Dread and Addiction to the High

I was dreading facing my emotions. They felt like a dark cloud over my head and a heavy weight on my chest.

My throat and mouth were full of bile, my heart full of acid, my body full of stress, my mind full of anger and resentment, my chest full of a burning sense of jealousy, self-righteousness, loneliness and pain. 

I was riding my bike home from Crossfit and my hands were stinging from the cold. The sun was just starting to rise over the horizon. The brown and sandy mountains were still in shadow with a soft yellow light painted over them. I realized that I was free. There was nobody holding me accountable, nobody asking me to do anything, nobody watching. I had no Higher Power in that moment, and I was reduced to my selfish and material desires. Why not? I was hungry, I was emotional, I was bruised, and I was craving anything to pull me out of the muck of human misery.

So, I stopped at Vance’s cafe and had breakfast. I was so happy to be there. I got a bacon burrito and a chocolate chip pancake, betraying everything that I stood for at the time: vegetarian, sugar-free, saving money on a budget, intermittent fasting. I threw it all out the window and the thrill of indulging in all of my addictions gave me so much adrenaline that it was worth it. I was so angry, so pissed off, I had lost my connection to my higher power completely and I was reduced to my ego, my self-righteous and self-centered Self, my greedy and not caring Dr. Jekyll.

I have no regrets. I enjoyed every bite of the burrito, every grain of sugar in that pancake, and every sip of the coffee. I needed that moment to feel like I had taken back sovereignty of my body.

Instead of surrendering to a higher power, I surrendered to my ego and IT FELT SO GOOD. There is a crucial difference between feeling like you are in control of your own destiny–in control of your own time and space–and the feeling of surrendering to a higher power. When you feel like you are in control, there is an adrenaline-high to it. You feel powerful, calm, and self-righteous. You feel smart, you feel like you are in the driver’s seat (and indeed, your ego, the part of your Self that you have identified with for most of your life is in the driver’s seat during those moments) and you feel a giddy kind of excitement and POWER. You are your own higher power. This is true. But sometimes, when there is an adrenaline high to it especially, instead of it being your Wise Self, it is your ego instead. You worship your ego like a god. You believe that this ego self has the power to make you feel good. 

And it does make you feel good. 

For a time. 

Eventually, the effect wears off.

There’s no food that can make you feel better; no gadget, no relationship, no drug. Not even an "experience," like a vacation, is the ticket or key to make things feel better, to fix your life or yourself. It’s just not how it works. 

Because whatever it is, its effect will wear off and you’ll be back to where you started.

Instead, life is about surrender. It's also about love and connection and creativity. But it’s also recognizing and accepting the pain and boredom as an equally important and valuable part of life. Life is pretty boring, not that exciting, and difficult.

To be in control of your life is an illusion. 

Feeling like you are in control vis-a-vis your ego's demands is such a different feeling from surrendering control to a higher power. When you surrender to a higher power, you do give up a feeling of control, freedom and sovereignty over your own body, life, time and space. It’s not just yours anymore. Your life and your body is the community’s, the marriage, the organization, the program, the Universe’s. Because what you do affects everything you come in contact with. It’s not all about you. And you’re not in control of your own time and space. There is so much with so much more power than you controlling your life, your time and space. Your marriage, your relationships, your community, your nation and your world all have control over how you are able to move in the world. You can’t pretend like you have control. That is a nice way to calm anxiety but it’s only an illusion. The more you can surrender to giving up control of your life, the better.