Aghori

If you are a borderline alcoholic you can feel the urge to go to the liquor cabinet after work, but you know that after the first glass a second one is coming and many more afterwards. As you see the bottle, you can already feel that pleasant surge of blood to your brain, and you know that at this moment the auto-pilot will take over. And you know that on days when your wife travels, a lot of dark stuff will happen at night. And you also know that you will hit the children the next morning. The slightest irritation from their side and they will be slapped hard. And then in the evening you will be at church again, weeping, praying, confessing and promising the holy Mary for the thousandth time that you will never, never do it again.

Does this addiction theme resonate with you. Have you ever felt hooked in your life? Perhaps it is sex, other substance abuse, perhaps work, video games or dependency in relationships? Believe it or not, there is actually something very simple about the path towards addiction, you know where is ends and you know that if you take the first step, all the others will follow like a chain reaction.

If you follow a spiritual path, your shadow will follow. The more extreme your desire to step into the light, the larger the shadow will be. Aghori is the spiritual discipline to embrace your not-so-holy desires. An Aghori master once offered three pieces of advice: do not be embarrassed about your desires, do not fear and do not doubt. The trick is to understand that the same desire that drives you towards nirvana also drives you towards vice. We have to understand both urges, and we have to understand that neither will lead us anywhere except of course to repeat the endless back and forth between our notions of light and darkness.

So don't be embarrassed by your urges, experiment with them and you will find a sustainable way to express yourself. And if your desire leads you straight to addiction, well, then you will understand the futility of going down this path. There is actually so much power behind this insight. Do not be embarrassed of who you think you are, do not fear and always be honest with yourself. 

Just one note of caution at the end, I am not advocating that you follow your urges all the time, I am just saying that experimenting with them and trying to express them in your idiosyncratic fashion might be part of your path. If you say that Jesus managed to beat his power temptation when he was in the desert and the Buddha managed to overcome lust and you have to be like them, I would say to you that we already had them, but now we need you to show up and do it your way. No matter which way you go, no matter what you do, life will always present you a perfect opportunity to wake up here and now.