Trust feeling good. It is our natural way of knowing that we are going in our own right direction.
This website is dedicated to the many wonderful ways that we can increase the pleasure and enjoyment of our lives. In our culture pleasure is usually associated with sex. And since we are culturally ambivalent about sex, there is often a wariness about pleasure. But pleasure is feeling good. Pleasure can be found in everything from eating a mango to helping out a friend. We feel good whenever we are grateful or appreciate something. We can find great pleasure connecting with people as we go about our business. Pleasure is to be found everywhere if we only look.
Pleasure is also our motivation to do something, anything! We are always looking to feel good, or at least feel better. We eat because we want to feel less hunger and more satisfied. We work because we want to enjoy a great many things including a good place to live, good clothes and the many fun things in life to do.
Pleasure is also the currency we have to evaluate the many options we have to experience. When we have choices to make, even wildly different choices like shall I visit my sick aunt or pull the weeds in my garden, we do so on the basis of which choice will bring me the most overall pleasure. Visiting my sick aunt may be fun in itself, but it may also relieve a sense of guilt about not having visited her sooner. Weeding the garden may be about wanting the pleasure of the vegetables or flowers that we’ve planted and we know that in order to have that pleasure we need fewer weeds. So we make a decision based on the relative pleasures we expect from each choice.
Pleasure is also the way we find our alignment we the deeper parts of ourselves. When we have an overall sense of pleasure we call that being happy. That experience is one of greatly reduced stress and a strong sense of wellbeing. We get to that state by paying attention to how we are feeling at any given time and make course corrections as needed. For instance, we may enjoy playing golf immensely. However, if we play so much that we neglect our feelings of connection to our family, only part of us feels good. The other part, the emotional part can feel anything from lonely to numb. The composite feeling is then not one of happiness but of a mixture of pleasure and sadness.
Pleasure brings us back into the present moment and helps us see what’s important in life. It is also a powerful way to craft a life that is filled with joy, wonder and awe.