How To Quit Smoking

If you want to quit smoking if it is interfering with your life and how you want to live then listen to this. A combination of spiritual insight and personal experience blended together to help you kick the habit. whether you vape or if your analog this is how I overcame and transcended the urge to smoke.

Transcript

Hello and welcome back once again.

Thanks for joining me today.

Today I want to share with you something that I overcame in my life and that was smoking.

I smoked when I was a young youngster and after I got out of the military I picked up the dirty habit of smoking a cigarette.

But I swear to this day one of my favorite memories was basically waiting to go to work at a bus station and getting a cup of hot cocoa and a cigarette and sitting there waiting for the bus and smoking that cigarette and drinking that hot cocoa.

It's one of my favorite memories from that era of my life.

I don't know why it stuck with me that way but it was just,

I don't know,

It was just a moment.

Maybe because it was a moment of meditation and using meditation to quit smoking can definitely help.

But I come to you from first-hand experience and I'll share with you what worked for me.

There's a saying out there that goes that if you don't want any bad habits in life then don't start them.

Cigarette smoking is very,

Very addictive and one of the most addictive things that's legally available to the public.

So unfortunately I believe that and I think that the cons of cigarette smoking will outweigh the pros by many.

Some of the pros of smoking is a little bit of a stress relief,

A little bit of a control valve that you release a few times a day and it can,

And that can help you in a way but it's a negative thing to do to your body.

I mean if you don't mind dying about 10 years younger than you would have then cigarette smoking is okay.

But if you plan on living a little bit longer or maybe you want to surf a little bit longer like myself then it has to be dropped and I had to drop cigarette smoking.

I've listened to Osho,

The Mystic Osho and his two cents on quitting smoking and one of the things he basically shares with us is that it's not only a mental thing it's a physical thing.

The habit of bringing something up to your mouth and sucking on something in your mouth could be related to trauma from your childhood.

The cigarette smoking is a replacement of the mother's nipple.

That's what Osho said.

And in a way it's kind of true.

You have this habit that you're doing and it gives you something to do while you're not doing anything and it's very pleasing.

Even though it's harmful to the body and can cause all kinds of side effects and really mess up your lungs,

In a way cigarette smoking was pleasing.

So what Osho said to do was to make it a meditation.

Make your smoking a meditation so you become more aware of what you're actually doing to your body.

So he would take out the pack of cigarettes out of his pocket,

Put the pack of cigarettes up to his nose and smell them and smell the aroma,

The fresh aroma.

And then open the cigarette pack up slowly and make it a meditation to do this.

You open it up slowly and you pull out one cigarette very slowly.

You hold it up to your nose and smell it and breathe in and feel the beauty of the cigarette if you want to call it beautiful.

And then light it very carefully,

Very gently with full awareness.

Light the cigarette.

Then take a puff and imagine the air going into you and relieving all the stress.

And then as you breathe out you blow out all the negativity of life.

And in that way it becomes a meditation.

But what you'll find is that you practice that every time you smoke a cigarette.

And I know that sounds tedious,

Right?

But give it a try.

Just give it a try and you'll see that what happens is that you start becoming more aware of,

Okay,

I'm drawing the smoke into my body and it's harming my body.

And the more aware you become,

The more sensitive you become towards it.

Then the easier it is to drop it.

But what I found personally is you need four days.

And if you can go four days without smoking,

Then the hardest part is over.

Getting that physical addiction and you're going to have withdrawals from it.

Then you better be ready to put on a pound or two because that habit of bringing something up to your mouth gets replaced by eating.

So a lot of people that quit smoking gain weight.

And it's a tragic thing to have happen to you.

But then that could be the next journey in your life,

The next section of your life is to overcome the eating habit of overeating and having something going on with something to your mouth.

Osho even described to his followers that if you take a pacifier,

And when you're not,

Of course,

When you're not around other people,

When you're just at home alone or by yourself or with family that are comfortable around you doing so,

Then take a pacifier and suck on it.

And you'll find that that helps to alleviate the need to do something with your hand to mouth hand to mouth thing.

So that works for some people.

And what I found was that when I quit smoking,

I switched to Nicorette gum.

But it was the Kroger brand,

So it was an off brand of Nicorette gum.

And that worked.

It worked for four days.

But then after about maybe two,

Three weeks of Nicorette gum,

I asked my body,

Do I really need this nicotine?

Maybe I can just chew gum and have just regular gum take the place of having all this nicotine put into my body.

So I did the gum routine for probably two months.

And I think my teeth were starting to show signs of me chewing on gum all the time.

But it worked.

Hey,

It went step by step.

It brought me out of the habit of doing something with my hands and my mouth.

And then I just became aware more and more what I was doing to my body.

And yes,

I put on a few pounds,

But I went on a diet and exercise and I surf quite a bit.

So that helps a lot too.

And having clean,

Healthy lungs is good for a surfer.

Even though I know lots of surfers that smoke,

It's better for you and will help you stay on surf longer if you quit smoking.

Your lungs will thank you.

So I can honestly say nowadays that I have no nervous ticks.

I have no habits of wanting to put something in my mouth or wanting to smoke.

And I can be around other people that smoke and it doesn't bother me.

I don't feel the need to have to ask for a cigarette or smoke again myself.

I've basically in a sense transcended this negative thing or this period of my life,

This thing that evolved and existed while I did.

I mean it had a life of its own.

And sure,

There are good things.

There are good things about smoking,

But there are way more bad things than there are good things.

And if you want to quit,

This is just one path that I would recommend.

It's what worked for me.

And I can say I'm completely smoke-free.

I have no nervous ticks.

I'm not gaining weight.

I exercise regularly.

I surf often.

I'm feeling very healthy.

And that's one of the things about smoking that really got to me is that after like four cigarettes a day,

If I did up to five cigarettes a day,

Then I felt horrible.

My health felt like real sick and ill.

And I didn't like that feeling.

And when I got rid of that feeling of that happening to me,

It was just a sigh of relief.

It was just like,

Oh yes,

This is how we're supposed to feel.

I mean normally you don't know what health is until you feel sick.

And then you're like reminded,

Oh yeah,

Health is this.

Even though you can't define what health is,

Health is when nothing is pulling on you or hurting you in any way.

So anyway,

Folks,

I know this is going to be a short talk.

But I hope that it helped any of you that are out there trying to give up smoking and trying to find your path on the spiritual path that we all want to or aspire to travel.

And remember what Florence in the Machine says,

That it's hard to dance with the devil on your back.

Keep that in mind because smoking is definitely one of those things in life,

Just like other drugs,

That could be harmful to you.

All right,

So I guess we'll end it there.

I say thank you very much for listening to me.

God bless all of you.

And namaste to all my spiritual friends.

Aloha to all you surfers out there.

And blue skies to all you skydivers.

Take care of yourselves.

Bye bye.

Reviews

Thank you so much! I loved putting health into perspective!