There is nothing like a good dream

I am agitated.

Slightly dehydrated and a bit irritable.

Walking into PAK’nSAVE in this state was a mistake.

When I hit the potato chip aisle, my body screams for a quick fix.

"One bag of salted chips. It’ll be fine" a voice whispers from the inside.

I had spent weeks deeply listening to my body to make the right decisions to heal. I’ve finally stabilised my blood glucose back into the 6-8 range, free of the insulin and the medication. 

But this voice? It is pretending to be my body screaming. Is it my hungry ghost, my addiction, attempting a hijack?

I ask the watchman.

Potato chips?

An instant veto. Two capers.

I have those back at the bus.

My hungry ghost hates the light. My addictions hate being exposed.

You know.

I finish my shopping, observing the fading pleas of the voice inside, which finally die when I eat the capers.

A victory, perhaps, but my ghost is always there waiting to numb me.

It lives for the high, the dopamine hit, not caring it’s keeping me cold. It tells me:

"It's just a sweet tooth, everyone has one. It isn't a life-destroying addiction like meth."

But the reality is, it is slowly destroying my life.

The space opens widest at night, when I am feeling tired, leaving me vulnerable to temptation.

The bed is all mine now that my dog pal, Gracie, has passed. It is a blessing to have the room to stretch out, but I miss the deep, grounding oxytocin of giving her belly a rub.

In that silence of being alone, the slippery slope appears.

The iPad. YouTube. Pornhub.

I know the mechanics of this descent perfectly.

It does not nourish me; it merely papers over the cracks.

I will watch rugby highlights, light hearted comedy or average people making porn, I guess, to pay the bills.

At some point I become sufficiently sedated. Numbed to the world. And I fall asleep.

Since Gracie passed, I have been building a new path.

A 'sovereign love' protocol: a cold shower, moisturising my legs and feet, using a massager to shake the heavy tension from my big muscles. It helps.

But the mechanical habit is old and deeply ingrained.

My ghost prefers the dark . It whispers:

"It’s okay, no one will know.

But Satiety—the frequency of I am satisfied—will never be found by watching a video or listening to song of another’s JOI.

So, I am consciously, trying to, break the habit.

At night, in the dark, I put the iPad on the pillow next to me and begin to purposefully contact the Real.

I listen to the heavy rain and wind outside of the bus.

The high, searching whine of a mosquito hunting for blood.

I feel the tangible, delicious warmth of the duvet and the clean friction of the cotton sheets.

I can smell eucalyptus and orange, the faintest reminder of the laundry powder I use.

And I listen to the silence in the world.

If I can be ok with doing this for a short while and I do not indulge, I have found, unknowingly, I fall asleep.

In the morning I am usually rewarded with the wildest recollection of dreams that feel infinitely more nourishing for the whole of my being.

There is nothing like a good dream.

Question

Where in your life are you feeding your Hungry Ghost, your addictions just to numb the silence of being alone or the other hard realities of life? If you consciously touched the Real, what might you discover?

from the campfire,

Ākāśadāka