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the underlying idea, ‘if I could just get X, Y, Z, I would be okay’, is consistent and it is quite wrong.
because the cycle of desire and dissatisfaction never stops.
Addiction is when natural biological imperatives, like the need for food, sex, relaxation or status, become prioritized to the point of destructiveness. It is exacerbated by a culture that understandably exploits this mechanic as it’s a damn good way to sell Mars bars and Toyotas.
Consumerism manipulates the body's needs in a way that results in material gain.
What happens when you don’t follow the compulsion? What is on the other side of my need to eat and purge? The only way to find out is to not do it, and that is a novel act of faith.
Do or do not, there is no try - Yoda
Most people in the West belong to a popular cult of individualism and materialism
Money is the new-age religion.
egotistical thinking is the defining attribute of the addictive condition.
view: that I am the centre of the world and that what I want is important.
Incompatible with happines
I think it is a part of being human, to carry a wound, a flaw and again, paradoxically, it is only by accepting it that we can progress.
A pain in the leg means ‘don’t put pressure on this leg’; a pain in the mind means ‘change the way you live’.
The natural impulse to have sex becomes a compulsion to masturbate. The attraction to connect is culturally translated by pornography into a numb and lonely staring strum at broken digital ghosts. The most physically creative thing we have, reduced to a dumb shuffle that’d embarrass a monkey.
Bloody hell, I'll never wank again!
have hope
when that impulse comes up, I quickly assess my role in the situation:
It can be nature. It can be a unified field of consciousness that supports all phenomena. It frankly doesn’t matter and it is entirely for you to choose, as long as it is loving, caring and more powerful than you.
For me; the wisdom of past thinkers, nature and the metaphysical.
accept help.’
Ask and accept help whenever you feel yourself reverting to old habits. Do this because the ideology behind a new lifestyle needs constant application in order to execute change.
let go of all this, look within, there is no real power in the world of things, only distraction and pleasure.
At this point in the exercise we are reminded that we have to let go of our opinion of how other people, places and things ought to be. My mum, my girlfriend Laura and the government of North Korea are not obliged to moderate their reality in accordance with my whims. If I make my happiness contingent on them behaving in a certain way, I am fucked. I have to petition the universe, my innermost self, God, or whatever it is that I believe might be more powerful than me, to adjust my view – the view that my feelings have a meaningful bearing on the external world. We don’t trouble ourselves
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Much like in the way Descartes' sets our his moral rules for following his Discourse on the method for finding truths, it is important to remember, Stoically, that the only thing you can conquer and change is yourself. Do so for the sake of your own happiness, fore you shan't be happy if your happiness relies upon changing things outside of your control (such as; the world).
If you’re chugging through life in a job you kind of dislike, a relationship that you are detached from, eating to cope, staring at Facebook, smoking and fruitlessly fantasizing, you can sit glumly on that conveyor belt of unconscious discontent until it deposits you in your grave.
Confession doesn't need to be to God, but it will liberate you from isolation.
the opposite of addiction is connection.
These change with a new ideology.
I am not my thoughts. I observe my thoughts. So now if I start thinking about sex, on a good day, I will spot it early enough in the process to make a choice. ‘Do I want to peruse this avenue? This boulevard lined with trees apple-laden with old temptation? Is this going to be good for me? Or should I observe my breath, slow down, pick up the phone and share with someone I trust, that my mind, my naughty little mind, was about to fling my life off a cliff for fifteen minutes of mild amusement.’
This is the exercise of the Platonic virtue; Temperance.
Adlerian psychology concurs, there is no connectedness without community.
Before this program and the guidance of others using these principles my M.O. was to either be in a giddy and all-consuming romance or to be distracted by incessant promiscuity. I was using these means to deal with the intensity of feeling I experience.
Me.
We are all one.
Except the aforementioned help!
Foucault would tell you, if he were here and you could get him to cooperate, that the very notion of an inner connection to a divine being is a social and linguistic construct that we need to abandon, and that we invent ourselves rather than discovering ourselves.
It is hard to argue with Foucault here without inciting personal and emotionally biased premises.
crucible of Self,
Beyond the pain:pleasure schematic.
The prayer is an agreement with the Self that you would like to be.
In fact half of humanity live in conditions of galling poverty so any of us that have swerved that nightmare would do well to not spend our leisure time bemoaning the fact that we are not laid out on a yacht with a Kardashian slurping away at our privates because, the sages are right, the material world is an illusion and its treasures all too temporal.
Detach yourself from money and materials.
This step enables us through humble petition to a Higher Self, to experience deep peace and a power that is present and waiting to be unlocked. This is not a moral or economic argument. This is a system for managing your inner life so that you can deal with reality.
Guilt and shame tether us to old ways of seeing and being.
Accept that people are flawed and the past can't be changed but realise that you can teleologically change the future by letting go of guilt, shame and pain. Resentments imprison you and your ability to change.
Why would I want to hold on to an emotion that hurts me, turning my body and spirit into a vessel for ‘justifiable’ pain?
A message from the inner self.
Casual sex has no inner benefit.
my attitude towards women is to be one of nurture, kindness and generosity.
Deconstruct your old ways of thinking when they begin to assert themselves again. Apply your new model to them.
Choose the Platonic virtues.
the Puranic legend of the elephant king Gajendra
the elephant is ‘man’, the crocodile is ‘sin’ and the lake is ‘life’.
Surrender in order to be at one with your inner consciousness.
Spend time alone, write, pray, meditate.
Cast out obsession and compulsion.
This is how I pray. I sit quietly for a moment, I read a few short passages from whatever spiritual book I’m into at the time – at the moment it’s Patanjali’s yoga aphorisms. I think about how the writing is applicable to my own life, then I silently pray firstly for gratitude. This means I look at myself as a supremely lucky person, to be born in the place, time, health and circumstances I have been, how lucky I have been to have avoided serious injury to myself or others through my past conduct, how fortunate I am to have a life so full of beautiful people. I actually light four candles (!)
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‘Trying to solve an inner problem by outer means, in spite of negative consequences’.
