The Quest Worthy Undertaking

( An essay on pain, suffering, maturation of awakening ) 

I remember those monsters - the dirty, dusty asphalt rollers:
a small cabin with a man behind the most biggest cylinders I ever saw in existence.
In 50 years and all the technical progress, they did not change much,
same heavy metal cylinder that rolls and presses hot asphalt matter into the road.

This is exactly how I feel in the most sensitive days:
I feel as I was just passed over by the asphalt roller, as something bigger then me
just didn’t notice a little human on the road, and I got worked into the horizontal plane.
The amount of pressure on my body I can only describe with a help of this road equipment. 
It used to be a regular thing, and now it happens very rarely, still same sense 

of being worked into the two dimensional impression of being.

The pressure happens without any warning, and leaves suddenly without notice too.
There is some hormonal equilibrium, ever changing in a human organism
that I suspect as a landscape for this sudden experience of a great pressure.
I experience it mostly in my head, sometimes I feel as my scalp will crack one day,
releasing the pressure, like in a pressure cooker at the end of the cycle when you turn the
valve to the side, they call it “quick release” in an instructions that comes with the cooker.

As much as I always wished for “quick release”, it never happened.  

I learnt to agree with my body on the length of a cooking cycle.  

It might be half a day, or a day, or a little longer, there is no way to predict.  

Cycles in the past were months and years, imagine, so a day of pressure does’t bother me. 

I am just a little more kinder on myself.  I rest, take it easy, sometimes I take a pill.  

I used to be stoic, applying mindfulness philosophy:  just observing with great attention, 

no grasping, no pushing away, no trying "to fix".  Now I apply kindness 

and swallow a prescription strength pill with no spiritual remorse. 

Just like the road steam rollers are not changed or improved much 

in the last 50 years, my human body is just as vulnerable as before.  

It is still made of the same organic matter.  Same soft brain in a shell of the head 

gives impulses to all the organs, same red viscus fluid runs in a tiny capillaries,

bringing oxygen in and the waste material out of the cells.  Same mechanism 

that draws the air through the nostrils and releases it out.  Same waves of emotions, 

same sensations, same thinking process.  And at the same time, it is all different.

The pains and tensions don't bring suffering, the emotions are allowed fully,
and therefore they pass quicker, without hanging for days and months. 
I can cry and laugh in the matter of seconds, ask anyone close to me, 

even my acupuncturist.  Rick is a master of needles, he moves energies in my body 

with this mastery, and he can make me cry and laugh at the same time.
My facial expression would make a transition from  a "sad" to a "happy" 

with a pause in the middle in a neutral suspension. 

The eyes still full of tears, but the corners of my mouth already curled up, 

reminding me a porcelain Venetian mask with a painted tear under one eye, and a smile.  

What can better visually represent the roles we assume and play in life, without knowing!
I love that my face can do both mind states at the same time, even for a short time! 

It is just enough to confuse the usual brain patterns.

Suddenly there is a space without description. 

You are present, and you have more then one face now.  

Imagine what happens to habitual neurological passages? They collapse. 

The old mask has fallen, you are free from one more illusion about yourself! 

This space, where the mind does not describe you in old terms anymore and 

by the old roles, appears limitless.  There is a lightness of being you feel, and you notice 

you are not really physical, you are aware of physicality, but you are not limited to that.
You can have different pains, tensions, faces, appearances.  You can experience 

changing mind states, you can have variety of life engagements, and at the same time 

you are not that at all.  

Seeing the fullness of Life itself, the grand illusion of it, makes life not only bearable, 

but interesting. Great tension or pain: physical or emotional does not evoke suffering, 

mostly wonder.  Pain is pain, until it is “mine”, then it becomes suffering, can you see?  

The only way to be free from suffering is seeing who you are, and that is the quest 

worthy undertaking.