Pleasure of life. The deep subtle pleasure of life springs from playfulness, Leela's home ground. If I live my life playfully I don't hold onto anything too tightly; I don't take anything too seriously. Especially things I think. Pleasure can't compete with mental projections: doubt, smugness, religion, politics, tribalism, fear, insecurity, philosophy, causes, comparison. Those are all mentally created garbage I project on the world. None of it exists, it's just crap I project. I hold all that toxic garbage close as if it were precious. It's not. It's poison. Strong opinions are poison. Holding firm to any position is poison. Anything I feel righteous about is poison. The world is constantly changing. Fixed opinions and positions are poison. I need to engage the world fluidly, ready to change my understanding about anything at any moment because the world is fluid. Instead I ignore anything that doesn't fit with my set opinions or positions. I wrap myself in ignorance and feel smugly superior. I have to let go of all that and just see what's out there. I have to be willing to learn about it anew every day. Secondhand sources like media are no good for that. I need to learn from the world itself, starting with my own body.
Crude buzzes. When I get quiet inside I can feel the profound pleasure of being alive. It's a subtle oceanic sense of well being. As an air breather I have the good fortune to live on the bottom of the planet's largest and most magnificent ocean, the ocean of air. I am a tiny dot crawling across the incredibly diverse boundary of air and earth. The bottom of the ocean of air is where the action is. I went without the pleasure of being alive for over fifty years. I had that pleasure as a child, and well into adolescence, until my misplaced fascination with recreational drugs cut me off from it. Drugs like booze and cannabis are hooligans, yahoos. Their crude buzzes and highs are noisy compared to the sweet pleasure of life. The subtle pleasure of simply being alive can't be heard at all if I'm systematically poisoning myself. Even that fleeting sweet initial buzz of the first few sips of some fancy booze I used to love so much is laughably crude compared to the pleasure of life. The pleasure of life is subtle, but pervasive and protean. Leela sends me the gift of subtle pleasure a thousand different ways.
Bodily pleasure. Ever since I started the endless process of surrendering to Leela my simple bodily pleasures have grown deeper. It started early on, when I was still in my marriage, building strength to leave. Leela made strategic use of my own potent feel-good chemicals to reward and guide me, letting me know I was on the right path during a time I needed every bit of help and encouragement I could get. As I was moving into my new home she started using other kinds of pleasure to guide me via the delight I find in exquisite scents. She manipulates my sensory processing to give me subtle, delightful sensations with no external source I can ever find. As my diet has become more just how she wants it, food has become a major source of delight. Just lying in my bed at night I feel my body gently tingling, suffused with energy. In all of this, the steadily growing quiet inside me is the core, the source. That's Leela singing to me, singing her silent song that all of this is.
Melancholy. I take deep pleasure in the world as it is. I don't require it to be different, to meet some standard. Sadness is an inescapable quality of the world. The video On the Nature of Daylight is a heartrending masterpiece of contemporary art, combining Max Richter's inspired music with a wordless story about sadness. I've heard melancholy is the enjoyment of sadness. Maybe I'm melancholy. But I'm certainly not sad. Sadness is debilitating. I'm energized, tingling, alive, awake.