Joy is my true nature. It’s the unbounded awareness of oneness, which is all I am when I am free from a story and perfectly aligned with what is.
Comfort is a seemingly “good” feeling that I perceive to come from outside me (my body being outside the true me). It is just a feeling, which can only be the result of believing a thought.
Seeking comfort, ease, etc. in order to feel okay is painful because it argues with reality: it means I’m identifying whatever is happening as NOT comfort, ease etc. which is a false story. Everything is as it should be. The only thing that can be out of place is my story.
I cannot be uncomfortable without the thought, “discomfort.” Just consider a surgery patient under general anesthesia.
The idea that I need comfort, that I need to feel good, smart, accepted, safe, healthy, alert - that I need any certain feeling in order to be okay is painful. It is a false story of a body, of a fight for survival, of separation. Which is a painful story.
Especially when I don’t have that certain feeling.
The truth is that I always have everything I need. I never need what I don’t have. In fact, I never need anything that is not this. Because everything, in the end, IS this. This is all there is at every moment. Any other thought is confusion.
How do I know I need something? I have it. How do I know I don’t need something? I don’t have it (credit: Byron Katie)
The idea that I need to survive, that I need to win, that I need the time or space to relax, that I need freedom from pain (when I don’t have these things) is a painful story. A false identification with an illusion. It’s attachment to a temporary distraction from the truth of my eternal non-existence.
When I see things this way, all that’s left is a joyful peaceful loving of this.