My Dance With Addictions*

What, exactly, is an addiction? Is it a biochemical thing, something that enters the body and inevitably causes us to have a set of responses? Are we victims of substances or cravings?

Did you know that there is a recovery center for people addicted to computer games? And that the people there go through a physical detox: sweats, tremors, vomiting...just like any other "chemical dependency." WTF??? If addictions and symptoms of withdrawal are due to the chemical leaving the body, what chemical is getting into the people from playing games?

If an addiction to a substance is only chemical, why didn't I have nicotene withdrawal after smoking three packs of cigarettes a day for a little over ten years?

How could that be? I had never tried to quit. It hadn't crossed my mind because I liked smoking. I had been working on my Inner Self intensely for awhile. I began slowly noticing an increasing desire that came from deep within me to be healthy in all ways. I started to not enjoy smoking as much, but knew I still craved the comfort of cigarettes. So I just started paying close attention to what it felt like to smoke. I knew I wasn't ready yet, didn't know if I would ever be ready to quit, I just decided to feel smoking. I remember that I actually had an increase in smoking for awhile. Again...no intention to quit, per se with all this, just an awareness of what it really felt like to inhale all that stuff in my body, feel it in my lungs. Then one morning, I woke up, and of course, wanted my wake up smoke. I panicked when I discovered I was out of cigarettes. I started to scrounge the ashtrays, looking for a butt. I remember stopping, and just saying to myself..well...shoot.. you could scrounge more, you could go to the store, or you could quit. I chose door number three.

I never got cranky (really...husband even said so, so we know I wasn't delusional). In fact, I was happy. Happy and felt light and free. I've never smoked again, never wanted to. It was never a struggle. I was done.

My drugs? After testing the waters with tons of stuff, I ended up taking lots of amphetamines every day for about a year in high school to overcome a debilitating shyness I had. I literally could not talk to people. I would try to open my mouth, but if the person in front of me wasn't a friend nothing would come out. Speed got me talking again. I ended up taking so much of it (interlaced with all sorts of other drugs) that I started to sell it to support my habit.

I wasn't sleeping, wasn't eating (part of my anorexic/bulemic phase....before they were called this) and wasn't doing too well physically. Then one morning I passed out in the shower. When I woke up, I realized that the vision of my father finding me on the floor of the shower from being so wiped out from drugs was not an appealing scenario. So I quit. I continued with other drugs for awhile, but that one was done.

Eating and alchohol were not initially that easy for me. I craved. I dieted, tried to quit drinking tons of times. It didn't work for years, until I figured out what addictions were. I have this theory that I built upon when I heard something from a wise man. He said that addictions are there because the substance triggers an archetype within us. He supported his idea by pointing to drunks and how when they drink, it's like a different personality takes over. I noticed this in me.

So with my experiences to date and this ringing-true-for-me starting point, I devised this whole idea about what an addiction is for me. It's a part, a Voice in me that needs feeding/filling of some sort. If I am able to do the work it takes to fill/feed it, the addiction is no longer needed for that job. There is no craving so it's easy to stop. If the Voice is not fed/healed/given what it needs, then the craving remains and it's pretty useless to even try stopping, because those denied desires of the Voices will take over in their sneaksy ways.

With the alcohol, I stopped drinking entirely for about twelve years. It was easy. Again...one day, after doing years more inner work, I was just done. The need for the craving was filled and it was no longer needed. Then about three years ago, I got tired of, what I called "Not being an adult" and missing out on all the wonderful potential hedonistic opportunities I had going to outrageous dinners and having the added wine pairings. I had never missed drinking, but wanted "more" in life (as I said, I am a hedonist). I also began to wonder what it would be like to drink but not impulsively. Could I do it?

