The Cycle of Cravings and Aversions

A number of years ago I went on a Buddhist meditation retreat for ten days of complete silence where the only thing I was to face throughout it were my own thoughts. For ten days, one is not allowed to write, read, connect to the outside, use any technology, see any news, or talk. It’s interesting to see what happens to the mind when it’s shut off from its normal operations and functioning for a long period of time. I’m not sure if most people realize how much of their lives is in a perpetual pattern of craving things and then trying to avoid them when they become a source of pain. It was something I learned on this retreat about my own life.

On the first full day of the retreat, I told myself that not having any of my creature comforts wasn’t so bad. A little bit of silence. A little bit of meditation. A little bit of food that I probably wouldn’t eat outside of the compound (it was a Vegan retreat). I can do this, I told myself. As I sat there and meditated. The seconds became minutes. The minutes became hours. And as the hours turned into a day, my brain began to squirm. By the end of second full day of silence it began to shout. And by the conclusion of the third complete day of silence, it was screaming at me.

WHERE IS MY TELEVISION?!

WHERE ARE MY SNACKS?!

WHERE ARE MY SWEETS?!

CAN’T YOU JUST TALK TO SOMEONE?!

I WONDER WHAT “SO n SO” IS DOING?!

THIS IS STUPID, YOU’RE NOT GOING TO LAST TILL THE END!

I MISS MY OWN BED.

WHY DID YOU GO ON THIS RETREAT IN THE FIRST PLACE?!

And so on…

I couldn’t seem to shut off my brain’s desire to do something that was anything but sit with my owns wandering thoughts and continue to meditate. And by the end of the fourth day, it was as if my brain gave up the fight and accepted that I was in for the long haul to complete the retreat. And that’s when it hit me about my life.

Life really is a big stream of craving things. Initially we find something that we love. Maybe it’s watching television. Maybe it’s eating chocolate. Maybe it’s buying a new car. Maybe it’s beginning a new relationship. Maybe it’s buying a new article of clothing. Or maybe it’s something else. But in any of those cases, there’s something every single human being finds that they love immensely. And that thing is something that is initially always enjoyable. Take chocolate for example. The first piece of chocolate is great and one receives a good feeling inside. Then a second piece and the enjoyment seems a little less. Then a third, and a fourth, and at some point, the stomach begins to hurt from eating too much of it. Now, it’s no longer feeling so good to be eating any chocolate so the human desire is then to avoid it. And as some point, when all that pain in the stomach is gone and some time has passed from the bad experience, the craving to eat it comes back again. This same principle applies to all the other things I listed. How about starting a new relationship? First it’s great. There’s lots of fun and newly interesting things to learn about the other person. Then there’s the intimacy if it’s a romantic relationship. And of course there is a lot of excitement each time the two get together because of the newness of it. At some point though, conflict arises, and the two don’t see eye to eye, arguing ensues, and they start to avoid each other. Usually after some amount of time passes, the two will forgive each other and then start desiring each other’s company again. How about the buying of anything such as a car or a new gadget. At first it’s great and exciting and it’s shown off to everyone. Each time it’s used brings about a good feeling. But at some point that car or gadget starts to break down and begins to have issues. It becomes a source of anger and frustration and then the person starts avoiding using it and looking to replace it. I could go on with any number of things that human beings crave.

On my silent retreat I learned that many of us are on a constant cycle of craving things over and over and over again and then at the same time, avoiding them when they no longer are providing the same satisfaction they once did when they begin to provide a source of pain or frustration.

By day five of my silent retreat, I saw all of this clearly happening everywhere in my life. I was able to see myself comparable to that of a dog. A dog sees a treat in front of them and begins to salivate. It eats one treat after another and another and then after having too many of them, is throwing up and not wanting to see any of them any time soon. Since then, I’ve used many meditation techniques to move out of this tedious cycle of living. I don’t find myself craving things as much anymore. I’m still wearing old clothes that have holes in them. I still am using a version of the Iphone from 3 years ago. I am driving a 6 year old car. I don’t actually eat milk or dark chocolate anymore to avoid the stimulant properties within it. And I am in a long term relationship that I am very happy in, even when there are things that arise that challenge my ego.

I don’t want to be in a constant circular motion in my life of craving something, then averting it, then craving it again, and then averting it once more. Having God at the center of my life and using meditation and prayer has helped me to look at my entire life in a much slower pace. When the mind is slowed down, that’s when it becomes the easiest to make changes to the human tendency of having a hurried lifestyle. And that’s when one can truly begin to step off the cravings and aversions cycle for good.

Peace, love, light, and joy

Andrew Arthur Dawson

Looking For Something That’s Right In Front Of You

On my recent travels, I was in Puerto Rico and was attempting to navigate my way around one of the cities using an app on my Iphone. The destination on this certain evening was a restaurant that for some reason was not coming up when I did a search for it in this GPS tool. I spent 30 minutes attempting and re-attempting to find the destination in the app several different ways and eventually marked a point on the map that I hoped would be closest to where I needed to go.

After clicking “Navigate”, I soon was off on a 4 mile drive being guided by my digitally based English speaking friend. About 10 minutes later the cheerful voice said I had arrived at my destination. Puerto Rico is interesting in that the streets, in the downtown cities, are a lot of one-ways. On top of that, everything is in Spanish which I don’t speak or read making it that much more difficult for me. And even worse, street signs aren’t on every corner. As the navigation ended, I noticed I had just passed an ice cream shop that I had seen online and wanted to check out. I made a mental note and took a left at the next street to look for a place to park and see if I could find any more information out on my phone’s internet. My pulse quickened slightly and I began to get frustrated. I told myself I should have just stayed at the hotel and had something to eat there. After about 10 minutes of causing myself anxiety and not finding any further help on the internet, I took a deep breath, told myself that God would help me find it and then looked straight ahead to figure out where to go next. There on the next corner was the sign for the entrance to the restaurant I was looking for. Even funnier, across the street was a church that I had also seen online and wanted to get a picture of while I had ventured out. I chuckled realizing that all three places I had planned on going to were within a block of where I was parked. I then thought how this has happened a lot in my life.

