A LOVING WAY THROUGH ADDICTION

“Craving for alcohol is the equivalent... of the spiritual thirst of our being for wholeness..."
- Carl Jung

I was talking to a man who was struggling with his lifelong addiction to alcohol. Every approach he had tried - spiritual, psychological - had worked for a while, and then failed. I offered him a slightly different perspective, which seemed to resonate with him.

We were talking about how, in essence, addiction is a search for love. Addiction is spiritual seeking - the seeking I have always spoken about - in a very concentrated form. We are all addicts, in the sense that we all look for love (God, acceptance, the taste of life itself) in all the places we'll never find it - through success, through fame, through wealth, through power, even through enlightenment. We seek love outside of ourselves, and ignore the love we already are. We seek our completeness in the future, through objects, substances, people. We look for love at the bottom of a wine glass, on a bank statement, in the eyes of our guru. But the kind of love we really long for cannot be found in time or space.

We either see addiction as a disease, OR as a giant invitation to discover who we really are, to discover the love we were always seeking. I was exploring with the man how addiction manifested in his life. What did an "urge to drink" feel like? When the urge arose in him, what did he do with it? He told me how several times during the day, he'd get a strange feeling in his chest, very hard to talk about - like an empty, incomplete kind of feeling, like the absence of something. It would come out of the blue sometimes. It felt like something was missing. And he'd find himself automatically reaching out to a bottle of vodka, which seemed to remove the discomfort, if only temporarily. Was vodka really 'missing' from present experience?

I invited him - as an experiment - to STAY with the empty feeling in his chest, to really feel it, to drop all labels and judgements about it, to see it as a valid expression of life itself in the moment. Maybe it didn't mean what he'd thought it meant. As he stayed with that energy, feeling exactly what was there, he suddenly remembered being a child, feeling lonely and isolated and uncared for, and that energy in his chest felt like... yes, a longing for something he couldn't name. A longing for ... love. Well, of course it was. It wasn't a longing for vodka at all, it was a misinterpreted and misunderstood longing for attention, acceptance, love. This was the same energy he'd felt as a child, and he'd spent his life trying to escape, deny, ignore, crush, annihilate it in so many ways. He'd just wanted to numb himself to it. First through work, then through spirituality, and now through alcohol, as a last resort. The mind had been infinitely creative. This energy had never been truly met. It had become a taboo. It had been cast into the darkness. It was a lost child of consciousness.

He had forgotten who he really was - not a separate 'person', not an 'addict', but a vast and unlimited ocean of Being, in which even this little wave was allowed. This energy was not the lack of vodka, it was the longing for love made manifest. And it had never been acknowledged fully. He had been so busy seeking love (money, enlightenment, vodka) outside of himself, that he had ignored the very longing itself! The lonely child had never really been held, validated, loved. Who would truly meet this lonely child? Would he wait his whole life for a love he'd never find? Would he wait forever for the cosmic parent? For the second womb? Could the vodka ever love the child? Of course not. The vodka had no power of its own. It was an emperor with no clothes. It was the Wizard of Oz, unmasked. The love he sought was the deep embrace of this lonely child exactly as it was, not its annihilation. He longed for embrace, not genocide. In other words, he had really been waiting for the deep acceptance of this strange and uncomfortable energy in his chest. Now was a good time to begin giving himself what he had always longed for.

I invited him to stay and stay and stay with the energy, and I stayed with him there. We sat together with this unloved child, bringing stillness, warmth and attention to a previously neglected aspect of experience. This was giving something the vodka could never give, and had never given. Running away from this energy, running towards the vodka, had never really solved the problem. He had simply never been shown by anyone how to stay. How to be with himself. How to meet life, fearlessly. We started again.

In meeting the unmet energy with attention and presence, light flooded the darkness, so to speak. And we saw that there was never any darkness in the first place. This energy was not the lack of love. It was not evil energy, not the devil, not a 'bad' aspect of experience, not the absence of life. It was an invitation to love that which had never been loved before now. It was a call to remember who he really was - the vast, unlimited ocean of consciousness itself, already complete, never needing anything to complete it. Even a sense of 'lack' was swallowed up in love here. Then, it wasn't lack at all.

In just meeting this man exactly where he was, and holding his hand as he met his deepest sense of lack, that primal incompleteness that goes to the root of all human suffering, I was communicating something beyond words to him - that he was deeply okay exactly as he was. Okay in a place he had never felt okay before. Okay in an unspoken and private and even shameful place. He was loveable even without the vodka. What a revelation! His present experience could be exactly as it was. The raw sensation of life. The thought bubbles coming up, telling him, asking him, urging him to drink his way towards love (the primal lie). The technicolor image of the happy drinker, drowning his sorrows in vodka. Go on, just one drink! So tempting! Just a sip, and then you're in heaven! Those thoughts were allowed to be there too. They were all just images. Images, and sensations. And who he really was was vast enough to hold all of it. The vodka dream was just a small ripple in his vastness. Vodka couldn't improve one iota on his present experience. It couldn't give him more LIFE. It contained no magic, no mana. What a disappointment. And what freedom too.

We come to distrust the seeking mechanism, for it cannot deliver what it promises - love. We come to remember that the love we seek is always already here.

Addiction. It was only ever about love. Not very scientific, I know. But experientially, it makes perfect sense.

Of course this man may drink again (he hasn't yet, by the way). The seeking mechanism won't be disabled overnight. It's an ongoing investigation. It's a constant invitation to meet that energy as it arises. To stay present with it. To love that unloved child, so to speak - to meet it as yourself. The aim is not "to stop drinking" - that would set up a new seeking game, a new war. The aim is to discover the truth of this moment. And this moment.

