I woke up early this morning, and saw a post on Reddit about how it feels for a woman to be taking it doggy-style. One thing led to another, and my mind was led to the thought that as time passes by, my body just isn't going to be what it used to be. The inevitable fact of aging is that your body loses hormones and NAD+ levels, and as a result, you yearn for youthfulness - not just in terms of outward appearance, but that driving energy.

Then my mind was stricken by a rebellious rage, imagining and feeling that inadequacy of never being able to really arouse, or bring to those heights of sexual ecstacy the person I love. I'm sure a lot of people, particularly insecure couples in marriage, share this insecurity. For me, it was the humiliation of a participation trophy after failing miserably in a race.

A primal hatred which I'd suppressed, threatened to consume me once more. I felt so inadequate and deficient, again.

Luckily, I had a copy of Eckhart Tolle's The Power of Now, and compelled by a search for relief from this familiar pain, I finally realized how meditation really works in bringing you beyond your mind - how it hamsterwheels over its thoughts, memories, and the resulting complexes, anxieties, and the like:

A beggar had been sitting by the side of a road for over thirty years.

One day a stranger walked by.

“Spare some change?” mumbled the beggar, mechanically holding out his old baseball cap.

“I have nothing to give you,” said the stranger. Then he asked: “What's that you are sitting on?”

“Nothing,” replied the beggar. “Just an old box. I have been sitting on it for as long as I can remember.”

“Ever looked inside?” asked the stranger.

“No,” said the beggar. “Whats the point? There's nothing in there.”

“Have a look inside,” insisted the stranger.

The beggar managed to pry open the lid. With astonishment, disbelief, and elation, he saw that the box was filled with gold.

“I cannot live with myself any longer.” This was the thought that kept repeating itself in my mind. Then suddenly I became aware of what a peculiar thought it was. "Am I one or two? If I cannot live with myself, there must be two of me: the 'I' and the 'self' that 'I' cannot live with.“

”Maybe,“ I thought, ”only one of them is real."

.. the single most vital step on your journey toward enlightenment is this: learn to disidentify from your mind. Every time you create a gap in the stream of mind, the light of your consciousness grows stronger.