Deflating Hungry Ghosts

Gabor Mate wrote "In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts", a book about the struggles of heroin addicts he worked with in Canada. He is a doctor of psychology and yet even he had to admit that he had a strange compulsive shopping habit. When the stress of his work became too overwhelming, he went to his favorite music store and purchased many expensive classical CDs he didn't even need. He just bought them to feel good about himself for a few hours but then he didn't feel so good when the credit card bill came at the end of the month.

An addiction or a compulsive habit is a note to oneself that one has to do some homework and that a lifestyle change is in order. There is certainly a huge spectrum; for some this struggle is about cigarettes, eating or coping with annoying shopping habits; others have to fight life-destroying substance abuse. When you listened to the hardships of Dr. Mate's patients you realized why many of them fell into a big hole. His patients were often abused as children or sometimes simply abandoned by their parents. True therapy for them requires the apparent mission impossible, to discover that unconditional love that we all deserve late in life. 

Dr. Mate's compulsive shopping habit was harmless in comparison. Yet he felt distraught and embarrassed himself. How can it be, he asked, that someone with his academic training could fall into the same trap! He understood his imbalance perfectly well. Buying classical music was his attempt to bring some order and structure in his chaotic world of battling other people's addictions. Who knows, perhaps the solution for him would be to change to a less stressful job. Perhaps the CDs were the price to pay for his saintly mission.

Below I have sketched out the vicious cycle of a compulsive habit or an addiction. The tensions created by the hungry ghosts build and build until the sufferer finally gives into temptation yet again. After an euphoric release of the tension comes the void, the state of emptiness that makes you quite vulnerable to go for it again. But if you somehow make it through the withdrawal symptoms you reach some sort of balance. Unfortunately, sooner or later the temptation comes back. Perhaps it is a stressful situation; maybe some memories trigger the desire that slumbers inside. Your willpower eventually runs thin and you need to find release yet again. A new cycle starts ...

    

                                     Release

   Tension                                                         Void

                                      Balance

Shadow work is different than the commitment to never do it again. It is the process to understand the tensions that hide within you and to release them. Every demon has an authentic demand that appears in distorted form. The heroin abusers want to feel the peace, love and connection during the euphoric high that is so elusive in their real lives. Dr. Mate wants to experience the order and clarity that his missing in his chaotic therapy work. What message have the hungry ghosts in store for you? 

This soul-searching process is quite similar for every spiritual traveler. The objective of the Way is not just about experiencing peace, love and happiness all the time; it is the art of letting go everything that stands in our way of experience God. Hurts of the path, regrets, repressed desires, or the need for forgiveness; you name it. Letting go of psychological wounds requires time, but you can save a lot of time if you accept this phase and stop beating yourself up over it. Start seeing shadow work for what it is, the beginning of the journey back Home. Understand the psychological process that is at work and enjoy seeing the hungry ghosts deflate in front of your astonished eyes.

Never Mind the Darkness, Carry On into the Light

He was a well-to-do investment banker and very attractive. He was a man who worked hard and played hard as well. The rest of the world, including his girlfriend, would have concluded that he had it all. Yet, he was in therapy, trying to figure out the meaning of his sexual fetish. For some strange reason, before he could have sex with his girlfriend, he had to masturbate to a video of two woman boxers beating each other up.(1)

What a weirdo you might say, yet his struggles are just a little out of the ordinary.  We all have a shadow personality, and the more time we spend searching for the light, the more likely we will find some dark corners in our soul. Shadow work is the willingness to look were few others would. Don't beat yourself up over your shadow and don't lose sleep over how to rid yourself of it. There is a part of the self that simply doesn't want to be dragged into the light. Ask what it wants from you. A spiritual path is a journey towards the light. When you satisfy your shadow's demands in a spiritually kosher way, you will be catapulted towards wholeness and holiness.

We spiritual path travelers perceive the world much differently than the ordinary folks would. Perhaps I can illustrate this observation with a different case study. A manager has a very capable and creative colleague, but her contributions, while useful to the firm they work for, is not essential to the group he is in charge of. So when hard times fall on the company and he is asked to cut personnel costs, he lets her go without blinking an eye. What is wrong with that, you might ask, isn't he just doing what he is asked to do? Well, when you are in charge of someone, know that you have the obligation to take care of this person to the best of your abilities. The manager could have picked up the phone reaching out to other groups. It might have been hard to do, it might not even have led to anything, but when it comes to people no effort should be spared. Sadly, our manager probably had no idea that he injured himself. Just because something is the norm doesn't mean that it is right.

So please don't mind if you have problems that the ordinary folks don't have. You most likely are a step ahead of everyone else. Being "normal" is not something to aspire for, being with God is. A shadow struggle is often the beginning of a spiritual journey. And that's the best thing that could ever happen to you.

Psychotherapy can help you in your soul searching process, but to find peace there has to be the spiritual dimension as well.  Consider the case of Gabor Mate (2) who treats addicts professionally, but whenever some pressure is building either at work or at home, he feels the need to go on expensive shopping binges for expensive classical CDs. Given that he is a therapist himself it was not hard for him to figure out what the origins of this irrational drive were, yet he felt as helpless as his patient when it came to the will-power to stop this craving. I remember thinking to myself that he shouldn't make a big deal out of his shopping addiction. It is what it is. What is required is a change in his life - work balance. Don't fight the symptoms of your imbalance, go after the root cause instead. Some longing of his soul must have been unfulfilled. And with that insight a magnificent soul searching journey starts.

