Kicking the habit

The one addiction that gives rise to all the others

The other morning, somebody left the latch off the gateless gate, and my wild, undisciplined mind went roaming far and wide with zesty abandon.

It wasn’t the first time. It also wasn’t the outcome I’d been hoping for.

That wild romp didn’t happen all at once, of course. At first my mind paused and sniffed the air inquisitively, then took just a couple of tentative steps, (such tiny reasonable steps), away from What Is.

But that’s always how it starts, isn’t it…

Invitation. (Photo by Sharon Waldron)

Here’s how it happened.

As is my usual habit, while still lying in bed in the early hours of the morning, I began my day by resting in silent presence.

Some mornings, that’s an effortless joy. Pure velvet communion. Other mornings, not so much.

On this particular morning, silent presence lasted around 9 seconds, before I seamlessly slid into planning what to cook for dinner. Spaghetti perhaps.

My consciousness then glided out to examine the contents of my pantry. Ah yes. The box of spaghetti, there it is.

So far, so normal. A teeny step out of presence and into future dinner prep. Followed by a very short trip, no more than a dozen feet or so, into the pantry.

No biggie, right?

But here’s where it gets alittle bonkers. Here’s where the mind bolts and dashes off to chase its imaginary squirrels.

Because, by first accepting the invitation to leave the now moment—the only time that actually exists—and then to leave my physical reality and go adventuring somewhere else? I left myself wide open to the beguiling influence of the egoic veil. Uh oh. Fasten that seatbelt, kiddo, and settle in for the ride. Because we’ve just bought our self a ticket.

My mental search for spaghetti quickly catapulted me 70-odd years into the past: Straight to that classic April fools hoax pulled by the BBC, way back in the 1950s. The one where they reported, straight-faced, on the European spaghetti harvest, showing footage of happy peasants bringing in the springtime crop from their pasta tree orchards.

(Most viewers believed it.)

(Some things never change.)

Thoroughly tickled by the memory of that elaborate visual spoof, my mind then quickly shuffled its rolodex of other great sight gags, playfully leapfrogging into to yet another priceless bit of antique comedy footage—namely the one where a house front falls on Buster Keaton.

Um. Ok.

So in a span of maybe 2 minutes, tops, I went from silent presence…to silent movie. Seriously.

Hold the popcorn.

Sound familiar? We think it’s normal because we all do it.

It’s not normal. It’s completely insane—not to mention a sad misuse of our inherent creative divinity.

Our deepest addiction

It’s a subtle thing, this mental propensity for random adventuring. It entices us to voluntarily abandon the only place (HERE), and the only time (NOW), and instead use our truly awesome divine capabilities to go randomly romping through time and space…everywhere, it seems, except the current moment.

At first glance it doesn’t seem like much of an issue, does it. But in my view, this is our deepest and most serious addiction; this hypnotic willingness to abandon ourselves and allow the mind to drag us wherever it wants.

Whether due to upset, or boredom, or (in my recent example) sheer entertainment value, we eagerly buy our ticket and line up for the ride. Over and over again. Even though (some of us) really don’t want to. Still we comply, because it feels like the decision is out of our hands, right? And that’s the addiction bit. When you’re in it, it just happens, and it doesn’t feel like there’s a choice.

But hey. What’s the big deal? I mean really. It’s all just a tiny misuse of imagination, right?

Not really. Abandonment of our present-moment self cuts us off from All That Is.

Think about it: How can we know ourselves as we really are in truth, if we can’t even manage 15 minutes authentically showing up in the space where we actually are? Without the use of external spiritual practices, I mean.

When we’re unable to simply be where we are…we are automatically opened up to the whole false world of grievous misperception, simply because we don’t know who and what (and where) we are:

Belief in a separate self. Belief in lack, and therefore the need to compete for scarce resources. The need for enemy consciousness to protect ourselves in an unsafe world. And the countless addictions we then adopt, to mitigate the pain of our crazytown existence.

It wouldn’t be much of an exaggeration to say the entire world made of fear—the world currently most visibly manifest in our lives—rests on our seeming inability (and/or unwillingness) to stop our minds from making that random series of leaps from silent presence to Buster Keaton.

Willpower and showing up

If you’ve ever danced with addiction, you’ll know that freeing yourself of its influence has little to do with willpower.

