Compulsive activities are psychological
ways of trying to cope with unbearable memories and emotions. Sometimes people
have been through psychotherapy and recovered some of their memories, yet still
continue compulsive behavior, such as, for instance, alcoholism. This is a
puzzling issue. It points out that if we don’t have the awareness of God, we
have no place to go with these memories. They are no longer repressed; we are
aware of them consciously, but we cannot loose them; we don’t know what to do with
them, and they are still disturbing us.
Often, in psychoanalytic therapies, it is
recommended that we express our rage against the people, even punch them in the
nose, to feel better. The idea is that what. we have kept bottled up, we let
out and hurt those people back, and then we will feel better.
This is not forgiveness,
but a perpetuation of the conflict
There is no solution without God.
Cigarette smoking may be viewed as a form
of positive and negative worshiping. A smoker loves to smoke and hates it at
the same time. Cigarette smoking indicates a mode of being-in-the-world that is
centered around the concern for comfort. The cigarette smoker smokes when he is
tense in order to relax, and he smokes when he is relaxing in order to enjoy
feeling comfortable. He smokes when he feels bad and he smokes when he feels
good. His concern is with his feelings, with his personal comfort. Existential
worshiping introduces a shift of emphasis from personal comfort to
participating in Existence as a beneficial presence.
Here feeling good becomes, so to speak, a
by-product of being good rather than an artificial state induced by cigarettes,
drugs, alcohol or other means (i.e. obesity, compulsive eating).
It is important to know that our concerns determine the quality of our presence
in the world, and thus shape our individual destinies.
The cigarette smoker smokes when he feels
bad and he smokes when he feels good. No matter how he feels, he finds it
necessary to smoke because he lives with his consciousness centered around the
way he feels. Everybody takes it for granted that one ought to feel comfortable
and it seems natural to want to feel comfortable. As a matter of fact, feeling
comfortable is considered a sign of health. Feeling good and being healthy are
intimately associated in our minds. Therefore, everyone is mostly concerned
with feeling good, and some people seek good feelings one way and others
another way. But this, of course, is an error, and the more we accept the
assumption that feeling good is a proof of being healthy, the more we will be
susceptible to using various kinds of auxiliary means for endeavoring to
maintain a sense of well-being.
The cigarette is the symbol and the means
through which the smoker keeps confirming himself and his own sense of
well-being. But when a patient enters into treatment, he discovers that feeling
good is not synonymous with being healthy, even though being healthy doesn’t
mean that one feels bad. But as the mind becomes liberated from the
overwhelming concern with its own well-being, it begins to lose interest in the
various supportive means designed to assure its own well-being. To be healthy,
man must be concerned with being good rather than with just feeling good. Now,
this doesn’t make much sense in the beginning, but when an individual can see
that the quest for feeling good is really destructive to health, then he
reaches the point of seeking another answer. He begins to understand that in
order to feel good he has to be healthy first. To this end he must find the
loving mode of being-in-the-world. Then he will lose interest in cigarette smoking,
or in drinking, or in overeating, or in whatever he uses to confirm himself.
Suppose you were attached to a habit of
smoking and suddenly you cannot smoke. It is forbidden. Did you see what
compulsions, what suffering people go through when their attachment to such a
silly little thing, a piece of paper, tobacco and blowing smoke, is taken away?
They cannot live without it, right? That is attachment. Whatever we attach to
is our God. The Bible warns us all the time against idolatry. What is an idol?
It is something that becomes unduly important to us, giving us the illusion
that our life depends on it, that we couldn’t survive without it.
However, it is possible to lose interest
in smoking, because smoking is just an experience, i.e., a dream. It is
possible to lose interest in excitement, in contending; it is possible to
gradually disassociate ourselves from our experiences and reach a point where events come to our attention but not into our
experience.
The seventh principle of Metapsychiatry states: "Nothing comes into experience uninvited."
When we are advanced on the spiritual path, we reach a point where we have
stopped inviting experiences. Events come to our attention only and we respond to
them dispassionately with intelligence and love. For instance, someone I know was
stung by a bee and the place began to swell up and become red and clearly very painful.
But this individual observed the process without fear, quite dispassionately, and
didn’t say, "I
got stung by a bee." Instead, she thought to herself, "This
is an event of a bee sting, and tissue
reaction seems to be taking place. It seems to be happening, but right now I am
interested in looking after my friends and my other activities. I am an
expression of Divine Love-Intelligence. That is my life."
Thomas
Hora http://www.pagl.org/main-landing/the-works/
Our concerns determine the quality of our presence in the world,
and thus shape our individual destinies. Thomas Hora
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