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Pleasure And The Pain - The Sacred And Profane

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In our minds, there's often a split between extremes. It's a natural human inclination.

We tend to see things as "good" or "bad" with very little room for the gray area.

We move away from pain and towards pleasure...

We tend to identify things as either sacred or profane.

The list goes on.

The thing is, this mindset is representative of our split minds and hearts. We split things off because a part of us can't handle the possibility that it *all* can be within our immediate experience at the same time.

Not that it always is. Only that it can be. And we discount that possibility.

So when people suggest that profanity is "bad," I point out that it's merely a judgment we place on a specific configuration of letters.

THIS.

SHIT.

Same letters. Different word. Different symbols. And yet many of us will see one of those words as "good" and another as "bad."

But is it really the letters' and words' fault? :)

Are they really "bad" simply for being what they are?

I don't believe so. Nor do I believe that any human being is inherently "bad" regardless of what trespasses (or even atrocities) that person may have committed.

Lost, yes. Bad, no.

Similarly when we look at our relationship to pleasure and pain we often see them as being just one-sided. Something is either pleasurable or painful.

Even our most intimate relationships, we can rationalize as having "good and bad" yet we don't look at the possibility usually that they can be both *at the same time*

Yet inherent within our experience of being human is a sense of pleasure. Sometimes it's very obvious such as indulging in a great dessert or amazing sex.

Other times, it's more subtle. It's a nuance or hint that there's a gift to being alive. That something precious about being human is inherently pleasurable.

No more evident was this to me than two years ago when I was sick. VERY sick.

I was vomiting nonstop, and I had taken up residence on the floor next to the toilet so I could throw up in the toilet instead of everywhere else (and then have to clean it up).

Part of me felt like it was the end of the world. I knew it wasn't. It just felt that way. And with the frequency of vomiting, it seemed like it would never end.

Then one moment, I noticed how hot I felt - so I took my shirt off and laid on the hardwood floor. Then I noticed that the coolness of the floor on my skin felt pleasurable.

As I continued to notice the specific sensations of coolness, it felt very pleasurable...

And odd.

I was fully experiencing the pleasure of aliveness, of the sensations of coolness and warmth playing together -- while at the same time fully feeling the wretchedness of my illness.

The combination of this feeling of death and life was profound. And profane (at least my thoughts were!)

I share this story now as a reminder to myself –– to find the pleasure in the moments...

...To remember this possibility that we can experience some degree (even a little bit!) of pleasure in ANY moment of ANY day, regardless of how painful our life experience might simultaneously be.

Chris Cade

http://www.chriscade.com/