January 06, 2004
Enough Eye Candy - Addictions
I will try to paraphrase what Esther Hicks, channeling Abraham , has to say about addictions, because I think it's a helpful perspective. You can order the whole spiel on tape from her website. You will have to get past her booming "deity" voice, (which has softened over the years).
She says that an addiction originally develops because it feels good when you do it. (Esther, et al, are heavily into feeling good, since staying in good feeling acts as our guidance system, and let's us know when we are on the right path. We feel bad when we are disconnected from life force energy.)
Back to addictions. An addiction generally starts out as a feel-good experience, an experience that does help us to connect to life force energy; that's perfectly fine. In many cases, that means softening the focus on reality, because it may be painful. Drugs and alcohol do the trick here. The use of a substance only becomes a problem, when it stops feeling good. The kicker is that we often don't notice when that happens. By the time a feeling-good experience becomes a habit, becomes an addiction, we find we are searching for the old positive connection, hoping to recreate it by doing something that makes us feel terrible about ourselves.
Developing a new, powerful desire is the way out of an addiction. Identify something else you want passionately (you know, like health, beauty, consciousness, freedom, reconnection to life force energy). The passion will help you maintain your excitement while you are going through withdrawal from the addiction. It will help you stay in a place of eager anticipation, curious about what will happen after you stop doing what is currently making you feel bad -- your addiction. Of course, this is easier said than done.