WEEKLY MEDITATION
Incredible change happens in your life when you decide to take control of what you do have power over instead of craving control over what you don’t.
-Steve Maraboli
Within the mechanics of active addiction lies a craving for control on two important levels. Often the first to get our attention is our desire to control the substances or behaviors that have become problems and obsessions for us. This problem is exacerbated if there is physiological dependence involved. But the deeper level lies within the less obvious craving we have to control our conscious experience of life. Even if we can break our dependence on the object of our addictions, we are left with the problem of learning how to navigate reality as it is, without trying to manipulate our experience of it using exterior means. If we can learn to ultimately accept our internal emotional experience without having to hide from it, not only do we stand the best chance of learning what we actually need to do to change it, but we also diminish the underlying need for our addictions in the first place. We will never have the power to wrest a continuously painless experience out of life. But we do have the power to develop the skills to consciously navigate our full emotional landscape in meaningful and functional ways.