I began the experiment. It was just at restaurants to enjoy those amazing meals (I am a total food snob and enjoy fine dining). It all went really well until the second year, when life began to get very stressful. The more stressed it got, the more I found myself drinking. Not much, compared to the old days, but more than felt healthy. About a year ago, I even started to scare myself a little because I started to crave it again on a regular basis. I tried to control the cravings, but it drove me nuts: the more I tried to control it, the more I craved it. For the first time in many many years, I also started to unconsciously eat to bury my pain. I became a slug, didn't want to go to the gym, which I used to love. I would notice I went in cycles when I was running from myself, afraid to go deep because of what it might mean. One huge lesson I've learned is that growth never ceases and that mine takes circuitous routes. Even though I get to a place of inner freedom, it doesn't mean that I'm done. It just means I get to do it at a different level.

Part three in this series will be about the Gifts of Addiction Awarenesses

*Even though I don't call them that.

Art

Embrace by Ilse Fourie found here

Le Bonheur by Jean Claude Gaugy- one of my very favorite artists of all time. This image was found here.
The Mask by Kathy Ostman-Magnusen I highly recommend you click on the link and read what the artist has to say about this painting. Lovely. Took my breath away.

Addiction As Teacher 1

I pretty much take myself wherever I go. And just as I see Ego and Anger as being Teachers and allies to conscious discovery of the Self, I see Addiction in the same way. Addictions are merely a window to the inner soul, no more, no less. The only power they have over us is the power we give them.

It pains me, I must say, when I hear the constant litany of addictions these days. Are we addicted to addictions? Needing them to do....something for us???? What is it with our need to label everything, confine it, define it, "make" us something?

It pains me because I hate labels that illicit feelings of self-judgement and shame....or that have a very weird sort of energy I can't explain fully except it feels like a strange, twisted variant of a combination of Victim voice and arrogance. Like we're the victim of this, who's the bigger victim and who's overcome the bigger battle sort of thing. Please hear me when I say that I feel no judgement in that statement. Not one. It's a questioning/observation of the energy, nothing more. I have learned to love all my voices, even my Victim. But I also don't give any one reign. I certainly don't give Victim any slack. I listen to it and it lovingly keep in its place. I do this because I've learned that the Victim voice is the most powerful one inside us and I refuse to let it run my life. But that's for another post....

I suppose if I was to consider myself in the standard lingo/mindset of today, I would be labelled an addict of many things. Once an addict, always an addict, yes? I have an "addictive personality." I was a three pack a day smoker for ten years. I was out of control, craved so took tons of drugs for about three years in my youth (lots of it being "highly addictive" speed). I drank way too much for about sixteen years. I was overweight for much of my life, addicted to food.

What I learned was that, again, the body does not lie. If I am unwilling to look at something, wanting to push it down, my body will tell the story. I did all those things for a reason. I was in pain and I didn't want to face what my inner Self was telling me. I was afraid of all of who I was. I was lost. I comforted myself to feel good. And why would we blame anyone for wanting to find a way to peace, even if temporary, even if done in ignorance as to the possible ramifications of an unconscious activity that is so fun?

Our culture doesn't guide us to listen to our inner beings, gives no support for confusion and finding our way. In fact, when I was growing up, much of what I saw in the world was considered crazy. I was shushed, told to hide it in a myriad of ways: verbally, nonverbally and through the information that filters through in life. When seekers have no guide and find themselves alone, it's scary. We try our best in the moment with the tools, support and understanding we have. Sometimes we get lost. We can't ask the questions if we don't know what questions to ask. We can't find how to fix what's going on inside us if we don't know what it is. Why are we so tough on ourselves? Would we treat a loved one with the same lack of compassion that we constantly give ourselves?

So let me ask you...when you meet an addict...the ones who are still able to show a little of themselves between the haze of their addiction....or you knew someone before they temporarily lost themselves in an addiction....aren't they often the most interesting people? When I've listened to people who've gone the rounds, all the ones who did tons of drugs are fascinating. Look at artists!! Many in the performing and visual arts are addicts of one sort or another.

People, not just artists, are addicts because they have tons of creative energy and don't know what to do with it. Or they've been told early in life that they are not good enough to do something with it, or they're weird, or what they know isn't valid or real. And they believed it because it's darn hard not to.

