Addiction

[blueberry]

As someone who has struggled with different forms of addiction throughout my life this talk by Dr. Gabor Mate gave me insight into understanding the deeper roots of addiction.

-http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLki68uLfjw&feature=related

The topics of the lecture include the fundamental addiction process, effects of childhood wounding on addiction, positive and negative attachment, Cancer and the suppression of the true self, pain and the structure of the egoic mind, how society promotes addiction and clues to who we are when we are not addicted.He talks about the degree of wanting and how its related to the degree of emptiness you experience and how the degree of emptiness you feel is very much related to what happened to you very early in life.

As well as the structure of society and how people don't want to look at the truth within themselves or in the world. He explains that addiction is the nature of our pathological world. The quote below is from the lecture. It made me think of one of my favorite quotes by Krishnamurti, "It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society."

"Sometimes I think that the greatest achievement of modern culture is its brilliant selling of samsara and its barren distractions. Modern society seems to me a celebration of all the things that lead away from the truth, make truth hard to live for, and discourage people from even believing that it exists. And to think that all this springs from a civilization that claims to adore life, but actually starves it of any real meaning; that endlessly speaks of making people "happy," but in fact blocks their way to the source of real joy.
This modem samsara feeds off an anxiety and depression that it fosters and trains us all in, and carefully nurtures with a consumer machine that needs to keep us greedy to keep going. Samsara is highly organized, versatile, and sophisticated; it assaults us from every angle with its propaganda, and creates an almost impregnable environment of addiction around us. The more we try to escape, the more we seem to fall into the traps it is so ingenious at setting for us. As the eighteenth- century Tibetan master Jikmé Lingpa said: "Mesmerized by the sheer variety of perceptions, beings wander endlessly astray in samsara's vicious cycle."
Obsessed, then, with false hopes, dreams, and ambitions, which promise happiness but lead only to misery, we are like people crawling through an endless desert, dying of thirst. And all that this samsara holds out to us to drink is a cup of salt water, designed to make us even thirstier."


- Sogyal Rinpoche; The Tibetan Book of the living and Dying.


 

[anart]

As someone who has struggled with different forms of addiction throughout my life this talk by Dr. Gabor Mate gave me insight into understanding the deeper roots of addiction.

-http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLki68uLfjw&feature=related

It's a good talk, I watched it earlier this week.

The topics of the lecture include the fundamental addiction process, effects of childhood wounding on addiction, positive and negative attachment, Cancer and the suppression of the true self, pain and the structure of the egoic mind, how society promotes addiction and clues to who we are when we are not addicted.He talks about the degree of wanting and how its related to the degree of emptiness you experience and how the degree of emptiness you feel is very much related to what happened to you very early in life.

Yes, but our pasts do not have to define us. In fact, Gurdjieff said that the Work "uses the present to repair the past and prepare for the future". For people who are capable of repairing the past, they can free themselves from the "degree of emptiness" because they realize it has/had nothing to do with them at all, it happened 'to' them, it does not define them. From there, a person can go anywhere. So, while I really liked the talk, I think it's important to successfully walk that line between understanding the past and repairing it and being held hostage by it (identifying with it). I do think there are people who cannot "repair" it and must spend their lives navigating the same damage over and over again (sometimes by choice because they love their suffering and sometimes due to being incapable of anything else), but there are also people who can take their present and their future into their own hands and work through those cutting weeds of damage to find their real selves. I spent decades defined by what was done to me as a child until I finally learned how to start to think differently. It's a process, but it's possible. fwiw.

 

[Approaching Infinity]

Just want to note that there is a discussion of another one of Dr. Mate's talks going on here: http://cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php/topic,29601.msg379059.html#msg379059

 

[Kaigen]

Yes, but our pasts do not have to define us. In fact, Gurdjieff said that the Work "uses the present to repair the past and prepare for the future". For people who are capable of repairing the past, they can free themselves from the "degree of emptiness" because they realize it has/had nothing to do with them at all, it happened 'to' them, it does not define them. From there, a person can go anywhere. So, while I really liked the talk, I think it's important to successfully walk that line between understanding the past and repairing it and being held hostage by it (identifying with it). I do think there are people who cannot "repair" it and must spend their lives navigating the same damage over and over again (sometimes by choice because they love their suffering and sometimes due to being incapable of anything else), but there are also people who can take their present and their future into their own hands and work through those cutting weeds of damage to find their real selves. I spent decades defined by what was done to me as a child until I finally learned how to start to think differently. It's a process, but it's possible. fwiw.

Thanks Anart, this bring more light in the past matter. This is not necessarily a long time process I guess.

