In the yogic view, there is a difference between what is "right" and what is "pleasurable", at least that is how it is translated. What is right can sometimes be abstaining from something we desire or are attached to, or doing something that we don't really want to do. Doing what is right is the choice that leads to deeper, more abiding satisfaction, energetic health, and most importantly a lack of guilt or regret. Guilt and regret eat us alive, I truly feel they are intimately linked to cancer.
What is pleasurable in this moment may be also what is right or best, but it may be destructive in the short and long-term, to ourselves and others. That cigarette satisfies the nagging mental urge and gives a familiar feeling of calm for a moment, but it inevitably leaves us unsatisfied because we want more and more. It also poisons our body, wrecks our senses, and dulls our energetic connection to the world around us. It will break us away from our life. That beer may give us a comfortable level of warmth, confidence and ease, but it too poisons our body. The toxins wear the body out, leading to low-level (or deeper) depression, lack of self-esteem and a lethargy or lack of motivation that is hard to shake. It also morphs us, and make us reflect the fear or anger or sadness or emptiness that we are running from or trying to fill.
Any choice we make that is pleasurable in the moment but depletes our vitality or harms the well-being of others is considered unskillful, undesired, and thus the poorer choice. Why eat foods that cause cancer, diabetes, heart disease, or from which we have to detox? Why not eat delicious AND nourishing foods that create health and keep us energetic, minimize sickness and suffering, and sharply reduce health-care costs? Why must we always buy disposable things? Wiping our face and throwing away precious resources for the sake a little convenience is lazy, and self-depreciating. Our life is worth more than making a giant pile of garbage.
The right choice, in my experience, may take a little (or a lot at times) more self-control, but then the satisfaction derived from them builds lasting confidence, positivity, joy, and not only self-respect; but garners true respect from others, the kind that feeds into these other positive qualities in them and us.
We are bigger then our whims and addictions. Through trial and error we can learn to follow the "right" impulse, the urging from the deepest part of us that is always in harmony with the Whole. We can learn to ignore or temper the shallow longings of the ego side of us, the longings that lead us further from the truth of our own essence.
Choose carefully, you are creating your future, and the future of your world. Choose freedom over the prison of disease and addiction. You are here to be you, to live this life fully, to express your unique spark, your individual star in the night sky. We drift far away from our best self when we let ourselves be led by temporary gain, material, or momentary pleasure over the fullness and richness of creative, confident, freedom connected to the Universe in the role, the story, of this very life.
Sent on the Sprint® Now Network from my BlackBerry®
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