Ecstasy is a taught word

Ecstasy is a taught word. We are born with an inner sense of joy and curiosity that makes all emotions acceptable. Social conditioning leads us to believe that the spectrum of emotions has to be wild to be interesting, that we have to feel extreme joy and extreme sadness. Conditioning leads us to think that the only one that is acceptable of those two is the extreme joy, ecstasy. And that we can only feel that when we forget everything else.

We have been conditioned for so long how to forget to notice what is around us, to be curious, that we lose touch with our inner child. We lose touch with the innate ok-ness of being. We forget that nothing is permanent and all thoughts and emotions are just thoughts and emotions. And in creating that distance and alienation, we start to feel overwhelming amounts of grief, anxiety, loneliness. 

Drugs like Ecstasy, Zoloft, even alcohol remove that filter of self-correction we have been socialized to keep on and often allow us to just feel more deeply the wonder in whatever is around. By flooding our bodies with happy hormones, they keep us in a suspended state of extreme happiness, which is not the same as joy but feels like it. But they also disallow us from feeling much else, and in doing that, tie us to the belief that happiness can only be felt in the absence of other emotions.

The Buddhist way says to choose the middle path, to find your own equilibrium and remember that life is full of moments of joy and sadness, and that these are just moments and it’s ok to feel them, sometimes all at once. True joy comes in knowing that. True joy feels like a warm sun in your chest, carrying you through life and all its rivers with the knowledge that you can always come back to yourself. 

You were born with true joy.