From Desire To Addiction

Meditation is not some magic pill that cures addiction, but it is a necessary step in recovery. It does it in a very simple, radical way by cutting through the images. If we let go of the images, it breaks the cycle of desire, and we will be free to restart, eventually, if we persevere.

Audio: Hamish
Photo: Javardh (Unplash)

Transcript

Hi,

I'm Hamish,

And welcome to another reflection from the WCCM Young Channel.

Here,

We share teachings from John Main,

Lawrence Freeman,

And the Christian Contemplative Tradition.

Over these 10 weeks,

I've been reading chapters from Grace at Work,

A series of talks given by Lawrence Freeman in 2019.

In chapter one last week,

We learned about the spiritual aspects of the Alcoholics Anonymous program,

And in chapter two today,

We learn about desire,

Addiction,

And the role of meditation.

Chapter two,

From desire to addiction.

Quote,

Meditation is not some magic pill that cures addiction,

But it is a necessary step to recovery.

It does it in a very simple,

Radical way,

By cutting through the images.

If we let go of the images,

It breaks the cycle of desire,

And you will be free to restart eventually,

If we persevere.

I'd like to look at the human condition that we find ourselves in,

Which makes meditation a real gift when you find it.

The human condition that can be changed by accepting this gift at the right moment.

We start with the basic human needs.

We have physical needs.

If these physical needs are not met,

Even as children,

Food,

Drink,

Shelter,

We will suffer physical consequences because these basic physical needs were not met.

Basic nutrition,

Basic physical care,

If it isn't provided in the right way,

In the right quantity,

It will lead to permanent changes in our physical appearance.

The way we operate physically,

Things like our immune system,

Where the patterns of that are set very early in life.

Then we have other needs,

Social needs,

Educational needs.

We need to have our gifts and talents identified,

Recognized,

And developed.

And again,

If we don't,

We suffer intellectually,

We suffer socially,

We suffer culturally.

Sometimes we can make up lost ground,

But most people don't.

And then there are emotional needs,

Of course.

We need to be loved and we have a very high demand for love.

We demand to be loved exclusively as young children.

We find it very difficult to share love.

Often there is sibling rivalry.

It's almost inevitable,

Even if we come from a very loving family with healthy parents and a healthy environment.

It's impossible that we're not going to experience some form of deprivation.

At some point,

We are not going to be loved when we need it or as much as we need it.

Even in the best of families,

The most functional of families,

This is the case.

Now,

Whenever a basic human need,

Whether it's physical,

Psychological,

Cultural,

Social,

Or emotional,

Whenever a basic human need is not met,

We experience a wound.

It's a hurt.

It's a hurt by negation.

It's a hurt by deprivation.

That's not even speaking about maybe actual intentional harm that is done to us,

Which is even more horrific and damaging.

But even if it's unintentional,

Just in normal circumstances of life when human needs are not met,

We experience a wound.

And those wounds remain with us for life.

If you didn't get enough love as a child,

Then 50 years later,

You are not going to be able to rewind the tape,

Go back and fill in what you didn't get 20 or 30 years ago.

So wounds really stay with us for life.

In Christian imagery,

That's very graphically represented in the resurrection appearances of Jesus.

After Jesus rises from the dead,

He shows himself to his disciples and he still has his wounds.

Now the wounds have healed,

But the wounds are still visible and they are an eternal part of Jesus's character.

So what happens when we are wounded?

We feel pain.

That's what a wound is.

It's physical pain.

Our immediate instinct might be to rub it and take the pain away or to take a pill and take the pain away.

Even if there are side effects,

We still take pills to take the pain away.

What about emotional wounds?

Emotional wounds can be more difficult to heal.

They hurt,

Sometimes especially when these wounds are deeply embedded in our early history.

We don't even know where the pain comes from.

We didn't know as a child,

We weren't conscious as a child of the fact that I wasn't being loved enough or I wasn't being given this or wasn't being given that.

For example,

Like enough attention.

We just didn't have that conscious language or awareness to be able to identify that and a great deal of healing of emotional wounds is being able to name it,

Understand it and to know where it's coming from.

