Usually in life our animal heritage drives us after this or that need or want, and
our emotions go up or down depending on the quality of our perceived quality
satisfaction level. But when endorphins are permanently gumming up the works
we are not particularly driven anywhere, and our value system becomes more
abstract and divorced from happenstance and phenomena. It’s as though we were
permanently bathing in the exquisite turquoise lagoon—we are completely wet.
We want to get even more wet so we can feel something, but we can’t get more
wet than we already are. If we are already in background pleasure and bliss, how
can we experience the “pleasures” of life? Our emotional landscape is reduced to a
tropical island of perpetual sunny days in which nothing really happens. Bliss can
be depressing when nothing touches us, even depression. With a perpetual tropical
buzz going on we do not even register that we are depressed.
If everything is blissful then nothing is particularly pleasurable and so to actually
experience “pleasure” while in a perpetual pleasurable state we have to become
deeply “mindful” of the nuances, flavor and qualities of our experience. We must
hone our sensory and perceptive senses to delve into far greater subtleties. With
an even emotional playing field we lose both passion, motivation and navigation.
It appears that a sustained high level of endorphins causes one’s affect to become
somewhat “flat.” In my experience years of high endorphin levels creates a slow
decline in passion and we then have to do something extreme that will counteract
the eternal buzz, and bring more “excitement” to our nervous system. One thing
I have noticed with my steady decline in passion is that I can no longer readily
conjure feelings-thoughts-images of inner worlds, future visions and potentials like
I used to when my soul felt more alive, though I still have a vivid dream life it too
lacks potency and purpose. Even food looses its vivid quality as one of life’s simple
pleasures and the intensity and sensation of sex and touch is muted...even orgasms
are rather flat except on special moon cycles.
PsUeDo-eQUanimitY
During the awakening itself we tend toward a more amplified response
to attraction and aversion...and so after being pulled around so obviously here
and there for many years we tend to gravitate to the middle and gain distance
from external and internal phenomena. In this way equanimity is born from the
exaggerated consciousness, sentience and sensation of kundalini. This amplification
of being coupled with the background endorphins that make both pleasure and
pain less distinct gives us equanimity.
Unless this later stage of awakening is undertaken with eyes wide open the
chances are that this ambivalence-chemistry will become a pathological state with
symptoms including: detachment, apathy, disinterest, dispassion, disregard, dull
affect, emotionlessness, noncommittal, heedlessness, indifference, insensitivity,
lassitude, lethargy, listlessness, passivity, stoicism, unconcern, unimpressed,
unresponsiveness, lack of dedication and zest. So we could call this condition of
the chemical neutering of our libido a pseudo-equanimity. It’s a wonder anyone
ever gets enlightened, there are all these pseudo states that one has to experience,
learn about and transcend through enlightened application first.