By Lou DiVirgilio

Most of our living is at the level of our solar plexus.  This level of living coincides with our senses: seeing, smelling, hearing, feeling, and tasting.  The trouble with our senses is that they are not reliable. For example, it is dusk and you are walking, your eyes see something coiled, your senses say it is a snake.  However, the truth is, it is a coiled hose.  Its not that all our senses deceive us, they do however, lack the consciousness to discern fully, and at the same time you might say there is a quality of ignorance about them.  Our senses do however, provide us with the capacity to maneuver effectively about our lower levels of  our lives, that is “the getting and spending” part, but at the same time, negatively disassociates us with Nature. 

The Buddhist keep the relationship between the, lower material aspects of our lives, and the spiritual part,  by simply dividing the outcome of living a material based life, against the higher spiritual. The basic difference is that a strict material, “getting and spending” lived life, brings suffering, while the spiritual lived life brings happiness.  Most people, if asked which they would prefer, would chose happiness.  However, our “getting and spending” way of life has been praised, culturally excepted, and built into the perceived best practice of life to emulate. It has been praised so positively, that it has become a compulsion, to the point that we cannot control it, it controls us.   Compulsion is cyclical, and loops us, so that the more we use it the stronger it becomes, and the more difficult it becomes to brake free. 

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