Addiction

You cannot begin the work of releasing an addiction until you can acknowledge that you are addicted. Until you realize that you have an addiction, it is not possible to diminish its power. The personality rationalizes its addictions. It dresses them in attractive clothing. It presents them to itself and others as desirable or beneficial. A person who is addicted to alcohol, for example, will say to herself or himself, or to others, that
drunkenness is a way of loosening up, of relaxing after a tense day, of having fun, and, therefore, it is constructive. A person who is addicted to sex will say to herself or himself, or to others, that random sexual encounters are expressions of closeness, or love, that they reflect an evolved and liberated perception, and, therefore, they are desirable.
Recognition of your own addictions requires inner work. It requires that you look clearly at the places where you lose power in your life, where you are controlled by external circumstances. It requires going through your defenses. Even when striving for clarity, or when outer circumstances-such as an injury caused by driving drunk, or a marriage wrecked by promiscuity-provide evidence of an addiction, the personality often clings to a perception of its addiction as a mere problem, initially, as a small problem, then as a bigger problem, and then as a significant problem.
Why does the personality resist acknowledging its addictions?
Acknowledging an addiction, accepting that you have an addiction, is acknowledgment that a part of you is out of control. The personality resists acknowledging its addictions because that forces it to choose to leave a part of itself out of control, or to do something about it. Once an addiction has been acknowledged, it cannot be ignored, and it cannot be released without changing your life, without changing your self-image, without changing your entire perceptual and conceptual framework. We do not want to do that because it is our nature to resist change. Therefore, we resist acknowledging our addictions.
An addiction is not merely an attraction. It is natural for males and females to admire each other, for example, and to feel a warmth and attraction toward each other. An addiction is more than that. An addiction is characterized by magnetism and fear. There is attraction plus fear, plus a jolt of energy that is out of proportion to the situation. Attractions are a pleasing part of life. They can be satisfied and left behind, but addictions cannot.
An addiction cannot be satiated. A sexual addiction, for example, cannot be satisfied by sex. This is the first clue that the dynamic that is involved in what appears to be a sexual addiction is not sexual, but that the experiences of addictive sexual attraction, or repulsion, serve a deeper dynamic.
An addiction can be anesthetized. A sexual addiction, for example, can be made dormant within a relationship by a fear of losing the security of the relationship, but it cannot be healed without a recognition that it is there, and an understanding of the dynamic that lies beneath it. Unless this takes place, it will break through the relationship, or the facade of monogamy, at those moments when the personality feels most insecure, or most threatened. At these times, the personality will feel a sexual attraction to others.
Sexual addictions are the most universal within our species because the issues of power are tied so directly to the learning of sexuality within the human structure. Sexuality and issues of power were created within our species to complement each other. That is why each human being who is sexually out of control actually has issues of power in which he or she is out of control with his or her own power. At heart, they are identical. A person cannot be in
his or her own power center and be sexually out of control or dominated by the sexual energy current. These cannot exist simultaneously.
What is the dynamic behind sexual addiction?
The experience of addictive sexual attraction is a signal to the experiencer that in that moment he or she is experiencing powerlessness, and is desiring to feed upon a weaker soul. This is the dynamic beneath all addictions: the desire to prey upon a soul that is more shattered than oneself. This is as ugly to look at as it is to experience, but it is the central core of negativity within our species.
Sex without reverence, like business without reverence, and politics without reverence, and any activity that is done without reverence, reflects the same thing: one soul preying upon another weaker soul. The way out of a sexual addiction, therefore, is to remind yourself when you feel that attraction, that you are, in that moment, powerless, and desiring to prey upon a soul that is weaker than yourself.
In other words, when you are feeling the draw of a sexual addiction, consider simultaneously that you are in a mode of powerlessness that causes a desire to use others to surface within you. That desire feels like a sexual attraction. Remind yourself clearly of what it is that is being ignited in you. That does not mean that you do not physically feel a connection or an attraction, but, underneath it, what causes you to want to act is a different dynamic, one of powerlessness.
Allow this consciousness to penetrate deeply within you so that, at that point, if you want to act on your addiction, you need to walk through your own reality.
If you are married, or in a monogamous relationship, remind yourself that acting upon your impulse may, or will, cost you your marriage, or your relationship. Ask yourself if what you want to do is worth that. If you are healthy, remind yourself that acting upon your impulse may cost you your health, because you do not know whether or not the partner that you have chosen carries a disease, such as AIDS. Ask yourself if what you want to do is worth that risk.
Remind yourself that the partner to whom you are most likely drawn is drawn equally to others, as are you, that he or she has no more feeling for you than you have for him or her. You can be assured that this is the case because the sexual attraction that you have felt for this person is a response in you of a weakness detection system, so to speak, that you have used to scan those around you. When it locates a person who is weak enough to be susceptible to you, to be seduced by you, it triggers within you the experience of sexual attraction. Will you advance your masculinity, or your femininity, by exploiting the weakness of this person? Will that gain you what you want to gain?
