As humans, we are drawn to pleasure. We pursue pleasures systematically throughout life, and this is quite natural. Pleasure is a positive feeling. But is pleasure the end goal? He with the most pleasure wins?
Actually, as we all experience, pleasure is transitory. One may work extremely hard to assemble all the necessary ingredients for the ‘pleasure recipe’—what our society prescribes as necessary for a happy life—only to find, incomprehensibly, that they are not really happy.
It is easy to get swept along in the cookie-cutter formulas that our culture has developed as coping mechanisms for what is broken. We fall into our place in the formula, and years can pass without being fully alive.
Change is like a vacation, it is said. But vacation being a vehicle for change? The purpose of a Sacred Journey is just that. It is a journey beyond self-indulgent, fleeting pleasure, to a place physically and psychologically outside the life that is known to us. With new awareness comes a new and often delightful deepening of perspective that can be life-altering. This is the kind of pleasure that endures.