It takes tremendous amounts of energy to keep creative life force down. Something really huge is required to keep a lost, confused creator's knowing and life force down so they can "fit." It's true that they don't end up fitting as addicts, either. But in the intial stages they don't know or believe this is where it will lead. Then once they get lost, they need the additional numbing and continuing the addictive behavior because they still have all of the reason they started the addiction plus they now have this new label to add to their list of reasons for not letting their life shine.

My addictions and troubles have taught me my own Secret: the things that we have in life that seem like the biggest obstacles and pains are our greatest gifts. That when we figure them out, we now have these learnings and light to gift back to Life and humanity in whatever way seems right for us to give and be.

...to be continued

Love Embrace by Frieda Kahlo found here

Two Embrace found here

Yes, I Get Angry

It doesn't happen too often that I lose it. It takes lots to get me the point where one of my buttons gets pushed that far. But it does happen. It's happened twice now in the last seven months. Once was a personal fight, one was online when I felt protective of someone rights being violated and people being cruel about her.

In both cases, I felt a need to protect. See hair fly, teeth bare, energy of a huge battalion all balled up in my aura.

Anger is considered a "lead" emotion, meaning that we feel anger because we don't want to feel something deeper that is harder and more painful to feel. The reason I don't get angry very often is that I have learned to go to the thing being covered up. But....I don't always make it initially. I can still get buttons pushed.

In the first situation, I was angry and said "fuck you" to hide what was really going on...which was that I felt desolate, alone, abandoned, stressed, unloved, uncared for, at wit's end, unappreciated, unseen. The situation had built over time with me not addressing much of what was going on when it was smaller because I told myself that if I did, it would just add to the other person's stress (even though I know better). So, in this case, something that might not have been big became huge. Once I blew up, and got all that I had held back energetically out, I then went into all the other feelings that the outburst had hidden. I cried a really long time. In some ways, I'm still crying about it. But I'm not angry in the least. I would rather be, and am, raw.

In the second situation, I didn't even know the person who was, in my mind, being "wronged." The commentary on some random blog post about a woman was awful. The cruelty and justifications for it made me cry. And everyone was proceeding and adding to it as if cruelty is OK behavior. For me, it was an ethical consideration along with the wondering what it would do to this person if she discovered all that was being said about and around her. I imagined her alone with it. It drove me so nuts I left a comment on the blog then wrote a whole post on my blog (not this one) about how outraged I was. In the first version, I made mention of the "offending" blog and provided a link. I removed it soon after because the issue wasn't really about this particular blogger being mean, it was about humanity forgetting their hearts. In this case, when I went deeper with it, I realized I felt protective of her, but it was, of course, much more. I felt protective for women, for humans who look outside the norm. I remembered back to childhood when it had happened to me, I thought about the kids from Columbine and how people were cruel to them, made them outcasts and the ramifications of that. I saw this nameless woman as an innocent just living her life and being judged by mindless meanness. I felt a need to protect all of humanity from itself.

The anger diffused after I wrote the post. I still had things to say about it, will still call a spade a spade, but without the emotional hook that I had. I understood that people are just blind and everyone needs compassion, all of them. Even the meanies.

When I look at the times I've been angry, remembering times before I understood and was living a life of simmering anger, I know my anger is always about wanting to protect something in some way somehow. I do it so seldom now that when I do feel it, I really pay attention.

So, just like my ego, Anger is now my friend, too. How can I be upset and want to get rid of an ally who is only trying to communicate with me, and bring me the gift of my deep? Do I seek out anger? No. I just don't push it down or try to pretend I am happy when it wants voice. Do I want to stay angry? No way. It isn't fun, it doesn't feel good. I don't think anger is even comfortable with itself. The reason I think this is because when I access it, when I go there and allow its voice, it lovingly moves out of the way so I can become conscious of the underlying reason it showed up in the first place....which leads to greater consciousness....which makes me happier...which leads to creation, and on it goes.

