A Spiritually Excited State
Is a Trap

Please closely examine what is happening in your body the next time you get excited. You will usually discover two feelings, hope (the anticipation of a good result in the future) and fear (the anticipation that things might not work well). These feelings are attachments to the future; and both are tension-based, the more hope and/or fear, the higher the inner tension. (During sexual excitement with a significant other, the feelings of fear are usually absent.)

Please note that you are often not living in the now when you are excited. Excitement becomes an avoidance of the now by those addicted, most often avoidance of emptiness, aloneness and lack of love. When we are in an excited state, our blood pressure jumps, our heart rate increases and our extremities' temperatures fall, all signs of tension. Permanently higher-than-optimum tension levels (with subsequent health problems in a few decades time) result for those who make excitement (non-sexual) an important feature in their lives. Excitement also usually prevents the accurate perception of the more exquisite feelings of total loveliness, sexual bliss and pure joy. These feelings are truly felt only when tension is absent or minimal (as discussed in Chapter 15.)

To find your own way is to follow your bliss. This involves analysis, watching yourself and seeing where real deep bliss is -- not the quick little excitement, but the real deep, life-filling bliss. Joseph Campbell, 1904-1987