From the collective consciousness, I could sense that there are millions who are secretly living with their addictions but feeling powerless as they don’t know how to get out of the addictions. Life with addiction is such an abusive way of living, it is disrespecting the very LIFE itself. People with addictions are like the living dead who are yet to be buried.
Addiction makes you feel that if you don’t do it, you feel terrible that you are missing it. If you do it, you won’t feel the joy instead you feel guilty and powerless. At first, you start enjoying it, slowly it starts enjoying you. With the same unconscious pattern, you are not living life because the unconscious pattern is swallowing your entire life.
Fundamentally, addiction is an escape from LIFE – in whatever form life presents to you. You are just trying to escape from some thoughts or issues in your life, thinking that through the distraction of addiction, you can squeeze the joy out of it! We can never elongate the joy shaft from addiction.
I had come out of my own addiction and from my personal experience, with integrity and authenticity, I am telling humanity that no amount of psycho-therapy or counselling can fully cure the pattern of addiction because addiction is a conscious cancer which can only be burnt by the fire of consciousness. All addictions come from the root pattern of restlessness after we moved away from the space of wholeness. The good news is our consciousness can never be touched by any unconscious addiction. Addiction can only happen in the unconscious zone; hence the antidote for addiction is by infusing consciousness through spiritual understanding, awareness and spiritual practices.
Here are a few important spiritual truths that I learned from my guru, Paramahamsa Nithyananda:-
- Restful awareness is our nature. By our nature, we want to be in restful awareness, but to be in a state of restful awareness; we need to be trained through conscious practice and meditation. Unfortunately, this is not provided by the modern educational system. We are never taught how to be in restful awareness consciously. So when our consciousness is not engaged in life since our interest or enthusiasm is not created, we start moving outside to search for things which are not needed in our life. When this happens, we make it into a habit very quickly. Anything that makes us unconscious, it becomes a habit very quickly. When we can’t be with ourselves in restful awareness, we seek entertainment or distractions. That is why the modern entertainment is so adrenaline-based which constantly puts us into unconscious. It is like killing ourselves as the frequent adrenaline release to get a feeling of ‘high’ means that we are entering into unconscious enjoyment that dulls our senses.
- Tendency of moving away from life (Malenca). We’ve forgotten that the Kalpataru (Source of life) is sitting inside us. The expansion of life is destroyed by constantly moving to outer world things. If we can spend 1-hour a day in engaging our self with Source of life, it not only heals us but also makes us take responsibility in anything in our life. Unfortunately, we are trying to find methods externally instead of trusting solutions internally. Hence, we neither trust nor work on the internal solutions.
- Restlessness pattern creates addiction of desires and anger. With unawareness, it brings certain anxiety within us. The mixing of anxiety and panic in unawareness creates restlessness. In our brain, there is a part which is responsible for thickening of logic. This thickening logic is responsible for the administration abilities and multi-dimensional responsibility. When we don’t take up responsibility, the brain will just engage in expanding sensual pleasure patterns. The restlessness naturally expresses within us by expanding sensual pleasure pattern. When it fails, the restlessness becomes anger. The basic pattern of desire and anger that are born out of restlessness. The moment your logic is thickened, if you don’t feel responsible for all that is happening around you, you will become a cunning and irresponsible rebel. Our thickened logic ideally should be engaged in creativity, or else we are constantly working in cunningness. Restlessness is the source of anger and desire – which is the worst enemy in the world. Either restlessness is converted into awareness, which takes responsibility for every thing happening around us or it puts us into a conflicting pattern of greed and anger.
- Infuse conscious practice (Abhyasa) – All our sufferings from addiction are due to our unconscious practices. In fact, man’s unconscious layer is 9 times more than the conscious layer. Whenever actions get repeated, it becomes unconscious i.e. non-voluntary actions. If we don’t allow any unconscious habit, every moment we will feel alive and aware. Anything we do is deeply connected to our body-muscles level. Anything we do repeatedly, it get strengthened in our muscles. Unconscious practices or habits if they are encouraged and strengthened, we become unconscious. To live an integrated life with awareness, all we need is conscious practice (abhyasa). Practice can be understood in 2 ways – (a) constantly coming back to our center of restful awareness, letting everything else melt away; (b) constantly not letting samskara (engraved memories) gather inside us. All spiritual practices in Vedic lifestyle are designed to put us back to our default state of restful awareness – the unclutched state.
- Vedic lifestyle is conscious entertainment. It is time we get back to the Vedic lifestyle because in Vedic tradition, entertainment is all conscious-based. It is important for parents and teachers to infuse awareness in children through spiritual practices like yoga, pranayama, meditation, puja, Vedic chanting and festivities. These conscious practices not only balance them but also create a space of possibilities in them.
- A real master fills your Being with enthusiasm. Addiction and enthusiasm are completely opposite to each other. Things that give addiction can never give enthusiasm. I’ve seen so many people walked out of addiction after attending the 21-day Inner Awakening retreat by my master. In that alchemy process, he just makes high enthusiasm as the very quality of our life; which is a kind of joy overflowing through our intelligence. Enthusiasm is creativity and it is in those few moments of creation that we are experiencing God intensely in our inner space. High enthusiasm is the real wealth which only a master can bestow when he fills our Being with LIFE.
In essence, addiction comes from the root pattern of moving out from awareness. It is this pattern of looking out for solutions that stop us from solving the real problem in life. The only way out is IN – turn inward for answers to our real problem. Expansion can only happen if we engage our self internally. Namaste 🙂