Ideally I will take care of things in the moment more so they don't build. Ideally I will be less stressed so not be in a place of needing to protect as much. That would all be very nice.

And...I don't hold myself to that level of expectation, don't beat myself up when I am angry. Anger informs me, like the heat from a stove tells me that something is going on that isn't good for me. I am just a human woman, going through life, making my ways to the best of my abilities. I may fall off the track, but I get back on the trail pretty quickly. Anger, my ego, my dark all contribute. I want to embrace and be at peace with them all.

Anger by Santiago Mapache

Observations Of Spiritual Blogland

As I've noted a few times on here, this arena in Blogland is new to me. I've been enjoying reading about people's interpretations on spirituality. I notice:

...that very very few people mention sex, alluding it no more than once on their blogs, if that. Is this because spiritual people aren't sexual? Is it because the topic is verboten? Is it that sex is not considered a part of a spiritual quest? Where is this vital, core piece of our humanity, this place of connection with the divine? Are spiritual people uncomfortable talking about sex? Is sex still relegated to the sinful, the untouchable, even in our enlightened times?

....that when I shared this observation with someone I know who has both a spiritual and sex blog, she pointed out that not only is sex not discussed, but anger isn't either. I hadn't noticed, but am now looking for it, too.

**********************
After writing the above, the computer did a jiggle, needed time to regroup so I went to read a book for my coaching called "The New Male Sexuality." I opend the book and the first line I read was:

"Physiologically anger and sexual arousal are very similar. They both excite the nervous system."

Interesting. Are spiritual people unwilling to speak to things that have to do with the old brain, the Limbic system, the place of chaos and primal urges? The study of Neurotheology has discovered that the initial brain patternings in Ecstatic Spiritual Experience and Orgasm are the same pathways, both having origins in the Limbic system...also where anger begins. Why the taboo? Is there a taboo?

Time to ponder.

Tantra Exercise: Desire

This exercise can be done with anything in any circumstance where you have a desire for something.

Say you want a cup of tea. Pay attention to every detail in its preparation, the enjoyment of it.

Putting all awareness in your hands/body, see/feel your hand as it touches the cup. Appreciate its design and colors as you remove it from your cupboard. Feel the texture of the tea strainer. Watch each leaf of the tea fall into the tea pot. As you pour the water into the pot, watch and become one with the steam. Hear the tea pour out of the pot into your cup, notice the color. Smell the plant smells. Feel the heat of the tea.

Now sit with the cup of tea. As you hold the cup, imagine that the cup of tea desires you...your lips...wants to feel your tongue. With each sip, feel the tea's desire for you. Sit and enjoy every sip slowly, feeling the longing from the tea to dance with you, become one with you. Remember and imagine throughout your day that everything you desire also desires you.

Image from here

Kundalini Rising?

In 1993, I had lost 75 pounds, had been doing all sorts of bodywork to become more fully alive, get my energy (life) back. I was in another transition.

When I work on my emotional well being I generally do body stuff rather than traditional talk therapy. Through working with the body, I release emotional trauma and the accompanying deep gunky psychological protective stuff that keeps it there. I like doing it this way because I get to release all sorts of deep unconscious stuff without years of therapy. Very powerful work; not for the light of heart.

I was ready to live and in my Italian Leo sort of fashion, I was intense in this endeavor to have my body be a clear vessel of light. One of the bodyworkers I was seeing lived an hour and a half away. He was supposedly psychic and combined his knowledge about releasing old body stuff with his intuitive abilities. His name was Cory.

At about the middle of the fourth or fifth session, he was doing deep abdominal work on me. Now...I've had some pretty intense bodywork done. Cory did not do any one system of bodywork but had some training, I think, as a Rolfer. That Rolfing stuff hurts like hell, it does. Only thing that comes close is childbirth.