It's the first step in healing very often,

But as a child we don't have it and so the ache,

This hunger,

Thirst for something more is often buried deep within us.

It has a good side in it too,

Which is our human capacity for growth and transcendence,

But can also be involved deeply with our psychological woundedness.

So what do we do when we feel pain?

We want something to take it away.

At an emotional or psychological level,

What we do is to imagine,

Form an image of what will take the pain away,

An image of what will make me feel better.

We are going to identify our hopes,

Our longing to be free from pain,

Our longing to be whole,

To be happy,

To be peaceful.

We are going to identify those hopes with that image,

That image of what will take our pain away.

The next step is to say,

If I can get what I'm imagining in reality,

Then I will feel better,

That this pain really will be taken away.

Now the problem is that the image at some point has then become a desire and it has now begun to take on a life of its own at the imaginative level.

So the image now,

Through a high level of concentration and paying a lot of attention to that image,

Putting a lot of hope in that image,

It's beginning to form a desire and enter into the life of our desires.

So then we start going after that desire.

If the desire is to make a lot of money,

That's it,

That's my goal,

Or to achieve fame,

Power,

Success in whatever area of life I'm working,

Or it may be a sexual desire,

Or it could even be a desire for spiritual enlightenment.

The problem is that,

Even if we find the desire,

We do fulfill our ambitions,

Even if we get what we want,

It doesn't take the pain away.

It does temporarily,

Because the satisfaction of any desire takes pain away temporarily.

But then the nature of the life of desire is that it is cyclical,

It comes back,

And after you've satisfied it,

It comes back again.

Then we discover that fulfilling our desire,

Getting the job we wanted,

Getting the success we wanted,

Getting the sexual satisfaction we wanted,

That does not actually address the deeper ache,

This deeper hunger,

This deeper need that is felt as a pain.

So then we discover that the desire is not the cause of all suffering.

And then I think we begin to get quite complex.

We begin to branch out into desires,

Breeding desires,

When we will experience a greater and greater alienation from the original need,

The wound,

That unmet need.

Now that pattern of desire,

Which is pretty much the human condition,

Focuses on as the cause of all suffering.

If you are unlucky,

Then one of those desires is going easily to become an addiction.

Whether it is physiological or psychological,

It's almost inevitable that one of those many complex desires that we form is going to hook us into a compulsive cycle,

A compulsive cycle in which we lose our freedom and it takes us over.

So how does meditation come into this?

At the right time in one's journey,

In one's life,

If you have the grace of hearing about it,

Meditation becomes a way of dealing with this condition.

In the 11th step of the 12-step program of Alcoholics Anonymous that we talked about last week,

It states,

By raising our conscious contact with God through prayer and meditation.

It isn't then that meditation is some magic pill that cures addiction,

But it is a necessary step,

One of the steps to recovery.

And what is recovery?

In one word,

It's healing.

It's recovering the wholeness that we have tragically but necessarily lost.

Necessarily lost because that is the human condition.

We are going to lose it anyway.

And in recovering,

In healing,

In regaining the wholeness,

We're actually better off than we were before.

Recovery doesn't mean going back.

Healing doesn't mean going back in time before you were wounded.

It means dealing with the wounds that you've got with the story that you have,

That you are,

And evolving that,

Taking that to the next stage of its meaning,

Finishing the story,

Continuing to tell the story,

To live the story until you discover what is the end of the story.

You don't know yet.

How does meditation do this?

It does it in a very simple,

Radical way.

It does it,

And we do it,

By cutting through,

In a non-violent way,

These images.

Because if we let go of the images,

It breaks the cycle of desire.

If we break through the cycle of desire,

We break that pattern.

If we can break it at least temporarily,

And if we continue to break it often enough,

It will eventually dissolve.

It will be broken,

And we will be free to restart eventually.

If we do the work,

If we stay with it,

If we persevere.

Thank you again for listening to another reflection from the WCCM Young Channel.

I'm Hamish.

I'm very excited to share chapter three with you next week.

Thank you,

And until next time,

Peace be with you.