I think this speaks for itself...
Dear _____
A couple of weeks ago I was over and you asked me a question - "Why do I do that?" You looked at me for a second and then said you knew I didn't know... but I had an answer. It just didn't seem like a good time to go into it.
First, I don't for a moment think you do anything that merits judgment against yourself. The activities you described didn't seem bad or wrong to me, and even if they did (believe me, they didn't) it wouldn't be important anyway. It's the question itself that's interesting because I, just like most sentient beings, have asked that question so often in the past.
As is my experience, any question I keep asking eventually receives an answer. One day, about 12 years ago, I was sitting in my apartment in San Francisco and the answer popped into my head, almost like a vision. I was so taken with what seemed like obvious truth that I sat down and wrote it out in an essay of sorts. Being a dufus, I don't have that essay handy - it's filed with a lot of other stuff I'll probably never see again in a box somewhere in California. But no matter... the answer is welded into my consciousness.
We do what we do, whatever it is, to have the experience of the present moment.
We didn't squeeze ourselves out of our mothers' wombs to be lost in our thoughts, stuck in our heads in seemingly endless thought-loops. We crave the experience of being alive, of being in the present moment experiencing that to which our paths have led. When we get lost in our thoughts our subconscious minds compel us toward actions or behaviors which will return us to the present moment. Unfortunately, when we let our subconscious lead us to present moment behaviors we don't always make the most enlightened of choices.
The evidence is everywhere... people who have inappropriate sex with people they don't even like, sometimes screwing up relationships with people they love, because no one is thinking about yesterday or tomorrow when they "cum" with a new person; people who spend money they don't have because at the point of a purchase they're brought into the present by their new "thing"; people who cut or mutilate themselves because when the knife breaks the skin the "voices go away"... there's a common thread in each of these examples - after the action is over we're thrown back into our heads even more forcefully, spinning on the questions of "why did i do it" and judging ourselves for having done whatever it is. These questions and judgments add to the already blaring background noise in our heads and lead inexorably to... more of the same, as our subconscious compels us toward the same behaviors because of the desire to be present, to be alive.
Not all of the behaviors are damaging - in fact most of them aren't. Getting tattooed or pierced, exciting hobbies, dancing, etc are just less harmful examples of the same desire to return to the present moment. There's nothing wrong with it unless we're causing pain in our lives and/or the lives of others with our actions. It's these harmful actions that cause us to ask the question in the first place - "why do I do what I do?"
This answer wouldn't be worth much if it didn't also come with a suggestion of how to avoid the actions that create pain, that create more spinning and karma and force us to return to the same behavior to make the mental noise go away, if even for a moment. The answer is simple - but the application is, at first, difficult. When feeling compelled to do something that we suspect will bring pain or karma into our lives we can lessen the desire for this action by taking a different path to the present moment. The simplest, most accessible path is to return to our bodies via our breath. Three deep breaths can work like magic.
One of the beauties of this is that belief has nothing to do with it - you don't need to believe what you can discover for yourself.
So... whether it's returning to one's body via breath, or (as one friend does) jumping up in the air and turning around (he swears by it and it makes sense), or reciting the lord's prayer (Jesus wasn't stupid) - one needn't be led by the subconscious to do what will eventually hurt. But more importantly, once we know why we want to do these things they lose much of their power over us.
We're here for one thing, and one thing only - to have the experience of the present moment. Our responsibility to ourselves (and the rest of creation) is simple: pay attention where we are, and not to what's in our heads. In doing so we regain power over our actions.
You asked, after all.
Love, Gary
