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| How To Overcome Any Addiction |
Purpose Of Human Lives
We come in this world to be joyful, free and limitless. The very purpose of being born as a human being is to find full expression in various walks of life. Also, as humans we are capable of experiencing life far more profoundly than any other creature on this planet. Yet, there is something that keeps us contained, miserable & enslaved and in the process, succeeds in making us feel like a loser! ADDICTIONS!!
What is an Addiction?
We consistently & regularly do something in-spite of knowing that it is bad for our mental & physical well-being. This is addiction! It is more than just a bad habit. Today, human beings are addicted to every possible thing they can get addicted with. Cigarettes, alcohol, food, sex and even to people! Some of these things are outrightly bad for our system and cause a lot of harm to our physical & mental well-being, for eg. smoking & alcohol. Others are not bad when consumed in the right amounts. But when they are consumed beyond an optimal quantity, they become dangerous, for eg. food. The only difference between these two types of addictions is that the former would harm you faster than the latter. Any Addiction is bad and causes a lot of harm to us in various ways.
Harms Of Addiction
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| Harms Of Addictions |
The biggest harm caused by addictions is that it takes away our freedom and enslaves us. The joy of being human is derived from being free and not feeling attached or compelled to do anything. You must have seen successful love affairs failing miserably when converted into marriages. Why does this happen? It happens just because people no longer feel the mental freedom they had before getting married. Even if everything is great after marriage, you are doing well financially, you love each other like very much, but that feeling of peace & liberty ceases to be there. And in some time people call-off their marriage! If a thing as beautiful as love can shatter without freedom, just imagine what addictions do to us! When we know something is harming us and we still are not able to say NO to it, it is the worst feeling in the world. And slowly, with each passing day the charm on your face starts fading. You start entering the ‘cage’ of your addictions and finally it becomes impossible to come out of it! In many cases, people pay the highest price for their addictions when they commit suicide or die as a consequence of a deadly disease caused by the addiction.
Universality of Addictions
If a few people had addictions, it would have been an easy task to tackle and remove these addictions from our societies. But unfortunately, everyone of us has fallen into the trap of addictions. Even the doctor who is treating you for your addiction might himself be addicted to drugs that he picked up during his college days! If this is the situation, then how will we all come out of addictions? Who will help us? How to know the solution to addictions? To find a solution to addictions, let’s first understand its source.
‘Causes’ of Any Addiction
We can give a number of ‘causes’ of addiction like gradual habit development, a purpose-less life, temporary enjoyment or a feeling of emptiness & sadness. But all these causes are superficial ones that sprout-out of a root cause. We need to address this root cause to eliminate addictions once and for all. Let us see what this root cause is and how it causes an addiction.
Root Cause Of Addictions
As I told you in the beginning, human life is all about finding full expression. We find full expression as a human being when there is no hesitation, doubt or any confusion in life and when we are joyful by our own nature and not because of something or someone. But there are times when we feel stuck somewhere in life. Situations where we do something that we don’t want to do in life. And circumstances when we don’t have enough freedom to think or to act. This is when we long for something that will let us ‘escape’ from these compulsions of life. For example, you might have wanted to follow your passion in life and become a musician but family or financial compulsions forced you do a regular job. Now, you will feel the need to do something that ‘liberates’ you from this pain & feeling of dissatisfaction. And you will take refuge in becoming addictive to alcohol or smoking. But the reality is that, to liberate yourself from the enslavement by your regular job, you have further enslaved yourself to alcohol & smoking. It might give you temporary feeling of freedom and ecstasy but its a farce, an illusion! And this is not the end. As you move forward, you go deeper & deeper into the pit and get addicted to more and more things. Basically, you would become addicted to addictions before you know it! This is how addictions ruin lives by luring people into them and then eroding their freedom to the limits! We need to target and find a way past this root cause of addictions!!
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| Root Cause Of Addictions |
Preventing Addictions
Life is too short and too precious to do things we don’t like. The first thing that we can do to avoid/prevent addictions from trapping us is to do only those things which we really like doing. Our profession should be in an area which we are totally in love with. It should bring us alive no matter what is happening in our lives. There are many cases where people were going through really difficult times, yet they excelled in their respective fields at that very time. This became possible only because their professions gave them freedom. Because they loved doing it. Because they were able to forget everything while they were doing it. Hence, we should dedicate our lives towards becoming someone we really want to be and towards doing something we really want to do in our lives. If we don’t opt for the profession of our choice, we will keep trying to avoid our actual profession and would definitely land up in some kind of addiction(s).
Tackling Addictions
But not everyone is lucky enough to get a chance to do the profession of their choice. People may not be skilled enough. They may have family compulsions. They may have immediate economic/financial needs that may decide their professions. What do we do here? There is no option in this case but to make peace with the job you are doing. You have to find a way to enjoy it. You need to be able to make peace with it and find ways of deriving greater and greater levels of freedom while doing it. Everyday will feel painful. Everyday would feel like a punishment. And everyday will feel like a nightmare. It will feel like a trap! But you have to push the walls of this ‘prison’ each day with your dedication & resolve.
At this point, these pep talks seem to be hollow. Something is missing in them. Something that will make the picture complete and would give you the hope of accomplishing this seemingly impossible and humongous task! What is it? Spirituality is the answer!!
Spirituality : Addictions to Ecstasy
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| Spirituality : Addictions to Ecstasy |
Remember, no problem comes to trouble you. They are there just to make you realize who you are and what you are capable of. Take your ‘enforced’ profession as an opportunity to explore yourself, understand yourself and to rediscover yourself! With each passing day, learn to do the ‘job’ with a still mind & body. It might feel difficult initially, but it would happen for sure. Let the job make you meditative, limitless and nothing! A day would be reached when you would become capable of doing anything & everything with the same intensity, same zeal and same focus. You would reach a level where your favorite profession and your enforced profession would start giving you the same amount of peace, happiness and freedom! And by this time you would have learnt the minutes of this new profession fully well. The inner journey will provide you with a mirrored outer journey that would make you reach infinity and limitlessness!
Make A Choice
If you are addicted to anything, you first need to identify the thing that you are forcing yourself to do in life. Generally, it is our jobs. But it might differ from person to person. Whatever that thing is in your case, either stop doing it or reach a stage where doing it becomes as pleasurable for you as your favourite activity in life! Use the stillness & meditation of spirituality to achieve this stage easily!
You cannot decide what life throws at you but its 100% your choice what you make out of it! When you are thrown out of your comfort zone, you can as either choose to take short-term refuge in addictions that would destroy you in the long-run OR you can use the crisis to start your inner journey and tap into your inner potential to make every damn situation your comfort zone! The choice is yours!!
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