Given that this website has found you, you are likely a spiritual traveler who has some "dark secret" like many of us. Well, consider yourself a step ahead of the well-respected manager who may not be able to profess a single dark secret, even though he may have just ill-treated a trusted friend in the name of corporate profitability. Never mind the darkness of your soul. It is just telling you that you are ready for a spiritual rebirth. You will have these dark episodes with as much certainty as the Caribbean is likely to experience a storm season this fall. Don't mind its idiosyncratic expression either. If anything, the weirder your hang-up, the higher your determination to become normal again. Well, in your search to become normal you will likely depart further and further from mainstream thinking. There is only one way to find your balance again and that is to find the Way - the Tao. By living in accordance with the demands of your soul you will take the wind out of the sails for your dark cravings. So never mind the darkness, carry on your journey into the light and your problems will fade naturally.

(1) Case study in Brett Kahr's "Who has been sleeping in your head."
(2) Gabor Mate, "In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts"

Addiction - A Wake-up Call From Your Self

Gabor Mate, MD's book 'In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts' should be a must read for anyone who is struggling with addictive behavior or is interested in the subject. He has worked with numerous drug addicts over many years and describes their struggles in shocking detail. The book also offers detailed descriptions of the latest neurological insights on addictive habits. In essence addictive habits are so hard to beat because they shut down your mental decision process. When you are at it, you can't think; your pleasure seeking auto-pilot takes over, which of course begs the question whether you really have a choice in beating any ingrained addictions without external help.

Gabor Mate describes his own struggles with addictive behaviors in the book as well, but it falls a little flat in comparison. He gets a kick out of buying expensive CDs and he describes himself as a workaholic as well. Yet, his struggles seem trivial in comparison to his drug addicted patients who are wasting away on the streets of Vancouver. Of course he is right in saying that in the end there are very similar neural processes at work. I absolutely agree with him that we should think of addictions as a spectrum instead, but the people who are close to losing everything that is dear to them, including their lives, tend to mind when we compare our stubborn habits with their struggles.

I once ran into a problem when I discussed my process of abstaining from an addictive habit for 21 days and then recommended just observing how different the world will look to you after this period. Someone in this discussion forum got really upset with me and pointed out that he had been a drug addict and had he tried my method instead, he would be long dead by now. The point was well taken and I at least from that day on only talk about my problems as 'pernicious habits' that I would like to get rid off. So a 'pernicious habit' is at play when otherwise you still have your life under control. Gabor Mate certainly could have kept his problems for himself and no one outside of his family probably would have noticed that he is a shopaholic and a workaholic.

From the spiritual perspective Gabor Mate is absolutely right. Every addiction, illness or pernicious habit sends you a personal message that something inside of you is out of kilter and needs fixing. He spends several chapters in his book reviewing the spiritual literature and he often cites Eckhart Tolle and other Buddhist insights about the ego. Every addiction makes it clear to yourself that you are really running away from the True Self.

But in the end despite the best efforts of the author, his book is still caught in the common sense thinking that perhaps after beating an addiction, you can live happily like your neighbor next door. But that is an illusion. You are the neighbor next door. The spiritual conclusion has to be that once you have had an unpleasant encounter with your ego, a lifelong spiritual journey is about to start. In fact, one of the drug addicts he works with is a philosopher type who challenged him when he argued that with the help of heroin he can touch God, albeit only for a moment or so. Isn't that all what life is worth living for, his patient asks. Gabor Mate didn't really have a good answer.

The philosophizing heroin addict hit the nail on the head, once you had a taste of God you realize that She is the only thing worth living for. If you really look inside, if you are willing to spot and deal with that restlessness inside of you, an orgasmic high is surely waiting for you. It is an orgasm that never stops, a burning bush that never gets consumed by the fire. Your addictions, illnesses and pernicious habits are a good reason to start looking - God is waiting for you.

The Void

Read Gabor Mate, MD's account of addicts in 'In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts' and you will either cry or get depressed, and most probably both. He interviewed all kind of substance abusers in the Vancouver area and it turns out that most of these victims have been sexually abused as children, were homeless, were physically or emotionally abused, grew up in foster care, etc. It is pretty clear that all these drugs do is to plaster over, at least for a few hours, the psychological pain of the past, only to find the black hole even larger on the morning after. For a few hours these chemical injections let you experience what life could have been.

I find it incredible that we all experience the same movie and nobody knows about the others' existence. I had a safe and - mostly - happy childhood, I have a great job, a loving family, a creative outlet - that would be writing to you - but my problem statement is pretty much identical: there is a void inside me, very much as it is inside of you. We function quite well in the eyes of society, the hungry ghost inside of us is smaller, but the temptation to escape is there as well. Have a look around, everyone experiences this void, you can certainly experience it in yourself if you dare to look.

Just sit there and experience it without moving, just don't do anything about it and simply face it. No running away, no artificial entertainment, no idle chatter, no anti-depressant drugs, no alcohol, no Internet and no sexual escape. Just sit there and experience it and see what happens. That is what a spiritual journey is all about, the guts to face the emptiness inside, and the conjecture that once you are ready to face the void there will be that amazing Force that fills is up. Please try it!