WEEKLY MEDITATION
The bonds of degradation are too light to be felt until they are too strong to be broken.
-Charles Munger
The manifestation of addiction is very subtle in the beginning. Rarely does any person make a conscious decision to become addicted to something or even to engage in behavior that they assume will become problematic for them. Today’s quotation speaks to the nature of this subtle process, pointing out, also, that once the addiction has taken hold, a strong bond has been inadvertently created. This is an important point because it illuminates the difficulties inherent in finding recovery from our addictions. To successfully recover we must honor the attachment we have involuntarily created to our addictive substances or behaviors by voluntarily developing healthy strong bonds that can functionally take their place. Feeling connected and bonded is a basic emotional necessity for all human beings. And if we find that we are easily caught up in addictive patterns, it is likely a sign that we have trouble feeling naturally connected or bonded to the world around us without them. Recovery, then, must be a process that consciously seeks to meet these underlying needs if it is to truly free us from these powerful bonds of degradation.
