The Lazy Yogi

The spiritual path is the path of non-addiction. Addiction implies being incomplete, unwhole, lacking. Addiction tells you that you need to add something to your self, your world, before you can be at peace. Addiction is a lie.

There are two parts to addiction. The first part is chemical. Your body physically requires and craves a certain chemical in order to maintain its feeling of normalcy. This is the kind of addiction you see with certain drugs from cigarettes to heroin. The drugs themselves are just atoms and molecules and matter, nothing evil. But when habitually used they rob you of freedom.

The second part to addiction is much more rampant. That is the mental aspect of addiction. One can become addicted to anything in the sense that it becomes habit forming. Habits are a way of living below your level of awareness. You don’t have to be present and aware, you simply let the habit take over.

This desire to revert to a level below awareness brings a certain degree of relief and happiness. Why? Because it allows you to escape the disparaging and critical mind with which we are so used to walking this earth. Addiction and habit is simply the misplaced desire to escape the prison of thought.

The thinking mind is a gift and a wonderful servant. But in this modern era it has become a terrible master. We have become victims of our thoughts and judgments rather than evolved beings graced with intelligence.

Meditation is the technology to emerge from addiction once and for all. While doctors and rehabilitation can help remove physical addiction, they do not guarantee that the patient will not relapse into old habits. The only one who can guarantee that is the individual in question.

Through meditation we come to discover a kind of spacious stillness within us, a filled contentment that is empty and yet brimming to the seams. When you discover through your own experience that you lack nothing, need nothing, and are filled with everything, what room is there for needy addiction?

Habits melt away; addictions dissolve. While previously you needed to revert to a level below thought, meditation takes you to a place above thought. You are awakened, clear, and empty. Anything that arises simply passes through you.

That is the supreme peace of the Self and the true inheritance of humanity.

Namaste, sangha. Much love :)