seeker08 wrote:
You bet, I'll check in and I hope that goes for all of us. Chris, when you said "all is never lost" it's totally true except when under the spell of addiction. What a mind game.
Hi Irene,
How are you doing? I hope that you're doing well. You know, all is never lost, even in the midst of addiction. Though it can sure feel like that sometimes. Being in the grip of addiction while at the same time asking the same question over and over of why do we keep doing this, when we want to be free from it? And we really can't think of a logical answer, so we are usually left with the thought that there must be something wrong with us. That somehow it is WE that are broken and must rely on the chemical to complete us. This can often times leave us with heavy clouds of guilt and regret that seem quite solid and unpassable. Yet a cloud cannot put out the Sun.
All is not lost in the spell of addiction. Though the truth is definately obscured in the spell of addiction. For chemical addiction is an illusion. A distortion of truth that we believe in. It is a parody of reality.
But often times as addicts we feel that we are the problem and that the chemical is the solution. When the chemical is the problem that we believe is the solution. And this is where the mind games can come in.
Quitting smoking is simple. As a matter of fact it is one of the simplest things to do or not do. To quit, we simply stop smoking. It is that simple, the problem is, it is not always that easy. There is a part of our mind that tells us that quitting smoking is going to take everything away from us. We will lose our "great stress reliever", that we will lose our " time passer" or our "friend". Years and most likely decades of smoking has convinced us that all of our good times that we enjoyed and all the bad times that we overcame, that we did so with the help of the cigarette. But what did the cigarette really do? What magic did it hold? In essense what Truth is in the cigarette?
Didn't it distort the truth? Didn't it create the void only to that convince us that it would "resuce us" and fill the void? Did the anxieties that this "magic stick" relieve, also caused the very anxieties that we experienced over and over and yet over again?
What is behind the mind game? What is it saying that is causing the confusion? We as addicts play mind games when we start to imagine or wish that what is right now would be different. "I wish I could only smoke when I wanted to. I wish that I could control my smoking. I wish I could smoke when under stress. I wish I could smoke socially." and on and on it goes. And as we let these wishes continue to swirl within our mind, they then start to turn into fantasies. "Oh wouldn't it be nice, to be able to have a cigarette right now. Wouldn't it be nice when I'm out with my smoking friends to smoke a cigarette with them, after all they still "get" to smoke"
And quitting smoking will never be able to compete with the fantasy of smoking. The mind being as powerful as it is, can think up all kind of imagined "lovely fantasies" of that one "good cigarette" and yet, when that fantasy is acted upon, it crumbles like a house of cards, because a fantasy can never stand up to the truth of smoking. Fantasies are distortions of how we want it to be and not how they are.
All is not lost Irene. It maybe obscured, but it is never lost. The clouds may seem heavy. The may seem solid and unimpentrable, but a cloud cannot even hold a feather.
Accept Now that any fantasy or wish or any other distortion of Truth has never worked and will never work. That is not bad news!! This is the truth that will set you free! The suffering comes to the clinging of illusions, the wanting of what will never be. A cigarette will never be what you wish it to be. It will never be a better cigarette. It will never be a more compassionate cigarette. It will never be a friend. It will always be what it has always been, your one and only obstacle to freedom from smoking.
I'm going to post a couple of things that I have written lately. You can do this Irene!!
Take care,
Eric