Have you ever been searching for anything so intently like a restaurant, some other destination, or maybe something that you lost in your house such as your keys and no matter how hard you try, it seems to evade you?

I realized the other day that sometimes by just slowing down or in my case pulling to the side of the road and pausing for a moment, that what I’m looking for is right in front of me. An even better realization is that for years I searched for happiness again and again through many different things around me and never did find it. When I stopped searching, started meditating and praying, and seeking to live a life that God would want me to be living, I began feeling the happiness within.

It’s so easy to get caught up in distress when looking for something so diligently in life. I have found that what we are looking for is usually right in front of us or within us. Sometimes all it takes to find it, is some slowing down and asking God for help.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

“I Wish I Could Stay Here Forever!!!”

Have you ever been on a vacation having an amazing time and caught yourself saying something along the lines of “I wish I could stay here forever!”?

The first time I mouthed those words was as a child when my family took an annual vacation for two weeks in Myrtle Beach, SC. We left the Saturday after the school year ended and were always there to the Saturday after the fourth of July. I have fond memories of being immensely excited for those vacations when they got closer. My sister does as well. In a family where being dysfunctional was the norm and verbal shouting matches with anger and control were an everyday commonplace, the vacation in Myrtle Beach seemed like a reprieve from it all. For whatever reason, my parents became happier during it. The fighting was minimal, if present at all. My sister and I received a lot more praise. And our parents spent time doing things with us that were fun and made us feel like we were one happy family. I lived for those two weeks. I can still remember building sandcastles with my Mom and Dad. I remember having ice cream sundaes at an all you can eat toppings location after a long walk to find it. I even remember eating too much hush puppies at our favorite restaurant that we always went to on our first night out. And that’s just a couple of things that I remember fondly as there are hundreds more.

So why did my parents act differently during these annual vacations?

The best answer that I’ve been able to come up with is really based upon one of my own life’s travel experiences.

I’ve been to quite a different number of places in the world for a vacation but I have to say that I’m partial to going to beach destinations. It’s ironic because I currently live about 10 minutes from the beach and yet when I travel I like to go to places where they are present. What can I say? I love the ocean, it’s vastness, and it’s tranquility. Maybe that’s because of those beach trips I did year after year as a kid. Either way, many years ago, I took my first trip to the Caribbean. I was on a cruise that left out of Florida and was at that time in a different relationship. One that was rapidly falling apart. I really loved this man who I was trying to spend my life with, but unfortunately, he had fallen out of love with me and fallen more in love with the bed and breakfast that we were trying to own and run. What’s fascinating is that I remember how my relationship had so much drama and fighting, and arguing and yelling, even right up until the day that vacation began. But when we arrived at our warm and tropical destination, my partner started to treat me so much better. He showed me affection again. He offered me the warmth our relationship had once shared. He paid me compliments and gave me the attention that had long since disappeared. And that’s when I caught myself saying those words again, “I wish I could stay here forever!” And that’s when it finally began to dawn on me why my family was so happy on each of our annual vacations and why it seemed to be happening again in totally different circumstances.

Life is distracting. Our self-will takes us down paths that change our focus from the things that truly mean something, to things that we think are supposed to mean something. We place all our attention on making money, building businesses, acquiring “things”, and being busy for long hours of the day, all the while losing interest and focus on one the most important things in this world. Love. Love for ourselves and love for another. The partner I had on that vacation back then had been with me at that point for about five years. In the first few years, he could have been the poster child for what unconditional love is. Then came the day that he began to pursue his dream to run a bed and breakfast. Over time, the burdens of achieving that dream shifted his interests and his love on every level from me to it. The same held true for my family. My father relentlessly pursued his IBM career with long work hours. My mother in turn gave up her dream of being a French Interpreter that she had originally gone to college for, and instead became a housewife. Neither seemed very happy with themselves or their day to day lives but being on vacation changed everything. There were no worries or concerns for either of them other than where to go for dinner or what putt-putt course to play that evening. I saw my mother and father hold hands, laugh, and be happy with each other. As soon as we would arrive back at our home upon completion of the vacation, it was as if all of what we had just experienced in the past two weeks had been an illusion. The fighting resumed. My sister and I got yelled at again for no reason. And we were left with another 50 weeks to look forward to our next reprieve.

Vacations are just that, a reprieve from life. They can be awesome and rekindle some elements that may have dwindled in connections between friends or partners. Unfortunately, the longer the vacation, the more apt the everyday aspects of life will return. I’ve experienced it having thought I could make the loving times last longer by extending more weeks onto the end of once shorter trips. In each and every case, those worries and concerns, and those things that shifted the focus away from the love in the first place, began to creep back in, along with the fights and the arguments.

Today I’m in a much healthier relationship where I’ve noticed something pretty special. We express love to each other all the time even with each of our own concerns of every day life. When we take one of these reprieves and go on vacation, it only gets better. I believe that’s the way it probably should have been in all of my dysfunctional relationships prior to this including even my family. I don’t wish anymore that I could stay forever at where I’m traveling to. I believe that’s because I’ve placed God today at the center of my life and in doing that, it seems that whether I’m sipping fruity drinks under the tropical sun or whether I’m home watching snow accumulate in feet, that I happy either way.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson