We medicate ourselves to avoid feeling pain. For most people, it originates from emotional pain, and beneath that is always the spiritual pain of separation from our true Mother and Father--God.
What is “medicating with satiation?” It decreases our sensitivity by saturation of our senses, a form of numbing. Our sensitivity is what enables us to feel or sense God. We cannot know God by thinking of our Creator. To know or experience God is to feel God. When we saturate or dose ourselves with sensual experience, food, sex, alcohol, or drugs, we numb ourselves. This is no different than taking a pain-killing drug. Once saturated, we cannot tune in with all our sensitivity to Divine Presence. We no longer have access to feeling God since we no longer have access to our sensitivity, which is, in reality, our receptivity. “Medicating” is trading the feeling of connection to Source for a state of nothingness. But, with a relief of pain, stress, or frustration, we accept this temporary solution in place of the healing Presence of God.
Experiencing the Presence of God is a fulfilling, more aware, more sensitive state of being-one where expansion and spiritual evolution are so nourishing that the pain, anxiety, and stress drop away like light filling a dark room; this is when true healing is experienced. Satiation is merely treating a symptom, providing a temporary suppression. For life-changing healing, we must allow ourselves full sensitivity and courageously face the message of pain that signals the need for healing instead of running from it. Confronting what we need to heal is the only way to lasting happiness. Embracing our pain requires intense discipline to overcome animal instinct which tells us to run from it to escape and avoid what we must face.
The numbing experience, by sensual satiation, is a maddening one. The pain, stress, or anxiety still awaits emergence the very moment the satiation wears off. Since sensual satiation is part of duality, it has a beginning and an end. In fact, the moment satiation is attained, it begins to diminish, as does all temporary experience in the duality of the physical world.
The longing in the heart experienced when we are disconnected from our God-Self, drives us to seek fulfillment through human love. This is like two half-filled cups thinking they can become complete with the other filling up their lack, but since they are each in the predicament of their cups not being full, this is impossible. This feeling of emptiness is caused by separation from the God-Self. Because the connection is part of the world of duality, the human connection can only be sustained by continual effort. The imperfection of this “almost” fulfilling “love” state causes a mixture of anxiety and the feeling of contentment. So, it is not truly a feeling of contentment, which, by definition, is a constant state, not an impermanent one.
The truth can be realized once we see that a permanent state in the outer physical world is unattainable. As in all attempts to treat symptoms, not only is precious time lost that could be used for true healing, but also the ability to address the real cause of suffering is diminished. For instance, medicating, numbing, and suppressing the body's cells may lessen pain but also paralyzes the cells’ natural ability to heal. To heal, the cells need to be enlivened, awakened, and sensitized (just as you need to be wide awake to carry out your work efficiently).
There is an unconscious accepted myth that the body does not want to heal. The truth is that every cell in the body is programmed to do nothing else but carry out all forms of healing for us, and our interference in their inborn agenda is what causes us so much suffering. Much like a plant that wants to grow, bloom and bear fruit, our body always wants to heal and bring itself back into the perfect balance found in undisturbed nature. Our body has an inborn desire to help us become all we can be, to grow, bloom and bear fruit like the rest of nature. In the same way, our glands secrete hormones that change us from infant to toddler to child to adolescent and then adult; our body can further change from human animal to spiritual human.
All longing, need, and desire can be actually cultivated and focused on Divine experience. The more focused longing becomes, the more permanent the state of oneness, eventually ending all suffering.
Temporary satiation or permanent liberation: you must choose. You must want God-realization at all costs. When all craving stops, a clear vision of reality is born, untainted with interference by the mind (I. e. “This is good because I want it”). Be willing to die for your cause, and you will be born into an eternal existence, the dominion you were created to inhabit.
Fasting heightens the longing and sensitizes the hunger for something more spiritual. It is actually spiritual medicine. That is why Christ taught this by example as a path to liberation and enlightenment. Unfortunately, the art of purification and its relevance to awakening has been lost and eliminated from most of Christ’s teachings except in the Essene teachings, which reflect little-known ancient unaltered Christian scriptures. (See Essene Gospel of Peace by Edmond Szekely). *
For more guidance on this subject, see You’re Not Fat You’re Swollen aka Don’t Pollute Your Own Stream by the same author