

Our desire to change our inner state might well be the ultimate addictive mechanism we have.

And our capacity to profoundly accept our inner state is our ultimate freedom.

Thanks for reading!