I used to smoke cigarettes, and later I used snuff in an effort to keep the nicotine flowing without harming my lungs. I started smoking when I was 14 and quit nicotine altogether when I was 32.

I don't celebrate each passing day or week, and I don't congratulate myself for being so strong or having such willpower that I don't return to tobacco. It has no power over me anymore. There's no monkey on my back.

Alcohol or illegal drug addiction has never been an issue with me. Every addict has their own "preferred" substance, and mine has been nicotine. Many people have multiple monkeys, and some monkeys are more insistent than others.

The information you read here can help anyone to overcome any addiction, no matter which substance. Remember: nicotine is one of the two or three most addictive substances there are, especially when its addictive nature is (deliberately) enhanced by the tobacco companies.

I know that many recovering addicts use cigarettes as "self-medication" so they can lean on some other (legal) substance instead of the one their body really wants. I understand that practice, and I don't look down on it. But I know how a person can walk away from an addiction and never look back.

It hurts, though--emotionally. As an addict, don't you really know, somewhere inside yourself (whether you admit it to someone else or not), that your addiction is really an attempt to fulfill some aching emotional need that you first developed long before you touched the substance that now controls you?

To overcome the addiction, you must allow the withdrawal that you so greatly fear to have its way with you.

In doing so, you will experience many unpleasant feelings: the feelings that your addictive substance has been "putting a cork in," or "putting a happy face on." Putting a happy face on something doesn't make it go away. It just makes it fester underneath the surface.

In my own experience, I realized that tobacco (and whatever other substances were enhancing its addictive quality) was keeping me from experiencing emotions on a level that was necessary, but which I had never been comfortable feeling. I was taught as a child that certain emotions--and certain degrees of feeling emotion, like exuberance, jubilation, and despair--were not okay to show and therefore to feel.

I was punished for crying as a child. Well, guess what? We're made in such a way that crying is our release valve! We cry (among other reasons) so we can release negativity at the time we encounter it. We do this so that the negativity doesn't become trapped within us.

We all know what happens when negativity gets trapped within us, don't we? We experience such unpleasant feelings as fear, anxiety, doubt, depression, despair, anger, rage, hopelessness, loneliness, frustration, and all the other unpleasantries that tell us we're not doing it right!

Once you realize that your addiction is hindering you from feeling good emotions in the way that you are made to feel good emotions--and that it is a roadblock on the spiritual path that you might be traveling--you will find the strength inside yourself to take control of it.

An addiction is a choice of giving control of yourself to an external power--and not a benevolent one, but one that will eventually destroy your body and your relationships. Think about it: what else do you have but your body and your relationships?

The choice to feel the loss of the addictive substance, and to feel the upsurge of negative emotions within yourself that happens as a result, is the choice of wielding your God-given power over yourself instead of willingly giving it up to some outside power that will result in your destruction.

You don't get addicted to things that are good for you, do you? Good things let you be free to develop yourself instead of limiting you or hindering your growth. By their nature, good things cannot be addictive! Good things make you better and stronger.

Nevertheless, it is supremely important that you not look down on yourself if you simply don't yet have the strength to break this external control over your life. You might be so used to submitting yourself to harm that you don't even know what first baby steps to take in the direction of becoming powerful over your own life.

Maybe you were taught or shown as a child that life is supposed to hurt. That was wrong, but it's okay now. Be patient with yourself! Life is supposed to be joyful, and you can get there from here if you have patience and determination.

If you put in your mind the image of yourself as a free person, out from under the weight of the monkey, and focus on that image, you will make great leaps toward becoming that person. It's not the power of the addiction that matters. It's the power of you that matters! Looking to the addiction and calling it "my addiction" (or continuing to label yourself an "addict") will only give it more power.

The funny thing is, though, that the addiction really has no power. Remember, its role in your life is to cover up some emotional hole that you got a long time ago. For me, I was about four years old when I experienced the emotional wounds that eventually became addiction for me.

In my case, it took me two days to break nicotine's power over me. Fortunately, I was clearing trees with an axe and chainsaw during those two days, so I could physically let loose the rage that came out during the intense withdrawal. In the process, I became aware of a small and enraged part of myself that I had put into a mental compartment and shut out of my awareness when I was about eight. During those two days of hacking up limbs, I welcomed that perfectly legitimate part of me back into my life and it "fused" with me again. I'm now in control of this strong emotion that I couldn't handle when I was eight, and it's made me a better and stronger person.

An addiction--that is, the withdrawal that you experience when you don't give in to the addiction--seems like a huge monster. In reality, though, you're looking at the shadow of a mouse. When projected on the wall of a dark room, it can seem much bigger and more dangerous than it is. But you can step on it or scare it away when you realize your own power and use it!

I learned all these things you're reading here while I was shaking loose the binds of nicotine. I learned all these things by watching, patiently, the emotions and memories and mental images that passed through my mind as my body was fighting with me to get its fix.

Watching what goes on in your mind, without judgment, is among the best ways to understand yourself and, eventually, to experience spiritual breakthroughs that will bring you tears of joy and jubilation in moments alone with yourself.

Maybe something really bad happened to you when you were little. Maybe somebody did sickening things to you for a long time. Maybe you don't know what happened because you were too small or you just don't remember.

Patiently riding the wave of withdrawal is one way to uncover these old, festering emotions and memories. Uncovering these things is the only way that you can overcome their influence on your present life--and prevent their effects from being passed on to your children. You have the power to do it. You just don't realize it yet!