Surely, unless we get right to the root of all our addictions, and begin to shine the love of awareness itself into those unloved places, our addictions will just shift from one object, substance or person, to the next. We stop drinking, we start eating. We stop eating, we start shopping. We stop shopping, we start gambling. We stop gambling, we start checking our text messages fifty times a day. It's all a search for love, as the great mystics and teachers throughout the ages have been reminding us. This is an ancient and timeless message.

Addiction is not there to be 'cured'. It is not a disease, but a misguided search for love. The 'addict' in us is not there to be fixed or manipulated, or even punished. It's there to be loved to death. Suffer the little children to come unto me and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of God.

~ Jeff Foster (www.lifewithoutacentre.com)
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Once I totally surrendered and became willing to listen to the voice of my Higher Power/LOVE, then messages appeared in all kinds of miraculous ways. It required me to become very present to everything in the magic of the present moment. If I am living in my mind listening to stories created by the ego, then I miss what my Higher Power/LOVE is trying to tell me. The world is always calling me in so many mysterious ways, back 'Home' to LOVE and Heaven. The only requirement is a WILLINGNESS to listen and be vigilantly alert to what is going in my mind. A couple of days ago I was walking through my local town centre when I noticed the surf shop sign had some writing on it. I stopped and read it. I was completely amazed to read the most spiritually profound message (see above image) on a surf shop poster! Yesterday I met with a group of beautiful people who are devoted to the path of A Course in Miracles, which has been my way of living for a long time. A path devoted to seeing the Truth of LOVE only and letting go of all darkness in the mind. It was such a wonderful blessing to connect with those devoted to awakening to the miraculous power of LOVE. Just before going home I made my way to the Ladies room. I noticed a lot of graffiti on the back of the toilet door but one tiny piece of writing seemed to jump out at me and I leant forward. To my utter JOY I read these words: "Let LOVE be your guide, not fear!" WOW, what a perfect message for me, a great reminder as I had been struggling with fearful thoughts for several days. I had expressed this fear in the group and there came the answer written on the back of a toilet door! Who would have thought! I have received beautiful messages in so many ways, but never before on the back of a toilet door! Ha ha ha ha ha! LOVE has a sense of humour too!

~Eileen Dielesen (copyright 20.03.2017) 

A few days ago I went into town and entered the $2 discount shop to be greeted very joyfully by the shop assistant at the front counter. We chatted for a little while and then I asked her where I could find the product I wanted to purchase. I took the product up to the counter and opened my purse and then realised I did not have enough cash to pay for it. The assistant told me I needed to spend at least $10 if I wanted to use my eftpos card and then asked me how much I did have. I carefully counted out lots of small change which came to a total of $1.80. That will do she said and my Heart was so touched as I thanked her. She then said to me: "Pay it forward, not enough people do that." I laughed and told her I had already paid it backward! (Read the blog below which I wrote about 4 years ago!) My journey over the past several years has involved letting go of my attachment to so many material things. What has been happening recently is that I am receiving back things I gave away in the past and some of these were items that I held with great sentimental value. I let them go when my inner guidance directed me to do so. I trusted that all I needed will be provided for. I have been given things back that I gave away and not necessarily from the same source. The miracle is the realisation that giving and receiving are the same and there is no order of difficulty in miracles. The Miracle in the material world is the reflection of a growing LOVE and trust in my mind that all my needs will be provided for if I surrender to the Higher mind. This part of my mind guides me to awakening to Truth and finding that Heaven is a state of mind.  Here is the blog I wrote four years ago:

The 20c Miracle Pay it Forward:
Yesterday I went to the hardware store and while I was waiting at the checkout I noticed the couple in front of me couldn't find the extra 20c they needed for their purchase and so I opened my purse and placed 20c on the counter. WOW, you would think that 20c was made of gold from the reactions I got! They were so surprised and thankful and I tried to brush it off by saying "it's nothing, it's only 20c"! However I realised it wasn't the 20c they were ecstatic about, but the gesture of LOVE from a complete stranger treating them like valuable family members. The miracle is the Love in my mind and Heart that inspired me to give the 20c. We started up a conversation about Paying it Forward and I asked them if they'd seen the movie of the same name. Yes they had and I told them that I'd had some hard times in my life and complete strangers had given to me and I never even met them, so I was just paying it forward. The checkout lady joined in the conversation and we began talking about how small acts of paying it forward can change the whole world. We talked about how much goodness there is and how the news gives us feelings of despair when the Truth is there is much hope out in the world. She was so excited about my giving the 20c she was telling all the other staff at the other checkouts and I was really humbled and touched. 

The energy around me was just pure JOY and I danced out of the store my Heart bursting with happiness. Now that was the best 20c I ever spent and what did it buy me? It bought me the joy and happiness that giving from the Heart brings. It brought me a sense of joining with others in the spirit of community and took away all feelings of isolation and despair. It burnt away all shreds of self pity, self hatred and self loathing. It felt so deliciously joyful. Words are inadequate in explaining how I felt. Blissful with a sense of this huge bubble of joy energy bursting out of my heart are the closest words I can find to explaining what is an experience of Love in action. It did not come from the little 'I', it came from that place where we are all ONE, it came from that place I know where LOVE springs forth. It had nothing to do with the 20c, but from the intention of my chosen journey to follow my Heart in every single moment of my life. To trust my inner voice and not to let fear come in when I am guided to do something that seems challenging. Nothing that I have ever purchased of the material variety has ever given me that much joy!

~Eileen Dielesen (copyright 19.03.2017)

A totally beautiful video meditation.....reminding us what Love is. Sit back, relax, breath deeply and enjoy the experience of coming HOME to your Heart......