The prevalence of addiction in society is yet another sign of the profound dysfunction of the collective human psyche. In modern times, having instant access to every imaginable pleasure has only exacerbated the illness of the collective egoic mind, making us more miserable than ever.
Addiction has become an indelible part of our lives, taking on many different forms. Whether it’s substances, food, sex, porn, binge-watching, social media, work, or even relationships – we all have a coping mechanism (or many) that keeps us sedated at a comfortable distance from the inner unrest that’s within us all and that we are too afraid to face.
We have such an aversion to sitting with ourselves and with our own emotions that we will engage in behaviors that inflict harm on our physical body to avoid it. This is a prime example of the insanity of the human mind. Eventually, all the emotions we suppress and neglect make their way out anyway, in the form of disease or illness in the body, sometimes even death. However, there is an even higher price we pay for ignoring our inner world than physical death: our soul.
Addiction gives us the relief we long for; it temporarily liberates us from our suffering and gives us comfort in an otherwise hostile existence. It masks the pain each of us carries inside; a pain that we will do anything to distract ourselves from. The root of this pain is the experience of separation, of feeling all alone in the universe; feeling disconnected from God and the divine. It’s the pain and confusion of having forgotten our true nature.
The more we try to push this pain away and refuse to face it by distracting ourselves with this or that addiction, the stronger it comes back, and we find ourselves trapped in a cycle of pleasure and pain. Eventually, even the pleasure disappears, and all that’s left is pain and relief from the pain. The constant swing from pain to pleasure/relief is your default reality when you live in an egoic state; in other words, when you live completely identified with the mind. Addiction is law in such a state.
The spiritual consequences of addiction are grave. When we avoid facing our own painful emotions, we are looking for a shortcut to bliss that doesn’t exist. The purpose of suffering is to awaken our consciousness. The more we resist and try to delay suffering, the more we will suffer, which we see in the progress of any addiction. The only way out is through; we must have the courage to face ourselves if we truly want to self-realize and end the suffering. Addictions keep our consciousness enslaved, so that we never wake up.
Addiction is a manifestation of the egoic mind, and as such, it must be treated as yet another one of its dysfunctions. To transcend addiction, we must focus on disintegrating the ego through our disidentification with the mind (Read: The Ultimate Freedom). The mind, however, is not the only aspect of the ego; there are also emotions. Emotions are the body’s reaction to our thoughts, and therefore, most of our emotions are just egoic projections.
Even the emotions which we might consider positive are often just a part of the pleasure-pain cycle. For example, when we drink or take drugs, we feel ‘great’ for a while. Then, the pendulum inevitably swings in the opposite direction, and we suffer proportionately. This is in perfect accordance with the Fifth Hermetic Principle of Rhythm:
“Everything flows, out and in; everything has its tides; all things rise and fall; the pendulum-swing manifests in everything; the measure of the swing to the right is the measure of the swing to the left; rhythm compensates.” – The Kybalion
This is known as the Law of the Pendulum, and it applies to the life of all things in the universe, including our mental and emotional states. Any exaggerated ‘positive’ or ecstatic feeling is of the ego, not of the Being, and therefore carries within itself its opposite. Anticipation eventually turns into disappointment; egoic love turns into hate; pride into insecurity. Pleasure and pain go hand in hand; they make up the pendulum.
The ego seeks sensation; it always wants more pleasure, more ecstasy, but it can never imitate the bliss of a higher state of consciousness, because it doesn’t know peace. The ego is mechanical; it can only swing from one extreme emotion to another, but it cannot escape the Law of the Pendulum.
Feelings that come from the Being, our Atman, our Higher Self, are different from egoic feelings, because they don’t have an opposite. Calling them feelings is not entirely accurate; they are not merely fleeting emotions but rather states of being. True bliss, love, peace, and joy don’t have an opposite feeling – they transcend the Law of the Pendulum. These are higher states of consciousness that we should all strive for in our spiritual practice. Chasing highs is futile and will inevitably leave us low.
