Resist the urge. Don't be a zombie.

This last year has been ugly and yet so incredibly beautiful at the same time. My entire life I have been searching for something- an awareness, an understanding, a truth. I found all of those things when I felt at my deepest despair. The everyday comforts that make life tolerable also anesthetize us. There was a time when I didn't feel anything because I was comfortable. Then, life caught up to me. An ominous storm of failed relationships, financial instability and a general feeling of listlessness crashed into me all at once. The devastation was only alleviated by the intensity of the experience. I looked within myself. I found that I was experiencing everything so acutely and painfully. But the devastation and the wreckage made me feel alive.

I am not a sadist, I am not a glutton for pain; I am a person who seeks with all of her being moments of transcendence. The moment when the only thing that exists is your own breath, the feeling of the dashboard beneath your fingertips, and the subtle sound of night. I only achieved that level of sensation, that level of undeniable, tangible awareness, when everything that I thought I had was stripped from me. For this reason, I am grateful to run through the fire. The resulting scald only served to remind me that all we have is what we create for ourselves, in both our physical reality and our spiritual lives. Our minds are dusty. My mind was dusty. It accumulated a number of platitudes, doubts and everyday menial obligations that meant nothing. They distracted me from those moments when I really "saw." When I really "felt."

I have been impaled with truth. The culminating wreckage has only made me realize how little absolute truth exists. I am the only truth that I know, and I have been living like a zombie, seeking out the next thing to satiate my desires without ever truly evaluating what those desires are, or what those desires should be. I am finished allowing "no feeling" take the place of pain. No matter how bad things hurt, I am in this, and I will see it through.