Feral Paradise University asked River and me to devise a meditation for those poor souls who have tragically come to believe that pleasure is anathema to their spiritual practice.

Our offering is below.

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Many spiritual systems the world has inherited regard pleasure, bliss, rapture, ecstasy, elation, and related super treasures as troublemakers and distractions. The so-called “lower self” is greedy for such wasteful irrelevance, the saintly authorities say. “Begone foul deceivers!” they imply or declare outright.

How many zillions of us have been taught, often with dire and threatening tones, that feeling really good leads us away from life’s essential goals? Holiness and sanctity are likely to accumulate in us only if we shun the supposedly inferior temptation to bask in delight.

Of all the idiocies foisted on humanity, this one is among the most egregious. River and I are in danger of veering into apoplexy as we contemplate such a criminal delusion. We’ll try to be civil.

In both our extensive mythic explorations of dreamy truth and our scientific investigations of hard-core reality, we have gathered incontrovertible evidence that pleasure is a central necessity for any spiritual quest that actually works.

It’s a sensory instrument. A tuning fork. A feedback system. A way the body says, Yes, this. More of this. Keep headed in this direction. You’re getting closer to home.

We’re not talking about the jittery sugar-high of addiction or the perverse, jangly thrills that sabotage health.

We mean the rich, ennobling euphoria and exhilaration that arise during encounters with smart fun: inspiring us to love ourselves more, expanding our capacity to love others, leading us in the direction of our shining dreams, and helping us solve our knotty problems.

The eruptions of these life-giving nourishments might come through the stimulation of our senses, emotions, or imagination. They don’t yank us away from the sacred. They are among the sacred’s favorite ways of snagging our attention. Evolution didn’t give us many reliable compasses, but this is one of them.

Our comprehensive research reveals that
when we feel genuinely good—not inflated or superior, but resoundingly buoyant—our ethics improve. We’re more patient and curious. Less brittle and defensive.

When we’re swooning or even just shimmering with delectation, we see other people more clearly. They’re not obstacles or mirrors of our lack, but fellow creatures doing their best with the weather systems inside them.

By contrast, chronic deprivation, especially when dressed up as virtue, tends to make people tight and pinched and resentful of anyone who looks like they’re enjoying themselves.

Self-denial doesn’t reliably produce saints. Often it just produces people who are very good at pretending they don’t want what they want.

Those who know how to feed themselves often have a super-capacity to give without keeping score. Their generosity leaks out sideways. There’s surplus.

Here’s our very-well proven hypothesis: Compassion grows less from being twisted up about suffering and more from inhabiting joie de vivre so fully that we want others to feel it too.



Image by Howard G Charing

To the horror of the Rabid Life Denialists who equate suffering with virtue, we’re going to question their calculations.

With all the confidence possible for paradox and ambiguity lovers like us to summon, we will boisterously assert that the real inquiry isn’t “How much can I endure?” but “How much aliveness can I allow without flinching?”

With all the cheerful disdain we have earned the right to express by virtue of our carefully cultivated empathic kindness, we ask, what if generosity of spirit comes not from suppressing our quest for ebullience and gusto, but from celebrating it so thoroughly that scarcity loses its grip?

The blunt, brash, brazen fact is that we are less generous when we’re depleted and forcing ourselves to give out of duty and more generous when we are lit up and giving feels like play.

The raw, unruly, radical truth is that our best work emerges not when we’re grinding and grueling, but when delight has infiltrated us down to the core of our primal curiosity.

Feral Paradise University asked River and me to devise a meditation for those poor souls who have tragically come to believe that pleasure is anathema to their spiritual practice.

Our offering is below.

+

Many spiritual systems the world has inherited regard pleasure, bliss, rapture, ecstasy, elation, and related super treasures as troublemakers and distractions. The so-called “lower self” is greedy for such wasteful irrelevance, the saintly authorities say. “Begone foul deceivers!” they imply or declare outright.

How many zillions of us have been taught, often with dire and threatening tones, that feeling really good leads us away from life’s essential goals? Holiness and sanctity are likely to accumulate in us only if we shun the supposedly inferior temptation to bask in delight.