You are a sovereign nation in a world of sovereign nations. Your value is equal to all others'. Wake up, realize it, and take your own life into your own hands! You are more powerful than you've imagined until now.

Until now.

 

Religion is exoteric and spirituality is esoteric.

Religion focuses on the outer person (appearance or expression), while spirituality focuses on the inner person (thoughts, feelings, and so on).

Religion is form and spirituality is substance.

Religion copies and imitates, but spirituality discovers and originates.

Religion fills; spirituality overflows.

Religion brings routine. Spirituality brings freedom.

Religion values ceremony. Spirituality values meaning.

Religion imposes rules. Spirituality declares universal truths.

Religion says people are bad. Spirituality says they are good.

Religion empowers others. Spirituality empowers oneself.

Religion is the painting. Spirituality is the flower.

Religion looks to the past. Spirituality looks to the future.

Religion takes discipline. Spirituality takes curiosity.

Religion burdens. Spirituality lightens.

Religion persuades. Spirituality explains.

Religion fears. Spirituality seeks.

Religion defines. Spirituality expresses.

Religion teaches longsuffering. Spirituality teaches patience.

Religion takes away. Spirituality affirms.

Religion limits. Spirituality expands.

Religion requires the acceptance of a belief in place of experience; Spirituality requires the release of beliefs that hinder experience.

Religion is a bandage. Spirituality is the scalpel.

Religion obscures. Spirituality uncovers.

Religion is the haven of the fearful. Spirituality is the playground of the joyful.

Religion dulls. Spirituality sharpens.

Religion hushes. Spirituality laughs.

Religion cries tears of guilt and shame. Spirituality cries tears of release and joy.

I am spiritual.  Are you?

Consider these two statements:

1. There is much wrong with the world.
2. The world is perfect as it is.

Which one is true? Are they mutually exclusive, or is there common ground between them? Many people consider one to be true and the other to be false, or one to be true at one time in their life and another to be true at another time (maybe even in the same day!). Few people consider that both might be accurate descriptions of Reality—and not contradictory statements.

One hallmark of Truth is that different aspects of it can appear to be contradictory. This tendency is an example of the paradoxical nature of Life. In reality, both of the statements above are true. Here’s why:

1. There is much wrong with the world.

Who can deny that there are problems in the world that can be solved, and indeed must be solved for life to improve? Who can deny that it is possible for present circumstances to be better at some point in the future? To deny such ideas is to deny Reality, for all of Reality is in a continual state of improvement, despite some appearances.

The present state of things might be the best possible outcome in this moment, but is it the best outcome a year, a month, or a day from now? Some would say that a worse state of affairs in the future is possible. Whether this statement is true or not (and it isn’t, ultimately), saying such a thing only reinforces the fact that there is much wrong in the world. But what does this mean?

Humans are able to perceive, in their minds, a state of things that is better than the present state. Having this vision, they are then able to cause events to take place that bring into being the new and improved state that they envisioned. In fact, this is the primary human activity: making things better.

But why are things not perfect to begin with? Why is there some wrongness or imperfection in the world that we humans notice and begin to correct in whatever way we are able?

Things are in a constant state of change. There was a time when there were no people to observe Reality and say, “This could be better.” Back then, you couldn’t really say that there was “much wrong with the world.” The idea of wrongness is a uniquely human idea. Other creatures don’t observe, analyze, and evaluate (or judge)—and then create new circumstances for themselves. Not like humans are able to, anyway.

As Will Shakespeare said, “There is nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” Things are the way they are, for now, and they’re getting better as humans identify problems and solve them. So, why are they the way they are, and why are they improving? That’s the answer to the second statement.

2. The world is perfect as it is.

There is nothing constant in this Universe except change. It’s amazing that an individual bag of viscera and bone can come to make such a grand statement, isn’t it? I’m not tooting my own horn; many people much smarter and stronger than I have walked the Earth. How amazing is it, for example, that someone figured out that space and time are of the same essence, and that the apparent force of gravity is actually the movement of objects through a region of space-time that has been curved by the presence of a lot of concentrated matter? (That was Albert Einstein.)

The reason that a hollow tube with hair, teeth, and limbs can discover the nature of the Universe is that he isn’t just a hollow tube or a bag of viscera and bone. Humans, like the hollow tubes below us in the hierarchy of life on Earth, are imbued with life energy. This is the thing that makes us different from the dead.

This life energy, or Consciousness, is responsible for the Universe’s present state now and every point in time going backward to what we would think of as the moment of creation. We are in the midst of a grand developmental scheme here, and we are its center, believe it or not!

Humans, as the most-developed form of life on this planet, are at the very cutting edge of the development of Consciousness in the physical world, as far as we know. All That Is, including living and non-living matter, is constantly in motion and constantly being urged toward greater development and higher specialization by the Consciousness that underlies the Universe.

This Consciousness is supremely intelligent, loving, and good—all the qualities we desire to see in our mates and our children (except the qualities we only think are good because of our own imperfect perception). This Consciousness continually improves the state of things, through the beings It inhabits, and the present state of things is the best things have been so far.

So there’s a progression going on, from worse to better or lower to higher. Call it what you will, but there’s a Will—a Divine Will—a plan, if you will—and it will happen, no matter what you will! We live between nothing and perfection, in a constantly-improving Universe, so you can say either thing: “There is much wrong with the world” or “The world is perfect as it is.” Either way, you’re right.

Now go out and do something good in the world! That’s why you’re here: to improve yourself and, thereby, the world that the rest of us share with you.