FREEING MYSELF: PATHWAYS 1 - 3
An addiction is a programming ( or operating instruction to your biocomputer ) that triggers uncomfortable emotional responses and excites your consciousness if the world does not fit the programmed pattern in your mind. The identifying characteristic of an addiction is that if your desire is not fulfilled, you respond emotionally in a computer-like way and automatically play out a program of anger, worry, anxiety, jealousy, fear, ect. That which you emotionally avoid is just as much an addiction as is something you desire.
FIRST PATHWAY
( I am freeing myself from security, sensation, and power addictions that make me try to forcefully
control situations in my life, and thus destroy my serenity and keep me from loving myself and others.)
~~~ As long as you have addictions, your exquisite biocomputer~your mind~will be dominated by the vain attempt to help you find happiness by manipulating the world around you into fitting your addictions. A mind dominated by addictions is not able to tune in to then finer vibrations of the surrounding people and things ~ just as a drummer who plays too loudly can keep you from hearing the violins and flutes of a symphony. Addictions are not evil or bad ~ they just cost you too much in lost perceptiveness, wisdom, effectivness, and happiness.
"Addictions" always cause unhappiness sooner or later. "Preferences" never do. When an addiction is not satisfied, you feel upset or unhappy. When an addiction is satisfied, you feel momentary pleasure, relief, or indifference. When a preference is not satisfied, you simply feel indifferent ~ it was only a preference after all.
But when it is satisfied, it adds to the texture and beauty of your life.
It is vital that you fully understand that growth lies wholly in reprogramming your automatic emotional programming~~it is not necessarily aimed at changing your external actions. You can do anything you prefer as long as you are not addicted. It is not the external circumstances that constitute your addiction~~it is only your inside emotional programming that must be changed. And the wonderful thing is that it is fully within your ability to do so~~where as up to now you may have been hopelessly trying to manipulate the outside world to conform to your addictions.
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SECOND PATHWAY
( I am discovering how my consciousness dominating addictions create my illusory version of the changing world of people and situations around me.)
~~~We see things not as they are~~but as we are. Every addiction distorts your effective processing (on both conscious and unconscious levels) of the enormous flow of information that is continually flooding in through all your sensory inputs. Your progammed addictions determine your experience of the world for they are the guides that your reticular activating system
(your ego) uses to determine which data will be suppressed and which can go into your consciousness and command full attention.
The more you live with your distorted versions of the people and things around you, the more you certain you will feel that it is the only "true" picture of the world. Thus you build up a warped picture of yourself and the people and situatins in your world. For your mind is such that whatever it believes is true produces a feedback that continually reinforces and molds your perceptions. It is only when you become free of your addictive programming that you can perceive how things really interact in your world.
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THIRD PATHWAY
( I welcome the opportunity (even if painful) that my minute-to-minute experience offers me to become aware of the addictions I must reprogram to be liberated from my robot-like emotional patterns.)
~~~How do you spot your addictions? It's easy. You just notice the desires and expectations that you use to make yourself feel upset in various life situations. By tuning in to your minute-minute stream of consciousness, you discover the addictions that make you feel worried, anxious, resentful, frustrated, afraid, angry, bored, ect.
You thus use every uncomfortable emotion as an opportunity for consciousness growth.
Everyone and everything around you is your teacher. If your washing machine won't work, you are being checked out on your ability to peacefully accept the unacceptable. If you are addicted to your appliances always working, you will suffer. If you prefer them to operate well, you will not compound your problem by superimposing your uncomfortable emotions on the here-and-now realities of repairing them.
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