Facing Addictions at the Root Cause!

When the Student is Ready the Teacher will appear, I am just the messenger!

Take What Resonates!

The Truth shall set you free, the lie will keep you trapped!

First let me just say, we can't face addiction without discussing relationships.

Our relationship to life is about our relationship to self as it relates to the journey of life. Our relationship with self is reflected through the quality & depth of the relationships we have with everything that we experience in this life.

The best teacher in life is through experiences. Whether you go through it or you learn from someone else's experiences. That choice is up to you. So, if it isn't resonating now, come back to this later.

Everything that you do is in relationship to something else or with someone else. This you cannot avoid; it is a fact of life.

When we think about relationships we typically think of relationships with people. However, we have a relationship to everything, and everything has a relationship to us, which all comes back to relationship with self.

For example(s):

Your relationship to your phone or laptop to read this email, blog or newsletter. Do you clean your phone and electronics? Do you handle it with care and priority? Do you put your laptop in a secure place when you aren't using it? Are you aware of your relationship with your electronic devices and how you attend to them? These are extensions of you and your relationship to yourself.

I am not interrogating you; you are not in trouble -- at-least not with me. Your electronic devices may say otherwise!

Here is another one?

Do you treat your friends better than you treat yourself? Do you take care of others better than you take care of yourself? Do you have a habit or now realize your addiction of being a savior or a martyr, aka self-sacrificial? Then, when those who you gave all this energy and attention to don't respond to your liking, you blame them for your anger or passively aggressively, you say they used you, or abused you. When you really abused yourself, you abandoned yourself, you neglected loving yourself so much that it led to an imbalanced unhealthy relationship which you are addicted to. Which is why you deny and try to hide. So, you spend more energy manipulating others to perceive you differently than you truly feel about yourself and project how you truly feel on others. However, instead of facing this, you divert using various coping mechanisms. Whether it be secondary, tertiary or even quaternary causing further entanglement and suffering. Thus, more addictions and dependency on external coping mechanisms. Is this you?

No? Okayyy!

Do you get dressed to impress and please others or do you get dressed to appease yourself? You don't have to actually give me the answer or be honest and reveal your hidden dark secrets. It is for you to reflect and build honesty and trust with oneself. After all, your relationship to life and everything is based on your relationship with your true self.

You can choose to live in whatever illusion or state you want. Who am I or anyone else to judge?

If you made it this far, I assume you are looking to break the veil of addiction, so this blog is here when you are ready. Hope you like the intro.

Let’s talk about Relationships!

Your relationship with money

Your relationship with social media

Your relationship to shopping

Your relationship to video games

Your relationship to success

Your relationship to drugs

Your relationship to the past

Your relationship to the present

Your relationship to the future

Your relationship to stress

Your relationship to learning

Your relationship to flow

Your relationship to giving

Your relationship to receiving

Your relationship to exercise

Your relationship to discipline

Your relationship to thrill -seeking

Your relationship to pleasure

Your relationship to coffee

Your relationship to sleeping & rest

Your relationship to pain

Your relationship to sex & self-pleasure

Your relationship to other people

Your relationship to your own desires & needs

Your relationship to work

Your actual relationship with your family

Your relationship to Food

All of these relationships to anyone or anything are predicated upon your relationship with oneself!

(Let this sink in)

We are all creatures of habit!

But as we all heard, there is a thin line between love and hate and there is also a thin line between habits & addictions. Now whether they are healthy or not is for each individual to discern.

For it is your journey and your relations to everything and everyone around you including the moment you are continuously in.