Oh sure. On good days, willpower works, and you temporarily win. But the addictive root is untouched by that victory. So when the bad days inevitably roll around, you find you’re helpless once again in the face of its internal persuasion.

A Course in Miracles comments that we’re ‘too tolerant of our minds wandering.’

But what is the nature of that tolerance? Are we just lazy? I doubt it. And I also doubt that’s what The Course is actually saying. I’m confident that the seeming power of our hypnotic, narcotic, psychotic addiction is well known, and fully understood by All That Is.

Mental discipline and regular spiritual practices are undoubtedly what The Course is recommending there. And they’re incredibly necessary of course.

Because we’re the ones who have to not only show willingness, but also demonstrate through our persistent efforts to make saner choices, that we really do mean it when we say we want a healed mind.

That’s just how the universe works: Take the steps in the direction you want to go, so you can be lifted the rest of the way.

It’s not enough to just want freedom, in other words. Yet it seems to me it’s also not enough to just practice presence, or corrected perception, or mental discipline…although all of those things are definite prerequisite actions.

There’s one more element: A house-sized wall of pure Grace needs to fall on you, so that you’re actually able to free yourself. And that bit isn’t up to you.

Think of it this way: Your absolutely necessary practices and mental discipline can be likened to Buster Keaton moving himself into the correct position…so when that house front of Grace unexpectedly falls? You’re standing in the open window, admiring your newly spacious, uncluttered vista.

As opposed to, say, just viewing the whole event taking place, from the cafe across the street. Very different thing.

The emperor’s wardrobe

In truth, that egoic veil has never had any real power to control a divine being like you or me.

And indeed, the comparatively few individuals who have shed its sticky cocoon, always look back after freeing themselves, to discover there’s never been anything holding them. But that realization only comes after they’ve shaken off the veil’s hypnotic influence. After they’ve returned to sanity, in other words.

So in one sense, you could say the egoic veil has always been an emperor without clothing. It’s completely powerless, and it always has been.

(But that’s obviously not been our experience of it.)

I really don’t intend to paint the veil as an enemy, by the way. I suspect the veil itself is little more than a neutral series of suggestions, held in place electromagnetically.

(I have no idea how the above statement would be accomplished, by the way, or by whom. I’m just using deductive reasoning here. After all, this is an electromagnetic planet; all beings living upon it function electromagnetically; and thoughts themselves carry—or are possibly made out of—electromagnetic charge. So this presumed electromagnetic characteristic of the veil, if it exists, could explain the incredible persistence of an essentially imaginary egoic structure…even among those who would dearly love to be free of it. Because, if by inducing hypnotic suggestion, the veil somehow emits an electromagnetic frequency that entrains your mind, body and energetic field into its sticky way of seeing and being? The best will in the world is not gonna be enough to resist its influence on those bad days.)

But this is precisely why our current crazy transitional times are such a profound gift to humanity. Because the sacred high frequencies of pure divine love are becoming ever more available to all who are doing their best to position themselves beneath the open window.

And the egoic veil, while still giving the appearance of being clad in its usual finery, is, in a very practical sense, completely hollow now. It’s thoroughly unsupported by the beautiful high frequencies that are flooding this planet. So it’s more powerless than ever before.

Not just as a post-awakening-to-truth kind of realization. But a here and now, boots-on-the-ground kind of situation.

Truly: Nobody’s home in Veilville.

So this is where those practices and disciplines come in. They help us notice—in the moment when it counts—that we can choose to sidestep that same old convincing invitation to buy the ticket and step onto the ride.

We can say no thanks!, not once or twice, but over and over. On good days and bad, by relentlessly showing up in steady practice, we gradually create a reserve of mental strength…even if we’re not always having a good enough day to make that no thanks! stick.

In my experience, there’s little-to-no electromagnetic pushback coming from the veil itself, these days. Whenever we consciously decline to take the bait—on those good days, in other words—I’ve found it’s as if the veil simply mumbles, Oh all right then…and shuffles away, dragging its tattered remnants behind it.

So it makes great sense to use those good days wisely, when we have them. Right? Pure velvet communion, here we come.

And someday soon, who knows.

Maybe there won’t be any more bad days to be had.