WEEKLY MEDITATION
Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.
-Mahatma Gandhi
Our addictions develop as an attempt at finding harmony. Addictive patterns represent a rigid dependence on substances or behaviors that seem to soothe our emotional experience of life. There is a paradox here, of course, because addictions actually exacerbate the very contours of our emotional experience that we are trying to smooth out, but at their core, they represent an unconscious attempt to heal. As our addictions deepen, what they require of us to keep them going increases, too. This often leads to patterns of desperation that pull us farther and farther away from our ability to navigate life consciously, and we may regularly have to engage in actions that run counter to the way we would otherwise choose to live our lives. And when we are living with this kind in disharmony, we pay an emotional toll that must be answered, further, through the mechanics of the very behaviors that caused them in the first place. As we recover, even if we begin with an emphasis on abstinence, we will also have to address the inconsistencies that lie between our thoughts, words, and actions if we are to fully address the basis of our addictive patterns.