Let's dive into the world of Addictions & Habits:

Here are some common scenarios:

Scenario 1

You have a deep dark fear that no one really knows. You have hidden from yourself and the world the fear of being lonely. You want to avoid this fear, so you put an aspect of yourself to sleep and into a deep level of hypnosis. Some would call it a dream state. In this dream state, you hid this truth from yourself. Others may call it denial or delusion, either way this is hidden. Which leads you to invest a lot of your energy and time to rely on and\or commit yourself to relationships (all types of relationship), achieving goals, staying busy at work, becoming a socialite, addicted to social media conversations & posts - all to fill this void. You became so consumed, dependent and addicted to things and situations that derived from this original cause. For your state of wellbeing and happiness is temporarily felt from these external habits/ addictions and attachments. You deprive yourself from having it any other way. You're in deep denial of this illusion. The only way out is through the first step of breaking this cycle\pattern, habit, or some will say addiction, which is realizing this (your deep denial) and sometimes the only way to realize this is when you suffer enough to surrender and accept this truth!

Scenario 2

You have a deep dark fear of being vulnerable, so you never make any moves that require vulnerability or a certain level of risk because you fear being out of control, humiliated, not accepted, rejected or feeling disempowered. You want to avoid this fear at all costs. You will even deny it from yourself, so you find yourself trapped in nothing but mundane relationships. You have a habit or great desire of acquiring a-lot of material matter and worldly things/possessions to further deepen this avoidance. You avoid deep connections, even with yourself. You may find yourself to be an overachiever, goal oriented, addicted or continuously seeking external validation. You have a habit of over working, staying busy "productive", you avoid being completely honest with yourself and everyone else around you. You're super loyal to more mundane things. You even use that to flex and hide behind, at times when you are triggered you will use the mundane to belittle others and feel empowered. You never reveal your true self for that matter because that requires too much vulnerability.

You don't really trust anyone around you let alone yourself. Afraid to receive because you are afraid to give your true self. So, you become addicted to sex to feel connected. You become a thrill seeker to feel alive. You become addicted to your phone because that is one of the few ways you feel connected. You become addicted to food and masturbation to feel comfort and pleasure. You become addicted to your online image or the imagination of others to feel in control of other people's perception of you and to escape and hide from your true inner self and state. You become addicted to feeling full, so you overeat processed and dense food to feel comfort. You become addicted to victimhood because you're addicted to giving your power away and escaping from oneself. You will self-sabotage, but because you are in a deep state of delusion you unknowably create situations that feed these addictions, but we dismiss them as habits until it becomes inconvenient and debilitating or humiliating to our public appearance.

Warning: This next part you are about to read is intently repetitive for subconscious penetration. The subconscious is trained by association, trauma and repetition. Thus, leading back to the fact that we are creatures of habit! Many turn a blind eye to whether these habits are an addiction or merely healthy habits.

Like I said, you be the one to discern!

Your relationship with money is determined by your relationship with oneself and your beliefs, thoughts and habits (actions) with money determine your outcome. Your perception and reality of self (cause) reflects your relationship in regard to you and money. Your outcome reinforces your belief, thoughts and habits, see the looping?

This can be a healthy relationship, or some like to call it healthy habits or it can also become an addiction.

Thin Line!

Your relationship with social media is determined by your relationship with oneself and your beliefs, thoughts (association), and habits (action) with social media determines your outcome (effect). Your perception and reality of self (cause) reflects on you and social media. Your outcome reinforces your beliefs, thoughts and habits. See it now?

Again, you be the one to discern whether it's a habit or addiction. It is about your relationship to yourself.

Your relationship to shopping is determined by your relationship with oneself and your beliefs, thoughts (association), and habits (action) with shopping determine your outcome (effect). Your perception and reality of self (cause) reflects your relationship to you and the act of shopping. Your outcome reinforces your beliefs, thoughts and habits.

and same for ...

