Feel something. Feel everything.

The whole point here is to feel something. From the lowest lows to the highest highs. By taking something that keeps you from feeling these things, you rob yourself of that which makes you live. Feelings, physical and emotional. There’s a certain dishonesty that comes from the compulsion to avoid pain. We surround ourselves with things to buffer us from potential suffering.

There are a few things I object to about the Buddhist religion, and one of those things is the avoidance of pain. Buddhism teaches us to avoid attachments for they inevitably lead one to experience suffering.

Suffering gives birth to wisdom. There's no other way to know the fullness of life without suffering. We would not be able to appreciate The Good, if we have haven’t known the alternative. To not know suffering causes us to take The Good for granted. And that is death. It is void. It is the absence of love.

Nothing comes from nothing. Feelings are always the consequence of something. They can be the result of success or failure, acknowledgement or neglect. The feelings always succeed something, some kind of event. Suffering is usually the consequence of neglect of some kind. One might neglect her body, and as a result of this period of neglect, she suffers from illness. A parent might neglect a child, and eventually both will suffer from loneliness for the other. One might neglect his dreams, his innermost desires, and eventually suffer from loneliness for himself, from the loss of himself.

Feelings serve as an alert. As an alert it urges us to self-knowledge, to seek out the sources of these feelings. In tracing our feelings back to the source, we are lead on a path that winds its way through the world within, showing us the caves and the vistas. It is a process of love, for the greater the self-knowledge the greater the love. The more one knows himself the more he knows about the outside world as well. The more one knows himself, the greater his ability to empathize. We are all made up of the same stuff, after all.