Break the Cycle of Addiction - Ram Dass

[Music] like Elizabeth Spring Tao who was born here yesterday we come into the world we come from being fully at home and feeling that release that comes we have a little shadow of it when we come home at the end of the day those of you that have a home and put your feet up or relax or have a cup of tea or whatever that is that feeling of coming home or coming to a safe space or feeling back at peace or at one and when we get separated from that which and that's separation I

want to keep reiterating is created by the mind that's what the basic issue of the ignorance that is the root of suffering that the Buddha keeps pointing out basic root of suffering is thought the clinging of the Mind things which separate one from all of it now once that separation has occurred there is incredible pain we can call it being thrown out of the Garden of Eden we call it original sin whatever you want to call that I mean there are different metaphors within different systems but there is incredible pain and in some profound way

all of our actions henceforth are an attempt to return to that being for me under maharaji's blanket or in the heart of God or in the hand or being the one coming back into the one and we develop a whole set of techniques that we say make us feel good make us give us a feeling for the moment of yeah ah and some of those give us that moment so intensely and the rest of our life is so so much pain of our separateness and so devoid of that feeling that once we find one of

those things for example it might be a moment of sexual orgasm it might be a moment of Surfing when you transcend the dualism between you and nature it could be when you're doing something like cooking the way you turn into just the joy of the process it could be it could be any number of things it could be any number of things that when that occurs and it works it reinforces the behavior and you start to do that behavior more and more because it feels good it takes away the pain of the separateness and the

use of drugs the use of material possessions the use of relationships all of it when you get busy and get obsessed with relationships and wanting to get closer and closer to somebody it is trying to get to the place where you come back into that Oneness it is it's that yearning and you can feel it permeate the universe of people's consciousness so when you look at addictions from that point of view you see that it's not like evil it is just an attempt to get back the problem is that most behaviors that get you back

is like what maharaji said about drugs he said it will allow you to be in the presence of Christ but you can only stay two hours he said it would be better to become Christ than visit him and that's what you find out with most addictive things that they give you a short rush but they don't allow you to remain at home they just allow you the taste of it and then the minute you get thrown out because you weren't wearing the wedding garment the minute you go back to heaven but you can't stay because

you didn't come in it's the right way you end up feeling like I did something wrong I'm bad and then that starts a reaction of mind so that you get you come down then you feel guilt I must be bad I should have done something else why didn't I do the practices that would have allowed me to stay there rather than the thing that's short-term because you see your predicament what happens is that the the opportunity for the immediate gratification it's like What's called the in the psychology the choice of the the little candy bar

now or the big candy bar later and with little children they'll always grab for the little candy bar now because they want what they can get now they don't they don't have any delay of gratification and spiritual practices compared to having sex or compared to taking Coke or something is more like delayed gratification versus immediate gratification so when you start to stand back and see your predicament and see what you're doing there is a way from a spiritual perspective in which you begin with that slight bit of awareness to extricate yourself from the chain of

reactivity that we're talking about the chain of reactivity that goes from I'm feeling this hunger and then I'll go for the gratification and then ah and then the coming down and then oh [ __ ] and then I should have done it the other way and then I'm bad and there's a whole chain of thoughts that go on every one of those is just keeping the whole process going and as you develop the spaciousness you start to look at where you can intervene in the process of the sequence that goes on as the awareness gets

deeper you intervene at different places in the sequence for example the yearning the hunger starts and like for me for example I can I've had strong addictions to food so that when I am feeling unloved I'll eat and I'll get fat it's a pattern and then I'll hate myself loathing because of my body and so on and I'll go through it now I understand the psychodynamics of that at one level but let's take it from this point of view of the mind for a moment the first place I began to intervene was when menendra of

my meditation teacher said ramdas don't you see that it's just old Karma running off and I began to break in at the point that after I had eaten too much to reduce my anxiety because my mother fed me food when I was upset and I learned that pattern and all that stuff I start to instead of going into I'm no good and revulsion and all the sequence I break the chain at that point and then I just go back into my spiritual practices okay instead of carrying out that whole sequence I I shortcut there as

the witness gets stronger you start to go back in the chain further and further until as the dis the separateness is starting to come and the feeling of hunger and as you're about to eat you start to notice the fact that you're about to do that and you your mind anticipates the whole sequence and you in a sense begin to see The Emptiness of the form you're about to take and for generally when people come to me with addictions I'm inclined to say start doing spiritual practices start doing the studies that will allow you to

see yourself in a new way that will allow you to understand what that hunger is you're feeding in a new way to just get a little different perspective on it don't worry about the addiction it will fall away when it will fall away and when you do it again just notice it and the one the line I always used how poignant I am how poignant The Human Condition You know I'm so gentle with myself and what I have watched is the patterns of my obsessions and addictions have changed over time there's no doubt about that

and yet I didn't deal with them directly head on for the most part because what you see is and this is something that I'm sure I I create a lot of waves in many people including people that I love very dearly that I'm close to I see that a lot of the programs to deal with addiction end up creating a new addiction to being not addicted that is as bad as the addiction itself that I mean when you meet somebody that says I haven't smoked in three years two months ten days and four hours you

realize that their mind is as stuck as their mind was stuck in smoking maybe they won't die of cancer but they'll probably die of uptightness I mean I I'm being a little facetious but in general I'm saying that dealing with things that are which you're caught in the minute you start to stop them you invest them in a way and so my suggestion is that you just keep cultivating the practices and every time you don't see when I if I get up in the morning and I got up and I decided to stay in the

dream state and not get up to do my sitting that could start a whole sequence of you're no good you'll never get to God but in the time I'm saying you're no good you never get to God I could have been doing mantra and when I realized and I began to sit in meditation and watch the sequence of my behavior I saw that all my recriminations didn't help anything particularly they weren't really functional except trying to make me feel comfortable with myself and the better thing would be the minute I notice that I've lost it

or I've gotten caught or I'm stuck or I just started to do something just pick up a holy book do a mantra think of maharaji whatever sing a song I mean I'll start driving to town and I'm going to give a lecture and I start to get uptight okay oh my god do I know what I'm going to talk about you know and it's all it's a neurotic pattern I know it from years back it's my I mean I can give you a whole psychodynamic storyline about what that's about I look at it I think

ah there it is at that moment I started SRI Guru charanas and six minutes later I'm in a different space than I was before now you could say from a psychological that's denial and you should work with that but the fact is that thus far what's happening is it's getting less and less and I'm able to hang in here now with very little of that old anxiety that used to be crippling it used to be crippling I've worked with some of it but psychologically but a lot of it is just it's become uninteresting just become

an interesting and I just flip gears immediately I flip gears because the minute you get lost in identification with your personality to the exclusion of identification with your soul right that's what's happened you've lost it you've lost it and there are a thousand times each day you lose it and if you get caught in your soul to the exclusion of your personality you lost it equally as much and that's the balance of us as human beings hello I'm Mark animator of after school I hope you enjoyed this inspiring message from ramdas who is one of

my favorite speakers to illustrate the love serve remember Foundation carries on the teachings of ramdas through online courses Retreats books meditation music and more you can support ramdas's Timeless teachings and spiritual practices through a donation at romdas.org thank you [Music]