Knowing this, we can work to become the observer of our emotions in the same way we observe our thoughts. It can be incredibly difficult to stop identifying with our emotions at first. Most of us are completely overwhelmed by our own feelings – when we feel an emotion, we become it. The emotion possesses us, much like an entity, and we act and think in accordance with it. Once it passes, we look back and wonder what came over us. We can become completely different people under the influence of our momentary feelings and lose agency over our own consciousness. This is why it’s so urgent to become the observer of both our thoughts and emotions.
To do this, we must become intensely present with ourselves and with the emotion we are feeling at any moment. I like to focus on my breath and on the way my body feels from the inside. When an emotion comes up, I try to notice where I feel it in the body without any mental commentary. I sit with it and I let it be. This allows the emotion to disperse, rather than stay in the physical body and in your energy field, since you are not feeding it with your thoughts. Emotions are like ripples on the surface of the ocean – they come and go quickly, unless we resist them. If we are unable to accept them, it creates resistance, which only makes them stronger, more exaggerated, and so the ripple turns into a whirlpool.
The key to dealing with emotions is complete surrender. We must accept the way we feel; we must allow our emotions to flow. Feelings are ephemeral and unreliable – we must remember this if we are to stop identifying with them. What is constant and always unchanging is the awareness underneath the feelings, the ocean itself. We must always remember that we are the ocean, not the ripple or the whirlpool. We are the silent observer who experiences the emotion, not the experience itself.
Not identifying with our emotions doesn’t mean dissociating; on the contrary, we are intensely present with them, but we are not in their grip. We don’t judge them or comment on them mentally; we don’t even need to name them or know exactly what emotions they are; we just welcome them and observe how they feel in the body.
The more we practice this, the easier it gets to see through our own emotions and to comprehend why we feel what we feel. We become tuned to our body and our feelings, and we generate more presence. In other words, our consciousness grows. We no longer feel afraid of our own emotions, of sitting with ourselves, and thus we begin our path to intimate self-knowledge. At some point, addictions begin to fall away on their own, because we no longer need coping mechanisms to deal with our negative emotions.
Some people whose addictions are not particularly severe or physically harmful might not feel the need to overcome them at all. Any awakening being, however, understands the importance of cultivating spiritual sovereignty and wouldn’t want their consciousness dependent on any external influence, no matter how insignificant or benign it might seem.
Behind every negative habit we engage in, there is a divine driver – the desire to be one with God, to go back ‘home’, to feel the bliss and love of our true nature, unburdened by our human conditioning. Deep down, we feel that the perpetual background feeling of emptiness, unease and discontent we feel in life isn’t the ultimate reality of who we are. We intuitively know there is something higher for us, but we don’t know where to look for it, so we turn to addiction. We are sincerely and tragically misguided in our search for God.
The only way back to a feeling of divine connection, of love, bliss, and joy, is to drop all addictions. As soon as we do that, we will unavoidably be faced with the raw truth of our emotions. If unequipped or unready, this can be dangerous. But if we have been doing the inner work, it can be a momentous opportunity for soul growth. An opportunity to finally see ourselves clearly and move towards truth and liberation, and away from the illusion that human consciousness has been under for millennia.
“I believe that, if deprived of their drugs, a large part of the population would become a danger to themselves and others. These drugs, of course, simply keep you stuck in dysfunction. Their widespread use only delays the breakdown of the old mind structures and the emergence of higher consciousness. While individual users may get some relief from the daily torture inflicted upon them by their minds, they are prevented from generating enough conscious presence to rise above thought and so find true liberation.” – Eckhart Tolle, The Power Of Now
Addictions keep us disempowered, stagnant, pitiful, and complacent. They prevent us from expansion and from fulfilling our soul’s potential. The only way to transcend addiction is to comprehend it fully through the observation of our thoughts and emotions. We must stop being afraid of them if we want to advance on the path to self-realization. The ego is the root of all addiction, so when we work on disintegrating it, we naturally transcend addictions.