Addiction: From Bondage to Freedom

Dear friend, if you are reading this note you probably have a habit that bothers you, some addiction that simply doesn't want to go away. You probably mind your lack of will-power, perhaps even hate yourself deep down inside. You are not alone. As a matter of fact, most of us are addicted to something, some might not even realize that they are. With every addiction, there is some sensation, some feeling attached to it that you enjoy so much. You are in heaven when you experience this feeling and even the anticipation of this activity puts you in heaven. The flip side of it though, the withdrawal phase gets darker and darker, just as the high gets ever more intense. It feels like you are being sucked into a dark tunnel and with every step you are taking you are asking yourself why you can't stop.

All addictions are taboo in our society, be it a sex, drug, alcohol, gambling, or video games. Many of us manage to hide our dark habits from others, but eventually it will come out in the open and we are very afraid of that. You have probably tried quitting and had phases of success only to find that when you backtrack, your indulgence becomes even more extreme and afterwards you are beating yourself up over it. If you are religious, you probably curse yourself and think that you are a sinner, perhaps even that you deserve all this pain, struggle and suffering. You have to understand that it is the ego that is talking and not God; the same force that got you into this mess in the first place. You may be surprised to hear that, but the addiction is here for a reason; it can teach you so much about yourself, about your longings, about your cravings and the endless restlessness in you. The divine intervention to lead you out of this tunnel has already shown up. You will see that once you have managed to turn this car around, you will be headed for a lifelong journey into the light.

You cannot discover the ego by thinking about it. You cannot beat the ego by arguing with it. All you can do is to observe and understand the processes that are going on inside of you. The way out of an addiction is the same. When you observe, you don't judge yourself. You observe what triggers your urges. If you are an alcoholic it might be just a walk past the liqour cabinet that does it, if you are a sex addict, just seeing a computer might do it, and if you are a gambling addict, it might just be the air-ticket to Macao or Las-Vegas that gets your mental juices flowing. When your addiction has been triggered, you are able to observe how you are falling into a trance. Even the anticipation of your addictive activity releases the feel-good chemicals into your brain and from then on you are simply on auto-pilot.

You observe the triggers that get the ball rolling, you observe the feelings when you are experiencing your high and you observe the state you are in on the morning after. If you truly observe how you are hurting yourself, you are strengthening the authority that coexists in you besides the ego - you are strengthening the observer. It is a process, you have to give yourself time to shake off your addictive behavior. Schedule periods of withdrawal. Try to beat your habit for 21 days at least and when you are at it again afterwards, observe how much more powerful the observer in you will become after every dark session. Observe how your energy level is rebounding in the withdrawal phase, observe how the negative repercussions of every additional indulgence feels increasingly more painful.

If you run these dark experiments but you manage to stick to your 21 days of abstinence you will see how your confidence to beat your addiction once and for all will be going up. You will also see that you stop blaming yourself for being helpless. You may ask what is so special about the 21 days. Many psychological study report that it takes about 21 days to reprogram your sub-conscience. So when you experiment with your dark passions after having been abstinent over that time period, it will be literally a new person running these experiments.

After you have run these experiments for a while you will experience how you gain control over the situation. When you gain control you reach the stage in which you can perceive the triggers that would would have started the downward spiral; but you manage to stop yourself as the observer kicks in; you remind yourself of all the negative consequences, the painful 21 day abstinence process that lies ahead, especially the first three days of it which are always the darkest, and with this anticipation you literally stop the train from leaving the station. As the years go by the neurological pathways in your brain get re-wired.

We have a prediction for you my friend. Not only that you will manage to beat your nasty habit, but so much more. When you experiment with the observer in you, you will in fact start a lifelong journey that observes the workings inside of you. You will experience the ego that way and you will discover for yourself that each and every craving is in fact a distraction from the true bliss you can experience when your mind is still. In fact, one day you will thank your addiction for having jumpstarted you on this magnificent spiritual journey from which there is no turning back. Stop beating yourself up over your destructive habit. The past doesn't exist and the now is here to welcome you with open arms. They say that a saint is a sinner who doesn't give up. So get started on your clean-up process and discover for yourself that once you get started, you will not stop until everything surrounding you sparkles like diamonds in the sun. Why don't you get started today - you can do it!

By Christian and Su Zhen