Of all the idiocies foisted on humanity, this one is among the most egregious. River and I are in danger of veering into apoplexy as we contemplate such a criminal delusion. We’ll try to be civil.

In both our extensive mythic explorations of dreamy truth and our scientific investigations of hard-core reality, we have gathered incontrovertible evidence that pleasure is a central necessity for any spiritual quest that actually works.

It’s a sensory instrument. A tuning fork. A feedback system. A way the body says, Yes, this. More of this. Keep headed in this direction. You’re getting closer to home.

We’re not talking about the jittery sugar-high of addiction or the perverse, jangly thrills that sabotage health.

We mean the rich, ennobling euphoria and exhilaration that arise during encounters with smart fun: inspiring us to love ourselves more, expanding our capacity to love others, leading us in the direction of our shining dreams, and helping us solve our knotty problems.

The eruptions of these life-giving nourishments might come through the stimulation of our senses, emotions, or imagination. They don’t yank us away from the sacred. They are among the sacred’s favorite ways of snagging our attention. Evolution didn’t give us many reliable compasses, but this is one of them.

Our comprehensive research reveals that
when we feel genuinely good—not inflated or superior, but resoundingly buoyant—our ethics improve. We’re more patient and curious. Less brittle and defensive.

When we’re swooning or even just shimmering with delectation, we see other people more clearly. They’re not obstacles or mirrors of our lack, but fellow creatures doing their best with the weather systems inside them.

By contrast, chronic deprivation, especially when dressed up as virtue, tends to make people tight and pinched and resentful of anyone who looks like they’re enjoying themselves.

Self-denial doesn’t reliably produce saints. Often it just produces people who are very good at pretending they don’t want what they want.

Those who know how to feed themselves often have a super-capacity to give without keeping score. Their generosity leaks out sideways. There’s surplus.

Here’s our very-well proven hypothesis: Compassion grows less from being twisted up about suffering and more from inhabiting joie de vivre so fully that we want others to feel it too.

+

To the horror of the Rabid Life Denialists who equate suffering with virtue, we’re going to question their calculations.

With all the confidence possible for paradox and ambiguity lovers like us to summon, we will boisterously assert that the real inquiry isn’t “How much can I endure?” but “How much aliveness can I allow without flinching?”

With all the cheerful disdain we have earned the right to express by virtue of our carefully cultivated empathic kindness, we ask, what if generosity of spirit comes not from suppressing our quest for ebullience and gusto, but from celebrating it so thoroughly that scarcity loses its grip?

The blunt, brash, brazen fact is that we are less generous when we’re depleted and forcing ourselves to give out of duty and more generous when we are lit up and giving feels like play.

The raw, unruly, radical truth is that our best work emerges not when we’re grinding and grueling, but when delight has infiltrated us down to the core of our primal curiosity.



Image by Malcolm Maloney Jagamarra

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Experiments:

• Track the connection between your states of gleeful, zestful pleasure and your capacity for kindness, courage, creativity, and clear seeing.

• Learn to gauge the distinction between exaltations that feed you and diversions that merely numb you. Your body knows the difference long before your theories do.

• Gather evidence to test the theory that the pleasure-versus-enlightenment split is a cosmic practical joke—lazy, outdated, and spiritually disabling.

• Follow your joy, not blindly, not compulsively, but attentively. Watch how it keeps leading you toward becoming more human, more responsive, and more capable of love.

Experiments:

• Track the connection between your states of gleeful, zestful pleasure and your capacity for kindness, courage, creativity, and clear seeing.

• Learn to gauge the distinction between exaltations that feed you and diversions that merely numb you. Your body knows the difference long before your theories do.

• Gather evidence to test the theory that the pleasure-versus-enlightenment split is a cosmic practical joke—lazy, outdated, and spiritually disabling.

• Follow your joy, not blindly, not compulsively, but attentively. Watch how it keeps leading you toward becoming more human, more responsive, and more capable of love.



Image by Wassily Kandinsky