Losing-Energy Pleasure and Gaining-Energy Pleasure

We have described the brief, intense pleasure that drugs, such as heroin, cocaine, or amphetamines, introduce into the system as they quickly draw and burn up life force from a person’s organs, brain, and glands.

This is like a bonfire started with gasoline. It burns intensely and is very gratifying, but the fuel is gone and the fire is extinguished all too soon. The increased desire to experience that intense excitement, followed by the increased use of drugs, draws out the vital energy from the organs as well as from the brain and bone marrow.

Some of the entertainment we seek is also losing-energy pleasure. When we are entertained in excess with activities such as watching television, energy from our organs is required to pay attention, and so our life-force energy is drawn out toward the event we are watching and hearing.

We imagine ourselves to feel good because we perceive ourselves to be relaxing, thereby decreasing our stress. We do feel the release, but our vital organs are being drained of their life force by this excessive energy expenditure.

This stress to our organs creates negative energy, and if they do not have the means to transform it back into positive energy, we will accumulate too much and eventually our negative emotions will burst out.

Even though something such as quiet music can help us relax and create a sense of harmony in the body, too much attention to it will make our eyes, ears, and nervous system lose energy to the outside.

Afterward, we continually seek new songs, movies, and shows because these things never quite satisfy our needs but instead arouse us further and increase our need for stimulation.

The more we try to satisfy one or two of the senses by an outside means, the greater the need for satisfaction we create for all the senses.

When you try to satisfy the mouth and tongue, the eyes, ears, and nose need something to stimulate them.

It is a never-ending, increasing requirement of the senses. Multibillion-dollar businesses have arisen to satisfy our senses. They make tremendous profits, because ultimately they do not really satisfy us or bring us true joy and happiness. If these companies created entertainment that would satisfy us for a long time, they would go out of business. The Taoists regard our organs as the body’s parents and the senses as the children.

When they separate there is no harmony, but rather disharmony and need.

People search for happiness, satisfaction, and love outside of themselves,

rather than within. They listen to the desires of their bodies rather than to their minds and spirits. The more they search, the more they create a need and will never really find what they are looking for. Instead, they foster a deterioration within themselves. For example, if we eat a tasty food but do not have an inner harmony in our organs and senses, our eyes will want more, like children in a toy store. We might decide to see a movie, and then the ears want to be stimulated as well. We then might decide to go to a nightclub or a bar. In the end we might feel the need to get drunk, to smoke, or take drugs. True happiness, true joy, and true satisfaction come with inner peace. Turning sexual energy and the resultant orgasm inward is the first step to “gaining-energy pleasure” and to a control of the senses. Once you have more sexual energy inside, the organs will become stronger and will then be able to control, satisfy, and balance the senses