Anyway...there we were in the middle of that session, when he started in on my lower abdomen. I started to moan, and not in a good way. So, of course, he went deeper. Which, of course made it more painful, especially when he dug his elbow into the area above my pelvic bone and started to rotate it. And dug deeper (hate those Rolfers, I do, but keep going back, I do).
Breathing, moaning, screaming, releasing, more blood curdling screaming, swearing (I'm sure a blue streak as I do during those types of sessions), I finally quieted down and just went into the pain. I dove in, invited what was, surrendered to the sensation.

All of a sudden there is a fire in the deep belly. And it burns. And it builds. It starts to turn into orgasmic fire. Then it shoots, just like a Volcano Orgasm of a life time. And it just keeps going. And going. Then stops for awhile, then goes again. And keeps going and going. His elbow is now out of my pelvis, but the orgasm keeps going. It wanes a bit, then starts again. It stops for ten minutes, then starts up again. By the time I am in my car driving my one and a half hours home, this is stop-driving-the-car intense as the orgasm is so strong and is shooting out my head, feet and hands that it takes over. Waves and waves keep coming all the way home. They keep up once I get home, stopping for no more than an hour, then they start up again. I dream them in my sleep. They are there in the morning again when I wake up. And I am walking around having these volcano orgasms throughout the next day and the next and the next.

Now, I know this may sound fun. And today it might be. But at the time, I had three young kids and was running a business with 23 employees. I remember one day I was on a business call to my New York rep...had to stop the call to moan and feel the orgasms.

I kept calling Cory, begging him to help me make them STOP. He had no clue what to do. Thanks. My (then) husband knew what to do with them. Our sex life got better than it had been in years. I was voracious.

But it really wasn't fun. It kept up for weeks, slowly fading a bit, but distracting enough for me to need to try to find a way to stop them. Finally I found that if I held my pelvis in a certain way they slowed down and eventually stopped. Phew. Really, really bad timing.

The next year when I started my Tantra training, I asked all my teachers about this, wanting to understand what had happened to me. The only one that had much to say was Charles Muir who said that it sounded like my Kundalini had risen. It helped to have an affirmation that it was something others had felt, nice to have a reference point.

Interestingly enough, I had mini versions of this repeat when I had two periods of celibacy after my divorce. In both those cases, I had the spontaneous Volcanoes. They didn't occur anywhere near as often as in the original episode, but did happen at the most inopportune times. Like they happened in class...and once at the library when it was so strong I could not stop a moan...and then made the mistake of looking up to see all eyes on me. In both cases, they started after a month of celibacy, then continued until I had penetration. These episodes weren't traumatic like that first time (thankfully....sheesh....), probably because I didn't have the outer world responsibilities going on.

What I learned and relearned:

-Doing deep inner work needs time and space. It's way too difficult to integrate things when having to deal with the outer world. It's important to be gentle with the self.

-If you're going to have weeks long orgasms: plan a vacation and enjoy them, at least.

-It would have been nice to have someone there that understood what was going on to at least hold my hand.

-I'm not sure if it was a kundalini thing, but I thought it was...and, I'm still not sure. I do know that many people experience psychic disturbances with the rising. I didn't. But that could be because I was already "disturbed/out there/crazy" so I didn't have to, as that work was already done, hehehehehe. And in that vein: I also cannot read "The Course In Miracles" because I get vertigo every time. A channeler once told me that I have that experience because the Course is designed to break the ego and mine was already broken. Not sure what to make of that, either, but that would be one person's/entity's opinion, anyway.

-Bodies can do trippy stuff.

-I keep wondering what would happen if I was celibate now. Maybe I should give it a try.....nah!!!

Art:

Kundalini Energy from here

Lightening from here

Holy Fire Kundalini from here

My Truth

After traveling high and low, far and wide, both inside and out, the only Truth that remains for me is that I create my world. For me....from this, all things flow; other than this, all things are relative.

When the Visionaries, the Mystics of each tradition connect directly with Godsource, who do they see? Does a Sadhu see White Buffalo Woman? Does a Pentecostal see Hecate? Does Oshun appear to a Roman Catholic?

