Addictions to Wholeness!
This month I became aware of a deeper message on addictions: a deeper core message that results in us rarely ever getting over them but usually just substituting one addiction for another. There is a reason for this that is outlined in Guy Finley’s book Breaking Dependencies which was recommended by Emmanuel Dagher.
Our addictions are what we create to fill a void. Of course the void is all illusion but while we are asleep – metaphorically – we don’t feel whole. Our addictions can be because we are a culture that doesn’t like to look at or feel discomfort of any kind so we use sugar, alcohol, drugs and any other activities to distract us from feeling uncomfortable. The discomfort stems from this emptiness we feel inside us. This void is pure illusion because we are ‘whole’ in our ‘spirit’! When it comes to why we feel we aren’t ‘whole’ it is because in our world love is conditional. This isn’t to blame anyone; it is just how this physical world works currently. We are here to evolve towards love, to make choices around love or fear. And when we feel we aren’t enough, that love is conditional, we believe that this is true. We don’t feel that our option is to choose love but to see fear in everything around us. And when that moment becomes our story, we choose an addiction to fill the emptiness that tells us we aren’t enough or we aren’t lovable as we are!
Addictions come in multiple forms: from what we ingest to help us feel pleasure, to creating co-dependent and dependent relationships. As infants we were completely dependent on our family and as we learned that love is conditional we developed strategies to help people love us. We create coping mechanisms that are ‘addictive’ ways to live in our world. What addiction we create is because we feel this emptiness inside us and our ego becomes formed and within our nature we tend to have the voice that tells us this piece of chocolate will fill the void (even if just temporarily) and the other voice that pushes against it that says we need to be strong and avoid the temptation because it is unhealthy. Unfortunately both voices are keeping our addictions occurring because even the voice that tells us to be strong is suggesting that we need to change or fix something within us. We choose addictions and dependencies to fill an emptiness that can’t be filled because the emptiness doesn’t exist: we are ‘whole’ and there is no piece of our spirit that isn’t complete. Sugar, alcohol, cigarettes, feeling that we need everyone to like us or judging others, is just filling a temporary emptiness that keeps us in a pattern that makes us believe we need to have outside things, outside approval, feeling superior over someone or pleasure to heal, fix, change something inside of us that will make us more complete! This need comes from our ego and unconscious nature – not our ‘true Self”.
Nothing we do outside or inside will make us complete until we ‘remember’ who we are! Who we are, has nothing to do with this physical world and its ability to make us whole. It comes from observing ourselves. We can only free ourselves when we hear, feel, see or know when something changes where we feel a craving to fill the emptiness or discomfort within us. Let’s look at an example in my life: I have been using both food (sugar and salty foods) and binge watching on Netflix or Streaming movies and series because I’m feeling an emptiness within me. When I look deeper it can come from suggestion while watching some movie or show or it is why I busy myself watching and get caught up which creates the unconscious pattern of either binge eating or watching Netflix. Looking even deeper I can acknowledge many of the behaviors I see as disempowering me coming from a similar unconscious ‘need’ to fill my time, because of loneliness, dis-ease, or a void within. I laugh at the absurdity of my nature thinking that food will even temporarily fill the void or that I can even convince myself that just one more time and I will never want it again because I will have filled that ‘need’. But then I can see the darker parts of me that constantly measure my worth against others. If I judge someone it is because I measured myself as superior in some way. I have done both: measured myself as superior and feel inferior as I still desire them to like and approve of me. And our desire to have everyone like us comes from the same emptiness. No matter how many people approve of us as long as there is one person who doesn’t our ego justifies its position to feel empty and not worthy.
And there is no outer or inner thing we can ‘do’ that will make our addictions go away. If we diet we are actually strengthening our resolve that there is indeed something wrong that we have to fix. And it will strengthen the ‘need’ to fill it with more food eventually – or just replace it with something else. We all know those people who become addicted to exercise after a diet; people who have to eat more after quitting smoking; or people who make a health choice to become vegetarian but judge everyone who isn’t. They just replaced one addiction with another!
We will only overcome our addictions – and there are many different kinds within each of us – when we can remember that we are not our bodies; that we choose a Loving Nature over fear; that our ‘infinite spirit’ resides within each of us; that we can let our ‘hearts’ lead our ‘heads’ and know that we are ‘whole’ and complete as we are! When we know we have certain tendencies that we want to change, we should observe that part of us that chooses to fill a void.
Feel the void! Give it a voice and then Remember you are Perfect and Whole just as you are! Remember that Light within you and Shine it out to the World!