Снять с себя зависимости с помощью кармы (Феникс, 2014), занятие 2

[Speaker 1]
We're going to do an addiction hunting meditation. Where are we hunting? In your own self, right?

Whose addiction are we hunting? Your own, okay? Like, I'm going to do mine.

I'm not doing yours. You don't have to do mine. I'm good at it, at hunting it.

And we'll do a short addiction hunting meditation. It's good if you have in mind your own personal addiction before we start talking about the Wheel of Life and how to cut off your addictions, okay? Everybody in this room has addictions, unless you are a divine angel in disguise.

I'm not. All of you might be. But if you're not, then you definitely have some addiction, okay?

And I don't mean that you should think that you're a bad person, okay? You are. But, no, just kidding.

I'm just kidding, I'm just kidding. But we all have addictions. And if you can locate your addiction and work on it, you'll be ten times happier than you are now.

In six months, you could be ten times happier than you are now, if you can locate your addiction, okay? So we're going to do a little addiction locating meditation, okay? So, please sit up straight.

Feet on the floor is fine, okay? If it's more comfortable for you. If that's how you grew up, it probably makes more sense.

Otherwise, the addiction hunting meditation will become what kind of meditation? Knee hurting meditation. And you will focus on your knees, okay?

So sit up straight.

[Speaker 2]
Relax your forehead. Unwrinkle your forehead. Relax the corners of your mouth and your lips.

Try not to move. Try not to sniffle. Hopefully your cell phone's turned off.

If not, just ignore it. Let the eyelids drop.

[Speaker 1]
Don't even have the amount of muscle tension that requires your eyelids to be up, but let go of those muscles.

[Speaker 2]
Tuck in your tummy slightly. Relax your fingers. Drop your shoulders.

Bring the shoulder blades together in the back slightly. Puff out your chest. And then please come to your breath.

Start watching your breath. Don't try to control it. Just relax and watch your breath.

We'll stay watching our breath for a little bit.

[Speaker 1]
If you think of something else, just gently come back. Don't stir up your mind.

[Speaker 2]
Try to focus on the breath. Lightly. Gently.

Now we're not going to go looking for an addiction in the way you might think.

[Speaker 1]
We're going to go looking for the footprint of the addiction rather than trying to see the addiction. So the third quality of an addiction is that it disturbs you. It makes your life unhappy.

And so that's like the footprint of an addiction is some kind of disturbance in your life. You feel upset or you feel off balance or not quite right. And so what I'd like you to do, and I'll do it also, and it's worked for me in the past during addiction hunting meditations, is to look for the footprint of an addiction, which is some kind of disturbance in your happiness in the last two or three days.

So please go back over the last two or three days. If you can't remember how you were feeling or what you were thinking, try to remember the places you were. I was in my car going to Cape Verde.

I was in the Barnes & Nobles in Flagstaff. I just got back from Giant Coffee on MacDowell. Remember where you were and then take your memory back there and examine your state of mind in that place.

And try to remember a period of five or ten minutes when you felt a little bit disturbed, like something threw you off balance emotionally. For me, it's very commonly an email I get. Usually people don't email me until there's a problem.

And I've learned not to look at emails just before I go to bed, for example. So try to go back over the last two or three days and remember an incident where you felt a little off balance, angry, jealous, hurt. And then we're going to track that to an addiction.

[Speaker 2]
So I'll give you a few minutes on that. Okay, now try to see if that off balance feeling or the feeling a little bit upset might have its roots in some kind of addiction that you have.

[Speaker 1]
So, I don't know, in my case, if I got emails about some problem in one of our organizations, then if I don't have an addiction, then I'll just sort of happily deal with it. But if I do have an addiction, let's say to people listening to me or something like that, authority, then that thing would make me upset or throw me off balance for a few minutes. So try to examine the incident where you got slightly off balance or upset and see if at the base of that there might be some addiction that you have, some kind of craving or attachment to something under there.

For example, if you take a person who's addicted to alcohol and you refuse them alcohol, if they're about to reach for a drink and you try to stand between them and the alcohol, they get very angry. Or if I'm addicted to pastries and I'm about to bite into a pastry and someone grabs it out of my hand, I get very upset. So getting upset, getting thrown off balance, is a sign that we might have some kind of attachment or addiction.

So see if you can find it. See if you can go back through incidents where you were a little upset in the last few days and attach it to a possible addiction, and possibly one that you've had for a while and you didn't know or you didn't recognize.

[Speaker 2]
Please come back to your breath. Watch your breath quietly. Stay on your breath.

Don't come up. Stay on your breath for about three breaths, and then slowly open your eyes. Good.

[Speaker 1]
If you want to, you can take a stretch. That's just so you can keep in mind for the rest of today an addiction that you might have. Okay?

So keep your mind on it as we talk. Keep your mind on that addiction.