The Ecstasy of Experience

It's only Thursday night and I'm already typing my blog article for the week. I'm feeling a bit relaxed now because I'm on leave tomorrow. I'll leave all the emails behind for once and relax by writing anything that comes into my mind.

The mind. Everything begins and ends with the mind. Earlier this morning I was watching some video clips shared by a friend who went diving at Pulau Perhentian.  I'm happy that my friend is enjoying life, going diving and golfing all over the world. We all have our ways of deciding what is the proverbial 'good life'.

For some, it is seeing the world--going on tours to exotic locations overseas. For others, it's aiming for that peak experience--skydiving, mountain-climbing, bungee-jumping or simply partying and hobnobbing with the rich and famous. Life is great when you are healthy and wealthy enough to pursue all these things. We only live once and why not enjoy while we can, or forever regret that we missed these opportunities?

Every experience in life begins with a yearning, a desire--a thought in the mind. I should make a trip to Bali, now that the borders are open again. Or I should take flying lessons, so that I can soar in the skies and meditate on life and earth like St Exupery. Won't I enjoy all these things? Why not?

Now what happens when I do get to go to all these places and do all the exciting stuff that people dream of? I end up with experiences and memories that I will cherish for the rest of my life. These experiences, in the end is something that I can only recall back in my mind. Every experience reduces to a moment of sensation in the mind. Every mighty organism is a pattern of firing in the neurons of your brain.

Would the proverbial brain-in-a-vat experience the same happiness if the same pattern of firing is triggered. Who can tell. Is one set of experience more fulfilling and real compared to others? Who knows.

Is the pleasure of diving and experiencing the world underwater more mind-blowing than say, listening to an orchestra performing Symphony No 7 by Beethoven?  You are reading these lines now and perhaps, while reading, experience a moment of realisation. An aha moment. Is this worth less than the ecstatic exhilaration of jumping out of a plane with a parachute?

Do pleasurable experiences make you a better person? Does the feeling of being 'a better person' makes you feel good? Are we also simply looking for a 'pleasurable' experience every time we try to do good and help others? The pleasure of being praised, honoured and looked up to, feels good, doesn't it?

Obviously there are experiences that one would prefer over another. The experience of being stuck in a traffic jam on the road under the hot sun is certainly not something one would pay money for. But if we take the pain or pleasure of the experience out of the equation, are not all experiences 'similar'--something that occurs in the mind?

Is pleasure intrinsic to the experience or something that the minds interprets as such? If pain or pleasure is not something that's intrinsic to the sights and sensations itself, perhaps we can train ourselves to re-interpret each situation, to maximise pleasure? Don't people who practise sado-masochism, are perhaps doing just that, albeit unconsciously.

Reduce every experience to its raw signal. Distill its information. Assimilate them into you system. Rewire your brain. Like AI, every experience improves the model. We can be transformed by any experience, not only the mindblowing ones. Do not let the decibel levels distract you. The quiet moments of reading and writing could be as life-changing as that rare opportunity view the Earth from space as an astronaut. 

Everything in life reduces to an experience, which immediately becomes a memory that fades over time. An experience is only useful if one is present to it and extracts all its value the very instance. Every experience in life is potentially ecstatic. It is how present you are to the experience that makes all the difference.