The Hidden Addictions of Everyday Life
By Julie Redstone
Beloved Ones, we need to become more aware of the energies that influence us that affect both our bodies and minds, often without our knowing it. Such energies can take us out of ourselves, not for purposes of growth and expansion, but for purposes of contraction and reduction to a smaller version of who we are.
The precious gift of a sacred life is given to us in order to learn through our experience of reality.
When we seek to lose ourselves in a lesser version of who we are or in the predominant pleasurable sensation that masks itself as 'innocent enjoyment,' when we choose to substitute sensation of any kind for true awareness because it causes us to forget other things, we deprive ourselves of the capacity for maximum growth that could take place if we actually engaged with life as it comes to us.
This is not to say that all distractions or forms of entertainment are detrimental, for placing our minds and focus on something else can often give us an enlarged perspective, not a diminished one. It can give us the space in which to breathe and re-center. But expansion and contraction are two different things.
In one we retain our sense of ourselves and seek to move toward something greater in the way of consciousness - greater love, greater oneness, greater knowledge. In the other, we seek to lose ourselves in something that makes us smaller, primarily because it fulfills an impulse of the moment.
Because of the pain that is often part of the human experience, we seek distractions, we seek to forget ourselves and our experience, we seek to deny what we really feel.
This desire to depart from the truth of what is, is a function of pain and of the fear of not being able to handle it. It is not the wish of our deepest self, but of our self that feels alone and frightened, floating around in a reality that seems unsafe and in which we feel unanchored.
This constellation of feelings is the root cause of all addictive behavior, since all addiction attempts to create a substitute for the painful emptiness and aloneness that has accrued to us over time, often over many lifetimes. As a result, we have become accustomed to losing ourselves, and to feeling that the loss of consciousness is acceptable.
Pain does this to the freedom of choice that we each possess, pain and the feeling that we cannot bear the honest appraisal of what is, either internally or externally. It is in this way that the seduction of alcohol, drugs, sexual promiscuity, thrill-seeking through television watching or video gaming and many other things arise to provide outlets for our wish to avoid consciousness and to lose ourselves in something else.
There are some forms of addictive behavior we know to be harmful. But there are many others that we accept as simply a pastime, without consequences.
Beloved Ones, all addiction that takes us away from the truth of who we are and what reality is, making us smaller in our perception of the possible has consequences.
What makes such behaviors addictive is that they are fueled by powerful forces within us and often around us that seek to embed us in an energetic and psychological matrix that while appearing to keep us safe, actually makes us unsafe in its substitution of illusion for truth.
Beloved Ones, to engage in fantasy can be a beautiful thing. It can be the source of creativity, a vehicle for dreams of the future, and a way of living in anticipation of something that we greatly desire and would like to bring about.
Fantasy that arises from our own imagination and that is directed toward enhancing life and growth is part of our embodiment, the equipment with which we took birth. It is part of our imaginative capacity, the dreamer within.
But a fantasy world that we enter in order to abandon ourselves so that we lose consciousness and crave more and more of the sensation that is offered as a substitute is something else altogether.
Many forms of entertainment today prey upon this wish of ours to avoid consciousness and to avoid pain. Many engage us with fantasy as a form of seduction, allowing us to vicariously experience emotions and sensations that feel exciting in the moment, but that actually detract from the growth that is central to our existence as human beings.
When we engage with addictive television watching, for example, we take ourselves out of the reality that we are in with the possibility of finding new solutions to the problems we face, and give ourselves permission to not feel and to not know.
When this abandonment of consciousness is accompanied by powerful sexual energies or energies of violence that create an appetite for the 'thrill of fear' or the 'thrill of power,' we further remove ourselves from the truth of who we are and become increasingly available to influences that affect us without our knowing that they are doing so.
Such programming becomes a part of our own inner 'program,' influencing our desire to feel and sense more and more of these energies.
This is the property of addiction, namely, that it has an effect on our bodies and consciousness that changes who we are and how we are without our knowing it, causing us to desire more and more of both energies and sensations that the addictive substance or source is providing us with.
There is no addictive behavior that is without consequences, Beloved Ones. And there is no form of abandonment of self that does not have the potential for leading us in a direction that takes us toward our higher purpose, or in a direction that takes us away from that.
Today more than ever, we need to be aware of the choices that are put before us in terms of how, when, and with what kind of intention we are being led to lower our sights and to abandon ourselves, seemingly innocently, to something that takes us into the lower domain of emotionality and sensation. We are each responsible for these choices.
For we are each stewards of our bodies and our hearts throughout the time that we are here, and must learn and understand that if we give ourselves away as if we do not matter, then we are making choices that are detrimental to our growth and happiness, even if they appear not to be in the moment.
May all addictions and seductions offered that take us away from the deeper truth of our hearts and the sacred reality that we live in be unmasked in this time, that we may see and know the holy reality in which we are meant to live.
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