Kleshas: Avidya: Confusing Pleasure & Pain

Suffering is part of the life experience, yet, all too often, we suffer long past the due date that is necessary for the conception and growth it is meant to foster. All too often, we get caught in the undercurrent of discontent, delusion, and disharmony. Our landscape is muddled, our vision obscured, our breath shallow, and our hearts hanging by a thread. Avidya is being caught in the undercurrent. Vidya, on the other hand, is the feeling of toes in the sand, warmth on our skin, and views for miles upon miles where we can admire the sun sinking down past the horizon painting luminescent light strokes with a magical paint brush that never runs out of paint. Avidya is drowning in the undercurrent. Vidya is knowing that you are the forever magical paint and your lifetime here on this earth is: getting to be the one who holds the brush. What shall you paint my dear?

Avidya’s symptoms include believing the impermanent to be permanent, the impure to be pure, pain to be pleasure, and the not self to be the Self. Today we untangle the confusion between pleasure and pain. This can be something simple like partying tonight equals puking tomorrow, or a daily diet of processed food this year equals high blood pressure, weight gain, and brain fog next year. On the flip side of the coin, it might feel uncomfortable to lift the weights and do the yogas today, and quite pleasurable to be hiking to some epic mountain peak in three months with the strength to carry your toddler on your back.

When we forget or don’t know that we are spirit incarnated, gifted with our very own magical temples (our bodies) to explore the entirety of earth as a magical temple itself, it is easy to choose convenience over conscious. Mostly, we are not even doing the choosing. We are playing out a program molded by the hands of power and greed of which belong to those who also wear the veils of Avidya.

The moment is always now, but let us not forget, that this now moment, births your next now moment. What you think, say, and be, right now, provides the arena for you to play out your next now moment. Let us pack our stadiums with thoughts of your wildest dreams, with words of kindness and encouragement, and with acts of sovereignty and unity. Only then, will we get to usher in a cast who has not been repressed by the hands of power and greed, but raised in the truth of their own magical paint and how they get to use themselves as the truth of themselves to blend humanity’s very own masterpiece.

Dearest Reader,

What if we imagined that each word we spoke would be the reality we would step into tomorrow? Would you speak words of tragedy and separation and hardship or would you speak words of benevolence, and compassion, and unity? What if we blessed our own (and others’) trials and tribulations with words of gratitude and prayer? Your words are your wand, be mindful of the spells you cast.

All my love,

Andrea Dawn