Remind yourself that you both have chosen to interact sexually in ways that do not ignite your feelings because, if your feelings were awakened, they would only let you know that the person you are drawn to is no more emotionally involved with you than you are with him or her. It is one thing to think that you are sexually involved with someone and not feeling anything. It is another to face that neither is your partner feeling anything for you.
Look closely at the dynamic in which you are involved, and you will see that when one soul seeks to prey upon a weaker soul, and a weaker soul responds, both souls are the weaker soul. Who preys upon whom? The logic of the five-sensory personality cannot grasp this, but the higher order logic of the heart sees it clearly. Is there truly a difference when two consciousnesses are trying to link into a dynamic that ultimately will lead to balance when both have identical missing pieces? What causes the need to dominate, for example, is the same that causes the need to be submissive. It is merely the choice of which role the soul wishes to play in working out the identical struggle.
Enter into your own fear, into your own sense of wanting a drink, or sex with a different partner. Ask yourself to seriously review all of the times in your life that you thought you would gain so much from that, and face what you gained.
Hold onto the thought that you create your experiences. Your fear comes from the realization that a part of you is creating a reality that it wants, whether you want it or not, and the feeling that you are powerless to prevent it, but that is not so. This is critical to understand: your addiction is not stronger than you. It is not stronger than who you want to be. Though it may feel that way, it can only win if you let it. Like any weakness, it is not stronger than the soul or the force of will. Its strength only indicates the amount of effort that needs to be applied toward the transition, toward making yourself whole in that area of your life.
Recognize that what you are doing when you fear that you will be tempted, and that you will not be able to resist the temptation, is creating a situation that will give you permission to act irresponsibly. Is it possible to create a test that you cannot pass? Yes. The experience of wanting to be tempted in order to test yourself is the act of creating an opportunity to act irresponsibly, to say to yourself, "I knew I couldn't do it, anyway," and give in to your addiction. The heart of making a temptation that is greater than you can resist is that you do not wish to be held responsible for your choice.
The greater the desire of your soul to heal your addiction, the greater will be the cost of keeping it. If you-if your soul-have chosen to heal an addiction now, you will find that the decision to maintain your addiction will cost you the things that you hold most dear. If that is your wife or your husband, your marriage will be placed in the balance against your addiction. If that is your career, your career will be placed in the balance.
This is not the doing of a cruel Universe or a malicious God. It is a compassionate response to your desire to heal, to become whole. It is the compassionate Universe saying to you that your inadequacies are so deep that the only thing that will stop you will be something of equal or greater value in opposition to your inadequacies. This is the same dynamic that is expressed in terms of space and time and matter by the second law of motion: "A change in the momentum (mass, direction of movement, and speed) of a body in motion is directly proportional to the force affecting the body in motion, and takes place in the direction that the force is acting." By the magnitude of the costs of your addiction you can measure the importance of healing it to your soul, and the strength of your own inner intention to do that.
Try to realize, and truly realize, that what stands between you and a different life are matters of responsible choice. In your moments of fear, what you are obscure about in your thinking is the power and magnitude of your own choice. Recognize what your own power of choice is. You are not at the mercy of your inadequacy. The intention that will empower you must come from a place within you that suggests that you are indeed able to make responsible choices and draw the power from them, that you can make choices that empower you and not disempower you, that you are capable of acts of wholeness. Test your power of choice because each time you choose otherwise you disengage the power of your addiction more and more and increase your personal power more and more.
As you work through your weaknesses, and you feel levels of addictive attraction, ask yourself the critical questions of the spirit: If, by following those impulses, do you increase your level of enlightenment? Does it bring you power of the genuine sort? Will it make you more loving? Will it make you more whole? Ask yourself these questions.
This is the way out of an addiction: Walk yourself through your reality step by step. Make yourself aware of the consequences of your decisions, and choose accordingly. When you feel in yourself the addictive attraction of sex, or alcohol, , or drugs, or anything else, remember these words: You stand between the two worlds of your lesser self and you're full self. Your lesser self is tempting and powerful because it is not as responsible and not as loving and not as disciplined, so it calls you. This other part of you is whole and more responsible and more caring and more empowered, but it demands of you the way of the enlightened spirit: conscious life. Conscious life. The other choice is unconscious permission to act without consciousness. It is tempting.
What choose you?
If your decision is to become whole, hold that decision. You will not be as tempted or as frightened as you think. Hold it and remind yourself again and again: You stand between your lesser self and your whole self. Choose with wisdom because the power is now fully in your hands. Do not underestimate the power of consciousness. As you live and make conscious choices each moment and each day you fill with strength and your lesser self disintegrates.
As you choose to empower yourself, the part of you that you challenge, the temptation that you challenge, will surface again and again. Each time that you challenge it, you gain power and it loses power. If you challenge an addiction to alcohol, for example, and you are drawn twelve times that very day to have a drink, challenge that energy each time. If you look upon each recurrence of attraction as a setback, or as an indication that your intention is not working, you choose the path of learning through fear and doubt. If you look upon each recurrence as an opportunity that is offered to you, in response to your intention, to release your inadequacy and to acquire power over it, you choose the path of learning through wisdom, for that is what it is.
