drunk again

Sitting in the garden

Doing nothing

Drunk again

Have you ever had that feeling, that feeling of being drunk on life? Sometimes it can come at very exciting times, when there is a lot happening and there’s adrenaline in the body. It feels great. One feels ecstatic, very alive.

Exactly the same feeling can arise without activity, without adrenaline, without some exciting social interaction. If one sits silently, if enough stillness comes, then a space opens up within oneself. And in that space, even the tiniest sensation can become ecstatic. The breeze on one’s face, the chirp of a bird, the buzz of a fly – it is all felt so intensely. And it is felt intimately. These things are touching us on the inside, not from the outside. When we are really open to life, feeling it from a space of emptiness and stillness and silence, then there is no boundary, there is no separation. And the dog barking in the distance is all part of this. We could say it’s all part of me but that is not quite the feeling. The me has disappeared. And with this intimate intensity, there can come this feeling of drunkenness, a drunken joy.

This is the way of the Sufis. And the drunkenness that comes is a beautiful drunkenness. It is warm and joyful and very much alive. Yet it comes in moments of stillness and silence.