Your relationship to video games

Your relationship to success

Your relationship to drugs

Your relationship to the past

Your relationship to the present

Your relationship to the future

Your relationship to stress

Your relationship to learning

Your relationship to flow

Your relationship to giving

Your relationship to receiving

Your relationship to exercise

Your relationship to discipline

Your relationship to thrill -seeking

Your relationship to pleasure

Your relationship to coffee

Your relationship to sleeping & rest

Your relationship to pain

Your relationship to sex & self-pleasure

Your relationship to other people

Your relationship to your own desires & needs

Your relationship to work

Your actual relationship with your family

Your relationship to Food

Addictions are derived from the fear of feeling and experiencing the unprocessed unpleasant thoughts and emotions whether it be from judging oneself or others. Fear of being judged, blaming oneself or others, fear of others blaming you - which can lead to shame and denial. It can lead to a delusional state of numbness & abandoning oneself. Scared to feel abandoned by others and alone, so many suffer quietly and deny this. Afraid to experience fully, so often we project that we are scared of others or create an illusion of outside enemies to the point that we believe our external reality more than what is happening internally.

Typically, we are addicted to hiding from ourselves. Thus, we avoid these aspects of oneself which leads to an imbalance, which is a void that we try to fill with good intentions that can easily slip into addictions. And compound or evolve into multiple addictions, unhealthy attachment and codependencies.

When we focus on external outcomes more than our internal state which is really what is being reinforced externally, we start to gain our power back. Especially when we are honest with oneself and in our present state to build a better relationship to oneself, we will then change the relationship to everything else externally.

This all derives from fear. I know we all like to disassociate ourselves from fear and deny that it's a part of us, you know, separate ourselves from it. We probably even heard fear is just an illusion. What if reality is just a projection of your inner states. Which makes it all an illusion as well. Does this scare you? Or does this empower you to change your thoughts, beliefs and habits or transmute your addictions?

What if you are scared to be whole and present because you abandon and judge oneself and others through dogmatic belief systems. Now you're fearful of oneself, you denied it was there for you and you fed it. You judged it, therefore you idolized and shamed it. You cursed it, therefore you denied and shamed aspects of yourself until you fell into a state of addiction. Now it consumes you. Now it fooled you. It used you and devoured you until you couldn't deny its presence and power that you denied yourself when you gave it its very sources of power. No matter how much you tried to avoid it. So, you self sooth in what some like to call habits (others may say addiction) as you continue to appear to run away from your fears. However, fear only gains its power through denial and resistance from it. For whatever you judge you become, whatever you resist you persist.

Now you are controlled by external dependencies that cause you to be stuck in a loop or cycle you feel like you can't get out of because your perception is tuned to the cycle you are in. This doesn't mean the cycle is all that exists, but this is all that you experience, feel or see.

I could go on and on about how this can cause poor relationships with people, life and things and how it can possess people and any or all living things. All Addictions are coping mechanisms for the things we don't face within ourselves until we are left or forced to finally face them because our habits have been deteriorated or disrupted by our external reality.

Again, we are all creatures of habit, and our habits reflect our relations and relationship to different areas of our lives. To some degree or another we all have unhealthy habits and room to improve and develop healthier relations and habits to our experiences in life.

In order to transmute your addiction(s), it will require honesty, vulnerability, presence and to face oneself. To be committed to working on a relationship with oneself and self-acceptance. Let go of self-denial, let go of judgment, let go of perceiving control of anything other than yourself, let go of dogmatic beliefs of right and wrong ways of being or doing. For there is no right or wrong, but just cause and effect. Anything further is dogmatic!

Know you are the cause! Have compassion for yourself and extend it to others. Forgive yourself when you didn't and don't forget! And if and when you do, forgive again, and again, and again, and again. This is actually a good habit.

Try at each waking moment to be in the best state you can be in by accepting all of you. Even aspects that may not entirely be in the most pleasant state. This puts you in a frequency of acceptance. Especially if you can move to the state of being grateful for all there is, including your unpleasant states. If you can, do hold this for as long as you can and if and when you are not in the state of acceptance of your current state, you surrendering to accepting what is will always lead you back on track!

Know you always have the choice and power to change, even if it requires help from others. Just be committed to your internal state and your relationship to oneself and bettering it will better transmute your addiction or relationship with anything externally!