Jack Kerouac basically wrote the user manual for modern restlessness. On the Road sells the hunt: peak experience, spiritual conquest, one more hit of aliveness.
We inherited that script. Then yoga got imported inside it. Breakthroughs. Transcendence. The promise that the next workshop will finally do it.
But the math always catches up. At some point, there is not gonna be a thing that is more fun than everything you’ve already done. “I’ve already done this a bajillion times” isn’t laziness. It’s the edge of novelty-seeking.
I know that edge. There was a time I practiced like I was trying to pass a test. Respectability. Proof I wasn’t a phoney. You can only perform austerity that hard for so long before you either get honest… or you start burning up.
And then the terrifying part: the compulsion fades. You don’t have to grip so hard. No fireworks. No guarantee that transformation will show up on schedule. You worry you’ll lose what you earned, just because you’re not white-knuckling it anymore.
This is the unglamorous middle the tradition was built for. Abhyasa. Tapas that doesn’t eat you alive. The strange paradox: practice only gets interesting after it stops being interesting.