Comfortably Numb

"Hello... hello... hello... is there anybody in there?"

I was sitting on my deck this morning thinking about Lent and the desert experience when the words from Pink Floyd's Comfortably Numb slowy echoed into my consciousness.

I was meditating on the story of Jesus' time in the wilderness and I was reminded of John Candy's role as Dewey Oxberger in the comedy STRIPES. He explains his reason for joining the Army was to emerge from boot-camp as a "lean, mean fighting machine".

And it seems that for many the spiritual life is an endurance test; once we get beyond reliquishing our cravings for PopTarts, Diet Coke and Starbucks' lattes for six weeks that somehow we will emerge spiritutally lean. If I am not careful, I'll just make myself comfortably numb.

Like in the story of Jesus' desert temptations, the wilderness is a place where I come face to face with the voices that tempt me to satisfy my immediate phyiscal cravings or my cravings for prestige and power. For me, it's not so much about overcoming my cravings, as it is about noticing what lies beneath the cravings and my ego's desire for immediate gratification.

Have you ever fallen asleep on your arm?

You wake-up only to discover that your arm is numb and you cannot move it?

When you apply pressure for a prolonged period of time, you actually cut off communication from your brain to parts of your body. The pressure squeezes nerve pathways so that the nerves can't transmit electrochemical impulses properly. When you interfere with this transfer by squeezing the nerve pathways, you don't have full feeling in that body part, and your brain has trouble telling the body part what to do.

We do the same thing to the deepest parts of ourselves.

Have you cut-off communication with yourself?

Have you applied pressure for a prolonged period of time to you soul-- to your deepest self?

The last thing we often need is more pressure to somehow become spiritually lean for six-weeks, but we need to "roll off" our souls and and notice the feeling... the tingling sensation... as we allow ourselves to awaken to who we are.