No. We create our worlds and The All supports us so completely that even at this level, It manifests itself to us in the ways in which we will most easily receive It.

Why? Why do it this way? Why not one religion, one answer that lets us know our true nature, the One path back to God and how to "be" here on this planet? Why no user's manual for Earth?
Differences exist to further creation and expansion of Life. If everyone's brain worked the same way, if we all had the same experience and came to the same conclusions, there would be very little questioning, therefore very little new thought would emerge.

Our job isn't to arrive at One Final Truth because there isn't one. Finding it would mean the end of creation. Our job is to constantly be open to questions, to finding the next step. To recognize that new questions immediately arise from answers and that we hold all the answers and all the questions inside us. Truth is not static...it expands, it becomes more because the minute we create one thing, Life calls us forth to create more from that. This is what creative Life is about- the expansion, the more. It isn't about staying only with yesterday's thoughts, but rather taking what we have learned from yesterday and moving it forward in new ways.

These days of abundance of ideas and communication, we each have tremendous opportunity to discover and create new truths. A scientist knows the properties of different compounds. He knows how they interact with each other and in nature. But it's the creative scientist who makes new connections from yesterday's knowledge, applies things differently, who makes a new discovery. All knowledge builds upon itself and continues to be "more." Same thing with spirituality and truth.

When I go deep inside and ask what it is that finding Truth does for me, immediately the answer is "safety." Truth gives me a framework, a place to "belong" in the universe. If I can find the Truth, I have something to hold onto, something that I can say is concrete, real....even if it's in the ethers. Answers help my ego to cope, even if those answers involve the message that ego itself is the culprit for causing all my pain. My ego is more than willing to accept the blame if it can feel safer that it now has something to hold onto, to work toward, to explain the discomfort it feels. Ego thinks that when an answer is found, it can now go fix things or at least figure out an avenue to come to terms with itself.

A Teacher of mine once said that Truth is that which cannot be argued. Philosophy 101 said that if something cannot be argued it isn't Truth. So where are we to go with this?

Back to the self, as it's all I have. I am new here in what I lovingly call SpeerchulBlogland. I've been playing in SexBlogLand and this is a different world. Most of the blogs I read are by people sharing what they have found to be Truths. I am almost envious of convictions and surety in what they believe. I have a difficult time saying that anything is a Truth because I only see them as truths for me...and truths that are constantly in flux. As I said at the beginning of this post, the only Truth I continue to tenasciously hold onto is the one of creation. I've experienced it too many times, seen it in too many ways and places, sifted and sorted and pondercated on it and this is the only Truth I end up with. And, yet, I am even fluid in this, remain open. Yes, I've found some "lesser" things that ring as true for me and when I share them, others find resonance. I figure that's because we are on the same wave length, see the same things. I've been sharing some of them on this blog and will continue to. But I share them with a hesitancy, because I don't see them as the end, the only way. They're just my way.

In the meantime I continue to find delight and wonder in the manifestations of people's Truths:

-the Buddhist who finds Nirvana by letting go of desire

-the New Thought person who creates their lives through conscious desire
-the Pentecostal who starts speaking in tongues or does that snake thing
-the Tantrika who finds ecstatic union in sexual union
-the Native American who goes on a Vision Quest and meets her Totem
-the Voudoun who accepts her spirit ancestors/gods/goddesses into her body in trance dance
-the Shinto priest who connects with the Kami in an early morning ritual dip in a pond
-the Roman Catholic who sees Mary or is "blessed " with The Stigmata
-the Sufi who spins his way to Allah

-the Atheist and Agnostic

all of 'em.

Why? Because to me, we/they are all an important part of the Dance that we come here to do: the sheer joy of creation for no other reason than itself.

Art:

Eye of God composite Hubble photograph taken from here
Truth by Jon Syverson

Dervish image from the movie Dances of Ecstasy

This article has been included in be Conscious now's Carnival of Truth