The first time that you challenge your addiction, and the second, and the third, you may not feel that anything has been accomplished. Do you think that authentic power
can be had so easily? As you hold to your intention, and as you choose again and again and again to become whole, you accumulate power, and the addiction that you thought could not be challenged will lose its power over you.
When you challenge an addiction, and choose to become whole, you align yourself with your nonphysical help. The work to be done is yours, but assistance is always there for you. The nonphysical world, the actions of your guides and Teachers, touches yours in many ways-the thought that brings power, the memory that reminds, the surprise occurrence that reinforces. There is much joy in the nonphysical world when a soul releases major negativity and the quality of its consciousness shifts upward into higher frequencies of Light. Therefore, do not suffer in aloneness. There is no such thing.
Look at yourself as someone who is reaching for healing, and at the complexity of what needs to be healed. Do not think that you exist alone without other human beings of equal complexity. All that the human experience is about is the journey toward wholeness. Therefore, you can look at each individual and rest assured that they are not whole. They are in process. Were they whole, they would not be physical upon our plane. In other words, you have the company of billions of souls.
When you have worked hard, take the time to appreciate what you have done. Do not always look at the distance that you have yet to travel. Join your nonphysical Teachers and guides in applauding what you have accomplished. This does not mean to relapse into your addiction. It means allowing yourself to rest when you need it, to recognize when you become exhausted, and to give yourself the grace of knowing that even the best of us get tired.
Understanding the dynamics behind your addiction is one thing. Actually making the emotional connection to discharge the need for it is another story. Your addiction is not insurmountable. It is not overwhelming. If it continues to appear that way to you, it is because deep in your heart you do not see yourself as able to release the addiction, even if you understand why you are drawn to it. If your addiction lingers, ask yourself if you really want to release it, because in your heart you do not.
Until you fill in the inadequacies within you, you will always have your addiction. In order to release your addiction, it is necessary to enter your inadequacies, to recognize that they are real, and to bring them into the light of consciousness to heal. It is necessary to look deeply into the parts of yourself that have such power to you, to look clearly at how deep they are within you, and to see them as honestly as you can. It may be that your addiction has provided you one of the few genuine pleasures of your life. What is more important to you, your wholeness, and your freedom, or the pleasures that you get from satisfying your addiction?
When you understand that your addiction results from an inadequacy, the question becomes how you will respond to your inadequacy-by reaching for another drink, or another sexual encounter, or by reaching inward for those things that fill the whole? Move into how strong the power of your addiction is, into how deeply you feel its attraction, and ask yourself if the time is really right for you to release this form of learning. That is for you to ask and answer. You may hear the guidance of your nonphysical Teachers, and feel that it offers you a path of higher wisdom, but at the same moment realize that you are not ready to take that path. You might decide that this is not the right time, that you are not yet strong enough to live a certain way. You might indeed have to face that.
Ultimately, you will take the higher path, but if you wish to put the journey off for a day or a week or seven lifetimes, that is sufficient. Your Teachers see from a perspective that does not include time. It is the depth of wisdom for you to know that you will eventually take the path of consciousness. If that is the path that you will eventually take, why wait? Yet, there are times when there is wisdom in waiting as the rest of you prepares for the journey. There is no shame in this decision.
The Universe does not judge. Eventually, you will come to authentic empowerment. You will know the power of forgiveness, humbleness, clarity and love. You will evolve beyond the human experience, beyond the Earth school, beyond the learning environment of space and time and matter. You cannot not evolve. Everything in the Universe evolves. It is only a question of which way you will choose to learn as you evolve. This is always your choice, and there is always wisdom in each choice.
When you return home, when you leave your personality and body behind, you will leave behind your inadequacies, your fears and angers and jealousies. They do not, and cannot, exist within the realm of spirit. They are the experiences of the personality, of time and matter. You will once again enter the fullness of who you are. You will perceive with loving eyes and compassionate understanding the experiences of your life, including those that seemed so much to control you. You will see what purposes they served. You will survey what has been learned, and you will bring these things into your next incarnation.
If you choose to continue with your addiction, you choose to experience negative karma. You choose to create without compassion. You choose to be unconscious. You choose to learn through the experiences that your unconscious intentions create. You choose to learn through fear and doubt, because you fear your addiction and you doubt your power to challenge it successfully.
If you choose to challenge your addiction, to move consciously toward wholeness, you choose to learn through wisdom. You choose to create your experiences consciously, to align the perceptions and the energy of your personality with your soul. You choose to create within physical reality the reality that your soul wishes to create. You choose to allow your soul to move through you. You choose to allow Divinity to shape your world.
When you struggle with an addiction, you deal directly with the healing of your soul. You deal directly with the matter of your life. This is the work that is required to be done. As you face your deepest struggles, you reach for your highest goal. As you bring to light, heal, and release the deepest currents of negativity within you, you allow the energy of your soul to move directly into, and to shape, the experiences and events of physical reality, and thereby to accomplish unimpeded its tasks upon the Earth.
This is the work of evolution. It is the work that you were born to do.