You are an animal. You are a selfish animal. You have needs and you are driven to fulfill them. You are hungry and you must eat or you will die. You don’t want to harm or bring suffering to any other living thing, but you must eat and something living must be sacrificed for that need. You don’t want to be an animal. You are an explorer, curious about so many things. You want to experience, to think, to try to figure out the puzzles.
You are a passenger on a magnificent journey through life. Your body is the vehicle and the passenger is the real you, tied inescapably to that body, peering out through those eyes, listening with those ears, sopping up information through all of your bodily senses and trying to assemble it into a sense of purpose or plan. Life is a balancing act between the needs of the animal part of you and the mindful part of you. DB