Hello,
This is Guy Findley and I'm glad that you're still with me as we go into the fifth and final part of this series of talks on Breaking the Circle of Addiction.
The last session is entitled,
Being Whole is Being Free.
So let me start the last of these sessions with what I opened the first of them with,
Which was a question.
And it was if you knew for a certainty that picking up a pleasure to console yourself is exactly the same as picking up the pain born of that action,
Would you do it?
Hopefully we're beginning to understand enough about the dynamic of this lower level of consciousness that lives in the dark of us and that we have been in the dark with so far,
That we can start to understand,
At least it should be clear,
That the ways in which we have known to deal with addiction,
With dependency,
With compulsive behavior,
Will never deliver us from the consciousness responsible for the continuation of that unwanted condition in our life.
But if that much is clear,
Then there is a question,
Another one that begs answering.
What's left?
I mean,
What are we to do to be true to ourselves?
How do we go about incorporating these important insights and ideas we've gained through this series of talks?
And the answer is we must understand and then agree to enter into a new kind of struggle.
Only the struggle isn't any more with what we want or don't want.
The struggle has nothing to do with fighting with this or fleeing from that,
Where we somehow believe if we just suffer enough we'll get over that weakness or that if we fight hard enough we'll finally prove that we're better than whatever it is that's trying to pull us down.
No,
We need a new path and that should be clear.
Where rather,
Instead of struggling to overcome what is presented to us as insurmountable objects,
We begin to recognize that all of those insurmountable objects are really nothing other than a projection of a temporary identity in ourselves.
Something that actually produces through imagination reasons and justifications explanations for why we can't do or get past whatever that particular prison we may be in that moment.
And this brings us to the next important point.
The only way it's possible actually to transcend this addictive nature,
This consciousness that gives rise to it,
Is to begin to understand that whatever the bad habit,
That compulsive behavior,
Whatever it may be,
It isn't yours.
I know it's staggering because there's something in us that has so severely judged us for it that the assumption is by the judgment it must be mine.
But I'm telling you it's not.
And neither are you,
Your true nature,
The one who has that addictive behavior,
Who takes part in the captivity inherent in any compulsive behavior.
The fact is it belongs to a part of us that would have us believe that it is the whole of us.
It is not the whole of us.
Logic shows that no one part can rule the whole of anything without deceiving us into believing that that one part is the whole.
Let me explain.
When I judge myself for a weakness or an inadequacy,
In that moment I believe that that judgment and the part of me that feels that way,
That's the whole story.
And part of the lie of that whole story is that in the very act of judging that weakness,
I believe that's coming from a strength.
But that's not the whole story.
The whole story is that the judgment of the weakness is part of the way in which weakness keeps itself in place.
Rather,
The fact is that the whole of you,
Of myself,
Cannot act against the part.
That's what we have to understand if we want to be free.
We must begin to know what it means to meet the moment from the whole of ourselves,
From the holiness,
If you will,
From ourselves.
Where to meet the moment from the whole of ourselves is to see the whole of the moment,
Including the way in which that consciousness has deceived us into believing that the me who wants to run from a problem is different than the consciousness that produces it.
So how are we to do this?
First and it should be obvious,
We have to work to remain as aware,
As mindful as we can be of ourselves in the moment where that temptation appears.
And then to recognize that this unconscious pleasure and pain that seem to follow one another as separate entities are secretly twins.
They are inseparable characters living in and rising out of a divided level of consciousness that has no awareness of itself but that we can become aware of.
And then remembering in this way the whole of ourselves,
Seeing the whole of ourselves ask the question I started with.
If I knew that picking up that pleasure of getting ready to do what has compromised me a thousand times,
If I knew in that moment that the act of trying to console this emptiness or inadequacy was the same as picking up the part of myself that's going to judge me mercilessly afterwards,
Would I do it?
And the answer is no,
I wouldn't.
Because in seeing the whole,
The whole sets me free.
It's no longer an action of my will but rather it's a new action born out of seeing how I have been unknowingly subjugated by a level of self that I was never present to before.
This isn't about winning a battle and it's certainly not agreeing to feel defeated by it,
But to stand there and to live in that moment from a part of you that is already so far above what punishes you that it can't be deceived anymore into identifying with it.
That's how we break the circle of addiction.
I hope you'll work with these ideas.
Let them sink in.
See the truth of them.
Practice what you understand and I can promise you that the truth that you see and understand will release you from whatever has been setting you against yourself.
Thanks for joining me.
Bye!
