Uplift Your Life: Nourishment Of The Spirit

We often confuse numbing ourselves with feeling pleasure. We even have names that add to the confusion like, “comfort” foods, getting “high”, or a “trip.” Overeating, drinking alcohol, and taking drugs, however, are all ways of escaping reality and causing us more pain and suffering. Seeking empty pleasures like status, money, or reckless sex have the same result. Pleasure, on the other hand, takes us deep into our authentic feelings. Dr. Gottlieb defines pleasure as: “any experience that feels good…fills your body with delightful sensations, evokes warm feelings in your heart and positive thoughts in your mind, brings a smile to your lips, excites, amuses or satisfies, lifts your spirits or inspires a sense of well-being, meaning, and purpose.” He describes pleasure as a prism of experiences with four levels: physical (pleasures of the flesh), emotional (love, fun, and other positive social feelings), mental (like the delight of learning new ideas or the satisfaction of finding our purpose), and spiritual (i