Do I really need a cigarette, or do I just need some time to think? Do I really need coffee, or do I just want an escape? Do I really need a drink, or do I just want to put my cares aside and take the opportunity to be irresponsible? Am I really excited, or do I just want a distraction or feeling of acceptance? Am I really angry, or do I just want somewhere else to place the blame? Do I really need to eat, or do I just want to feel full and safe?
Taken at a small Ghost Town in West Texas en route from Marfa to the Mexican Border.
Learning to distinguish actual physical feeling from mentally fabricated desire is tricky. I still don't have it down, but I'm learning. At first, I went about it the wrong way. I assumed that since the mind is flawed, the physical feeling should be trusted. The problem with this, however, is two-fold. First, the only access I have to these physical feelings is through the mind since my entire body is wired through it. Secondly, even if I could rip them out and access them, say, with a computer, it would be, once again, my mind that I'd be using to interpret the results.
So, despite my initial reaction to the contrary, it seems that the most direct path toward clearing the mind is through the mind itself. By feeding the physical needs in regular recurring intervals with known measurements I'm able to force my mind to realize that it is impossible that I am actually feeling what it thinks I'm feeling. I can then decipher the mental desire behind the physical feeling. By acknowledging these mental desires for escape, solitude, acceptance, distraction, rest, security, or responsibility, I will learn to recognize the mental need instead of the false physical feeling.
Once I am able to recognize these mental desires accurately and regularly, then I'll have to decide how I want to handle them. Maybe getting a cup of coffee is a safe, acceptable, non-harmful way to acquire a much needed escape from time to time. If so, I don't see any reason to stop doing it. However, recognizing my need for escape instead of my desire for coffee will allow me to control myself better and not allow me to use a false need for coffee as an instrument of escape and procrastination.
Of course people have lots of other addictions with their own corresponding false physical feelings and the mental desires that cause them. I'm only hitting on the common ones here.
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