 

[blueberry]

Yes, but our pasts do not have to define us. In fact, Gurdjieff said that the Work "uses the present to repair the past and prepare for the future". For people who are capable of repairing the past, they can free themselves from the "degree of emptiness" because they realize it has/had nothing to do with them at all, it happened 'to' them, it does not define them. From there, a person can go anywhere. So, while I really liked the talk, I think it's important to successfully walk that line between understanding the past and repairing it and being held hostage by it (identifying with it). I do think there are people who cannot "repair" it and must spend their lives navigating the same damage over and over again (sometimes by choice because they love their suffering and sometimes due to being incapable of anything else), but there are also people who can take their present and their future into their own hands and work through those cutting weeds of damage to find their real selves. I spent decades defined by what was done to me as a child until I finally learned how to start to think differently. It's a process, but it's possible. fwiw.

I agree that the past doesn't have to define us. I am constantly seeking balance between processing the past and not swimming in it/dwelling in it. I realize that at times I let the past define me in the present in these moments I try to slow down and collect the "data" in present time and see whats there. I notice when I collect the "data" in present time it usually tells me that the way I am feeling is from the past and it is a program coming up.

I also look at my past and feel grateful for my upbringing and experiences because it has enabled me to get to where I am presently which is an interesting place and I feel inspired to grow and learn through deprogramming my childhood conditioning. I also question the past in terms of what we really know and on what level can we trust our memories?

I have learned I cannot trust my own thinking and the importance of a network to mirror and give feedback. Since I have been getting feedback it has helped me to recognize when I am in a thought loop that is a program. I have still many self -sabotaging thoughts and I am now reading the "Narcissistic Family," which has been highly recommended.

I am wanting to uncover the past but like you mentioned Anart, "I think it's important to successfully walk that line between understanding the past and repairing it and being held hostage by it (identifying with it)." I have referred to this as "doing a dance" of uncovering the past well still being present and remaining inspired towards the future. This "doing the dance" is not an easy task as things can feel so intertwined and it can become difficult to identify the past from the present so at this point I feel what is helping me to get clear is to read the psychology books recommended here on the forum and continue to do group work and mirroring within relationships.

Thank you Anart for the reminder and it has been helpful to hear your words.

 

[anart]

I am wanting to uncover the past but like you mentioned Anart, "I think it's important to successfully walk that line between understanding the past and repairing it and being held hostage by it (identifying with it)." I have referred to this as "doing a dance" of uncovering the past well still being present and remaining inspired towards the future. This "doing the dance" is not an easy task as things can feel so intertwined and it can become difficult to identify the past from the present so at this point I feel what is helping me to get clear is to read the psychology books recommended here on the forum and continue to do group work and mirroring within relationships.

Yep, and it's almost impossible to do it alone - actually, it IS impossible to do it alone - which is why we're here, with our hands outstretched anytime you need to grab a hand.

 

[Jones]

I also question the past in terms of what we really know and on what level can we trust our memories?

This is a question that I’ve been asking myself recently when a deeply buried memory(?) come up during some body work.
It was just a flash of an image and was followed days later by an intense jolting physical sensation in the area that the therapist was working on – the side of my head, jaw. For some reason I pieced this flash together with other snippets of memories and put a story together from it. As this story was coming together over the course of a few days I constantly questioned whether this story is correct. They are all just flashes and I really don’t know whether I’ve put them together as they actually occurred, so how can I know if the story is correct – the fact is I can’t really. Well not yet anyway. Those that could verify it for me are either long gone or not inclined to the truth for their own reasons.

The thing is though, and I keep in mind what V said in the movie V for Vendetta about artists using lies to tell the truth and consider that perhaps my memories are lies, but that maybe they are trying to tell me a truth in a way that I can feel that truth viscerally. I’m also reminded of what Laura wrote about past life regression (I think it was that from memory) in hypnotherapy and how, and I’m paraphrasing, a past life often cannot be proven – is it real? Who knows – but the patients invariably showed improvement if the emotional content of the conscious or unconscious past life memory was felt and resolved.

The memory that came up during the body work was of physical abuse when I was around 4yo, the other snippets of memories that I put together with that were of being hospitalised for two weeks, my mother not coming to see me, being released into my grandparents care, my mother coming to visit, my grandfather arguing with her and chasing her away from the house, and my mother’s version of the story, which I hadn’t questioned until now, as to why I was hospitalised. Is the way that I put that together true? I can’t say. Maybe it’s not true in the physical sense, maybe it’s a truth that I couldn’t face, but it is at least emotionally and psychically true from what I can gather from the Narcissism Big Five.

As an aside, and I’m not sure if it holds any significance or not, but this is around the same time that I had my first experience of de ja vu.

However putting the story into a physical context really stirred up some emotions for me – such intense anger that I could hardly breathe, nausea and finally sobbing – waves of these emotions still return as I write this. The bottom line, which is the truth regardless of how my memories were presented or interpreted, is that I was hurt and frightened and that it was covered up, hidden. That’s the basic message and that is true regardless of whether it was physical or emotional, conscious or unconscious, intentional or mechanical – OSIT.