Mohanji’s answers about addiction
Addictions start with a thought. For example before you start drinking, you think you would like to have a beer. And before the thought comes up there is an inclination which provokes the thought. Thought is born out of that inclination. Look, I never think I should have a drink because I don’t have the inclination to drink alcohol. What comes before the inclination? Karma! So the root is karma, which you carried forward from another life, because you wanted to experience alcohol. So the seed for drinking alcohol is already in your causal layer. When the environment is right this seed will sprout. This seed is the vasana (tendency) and when there is vasana then you get the thought. You might suppress the thought but that does not mean it has disappeared. So in specific situations the thought becomes a word, and you might say “I want a beer.” Then someone gets you a beer and it becomes an action.
Addictions happen when the subconscious takes over: conscious mind engages in doing action, and then the subconscious takes over. Then it reproduces it, as a faithful servant. And then when you reproduce it over a period of time it becomes your habit and then part of your character. How to come out of it? Reverse the process! Take it out of the subconscious and bring it into your full awareness and consciousness. And when you are in with that drink or cigarette with full attention, every drink you feel 100%, and then this habit drops slowly but surely. That’s the only way.
Thus source of addictions is inertia and you can listen more in the podcast Inertia.
Overcoming addictions or bad habits
Q: How to overcome addictions? Being aware is very difficult in the heat of the moment.
Mohanji: First of all make a diagnosis that you have an addiction and it is binding you. It can be any binding – a person, material, any binding is not conducive for liberation, whether it is a person, a situation, ownership of materials, ownership of people… Whatever bindings we have, they are all handicaps. They are all addictions. They are not only material addictions. So fundamentally, we need a diagnosis i.e. awareness that there is something which is binding you.
Next, whenever you cannot handle something yourself, approach somebody who can help you; someone who has already gone through it, who has experience, who can guide you to get out of it. Whenever a situation happens in our life, for example, you have to handle tax payment and you do not know how to do it, you have to talk to a tax consultant to handle it correctly. Similarly, when you have an ailment, you need to talk to a doctor. When you have an addiction, a compelling behaviour which you cannot change, you need to connect to an expert. That is the best approach. We have experts, counsellors, guides who can take people out of various situations. You can choose one who is time-tested or with good recommendations. That’s the way to come out of addictions. Usually the same mindset which started an addiction cannot get one out of it because the same frequency which created something cannot be used to uncreate it. You need a slightly higher frequency to uncreate it. That is exactly how it has to happen.
When you know there is an addiction, there is always something which has created it. So go to the root cause. It could be boredom or some kind of disappointment, something which could have created it. Just an environment would have also given you that. Because you live in a particular environment and it was ok to have this addiction. So anything could have given you this addiction. AWARENESS is the right thing to overcome addictions. When you say ‘awareness’, first awareness is that your duration in this world is limited. You know very well, if you live 80 years, it is only 29200 days out of which we sleep, eat, wash, wash clothes, fight with people (laughs), we have our moods, then we watch television, entertainment, for all these put together we have only 29200 days, if we live 80 years. That awareness is the fundamental.
In that time what would you like to do properly?
This is the most important thing. Forget about destiny, forget about karma, forget about everything. You have a body, you have a situation, a life, environment, a particular nationality, a house to stay, food to eat, whatever. What do you want to do now? When you are clear about this, stop complaining. No self-pity at all. That’s a very, very bad thing which paralyses you. Don’t look for somebody’s sympathy or approval. That is also going to paralyse you. You are an individual. You are born alone. You will die alone. Nobody will be there for your birth or death. Your parents were there at the time of birth, somebody will take you to the graveyard. That’s about it. But you are taking birth alone and you are dying alone.
Q: In this boundary of time, what would you like to express? What do you really want to do in this world?
If you have clarity about that, you will automatically go beyond all your habits and addictions because mind is often on a repetitive mode. Mind is just following a repetitive pattern.
When you are conscious about your life and the duration of life and that this body has been leased from earth and body is made out of elements, like earth, water, air, fire, then you understand you do not have control over your body – it is changing, mind is changing, everything is changing. You have no grip on any of these things. When you are very clear about all this, you will understand, ”What am I supposed to do here? What is my core nature?”
Once you come to terms with your core nature, you can get out of any binding habit. This is not a problem. Otherwise, mind will say, “Ok, you are used to coffee, tea, smoking, just do it, what’s the problem?” But then we understand this is not what we want to do in our life and we start being detached from being any of these things.
So, sense of purpose, CLARITY OF PURPOSE, removes everything unwanted from our system. Gain clarity. Clarity should be individualistic, not that somebody tells you what you should do. That is not yours. Even if I tell you what you should do, that’s not yours. You should gain it from the inside. “What am I supposed to do in this life? What do I really want to do with this incarnation which has a duration, time limit?” Then it will give you the clarity of purpose. Think about it. Contemplate on it and make your purpose very clear. Purpose means the highest purpose you want to achieve in this life. Not just eat, drink, sleep and die. That clarity will give you a lot of strength, determination and then you can break any boundary in your life, especially habits.
Also, here is a good video where Mohanji’s Acharya Laurie shares her Journey to conscious recovery from addiction and depression
Compiled by Team Mohanji