Breaking The Circle Of Addiction #4 Step Out Of The Circle

Isn’t it strange that we’ll do something that seems right, and then a moment later, a day later, we will be judged mercilessly by some other part of us that tells us we were all wrong and that we should have never done that? And we never see that these two parts of our self that seem to be separated by time are secretly connected, belonging to one level of consciousness that is divided and cannot see its actions and their consequences.

Transcript

Hi, This is Guy, And welcome to our fourth session in our important study of how to break out of the circle of addictions. As with all the things that we've looked at so far, But even more importantly so now, We must call on all of our personal experience in order to prove the following facts that I'm going to lay out in front of us, So that by doing so we can see, Literally, Directly, What we must do in order to release ourselves from a consciousness that, As we described, Just knows fight or flight, Do or don't. Only those reactions in the opposites that create no real change, But just the continuation of that part of our self that finds itself trapped, Particularly when it comes to addiction. So in this fourth session, Which is called Step Out of the Circle of Pain, I want you to pay very close attention, If you will, To the following set of ideas. I can't tell you the benefit in fully attending to the next ideas. It should be abundantly clear to all of us that there is a part of us that is attracted to, Actually must love, What obviously hurts us, As does any self-defeating or health-destroying behavior when we agree to live out whatever the promise of that particular temptation may be. Just the simplest example, Particularly for me when I was a boy, I loved chocolate cupcakes and chocolate milk in the morning. Now after I would eat two or three cupcakes and down a half a quart of chocolate milk, I would get a stomach ache. So one part of me loved what my body hated. I was attracted to something that my mind, My appetite, Couldn't get enough of, But that in my love for those things, I was hurting myself and couldn't stop myself because it never dawned on me, Not directly anyway, That there was an inevitable outcome out of doing what I was drawn to do without understanding the consequence of that action. And it should be also clear that in the same moment, In this instance, Of giving our consent to what part of us is sitting there ready to compromise us as its best interest, But that we're never aware in that moment that that part of us, It actually hates or despises the weakness that it tempts us to act out. And not just the weakness that it judges, But it also judges ourself, Itself, For that weakness. And I still know this drill, I do something, I say something, I enact something, And at the time it seems wise because I'm drawn to do it, And I no more get through it than maybe the next minute or maybe a year later I recognize beyond the shadow of a doubt that that was self-defeating, That it was setting the stage for an addiction, Some compulsion that would hold me a captive of itself, But that when I was complicit in enacting it, I couldn't see the inevitable outcome of being on the stage that it had set for me. Isn't it strange that we'll do something that seems right and then a moment later, Again a day later, We will be judged mercilessly by some other part of us that tells us we were all wrong and that we should have never done that, And we never see that these two parts of ourself that seem to be separated by time are secretly connected, Belonging to one level of consciousness that is divided and cannot see its actions and their consequences. Again, We will love one and despise the other, And until we really begin to see the fact of that, Our life just keeps running around in a circle belonging to a consciousness that's asleep to itself and, If I haven't made it clear enough, Acting against itself in the dark of itself and then hiding from itself the results of its own actions so that in judging itself it says it knows better when it doesn't know better at all. And then of course it sets us in vain trying to undo what we can't undo by that same nature that's created that behavior, Meaning when it comes to an addiction the same consciousness that drew us into that addiction cannot possibly help us escape it. Then where to start? Well in truth we already have, But we're going to learn in the next and final session of this series of talks on breaking the cycle of addiction, Why being whole is the same as being free. I'll see you in the next session.