I went along with my addictions not realizing how they helped to keep my feelings tightly secured behind a paywall. I had to pay a price to get to them. The price is feeling them. Feeling afraid, feeling inadequate and feeling powerless. These are not fun to feel. Now that I am letting them come out to play I see why I was avoiding them. They hurt, they are confusing, and they feel like crap. I DON’T LIKE THEM.
I thought I knew myself. I knew there was some feelings I didn’t get to the bottom of, but I thought I was doing fairly well in uncovering them. Or I thought that my process was good enough to eventually get to the bottom of them. I did not realize how powerful they are and what I was doing to avoid them. I had an intellectual premise in place that told myself I was doing fine, that I was working things out, and that the little addictions I had, oh, what could they hurt?
The process to start to uncover these feelings means that I needed to become truthful with myself. I thought I had the desire to know myself. However if this were true I wouldn’t have had the addictions I have that allow me to avoid my feelings. If I had the desire to know myself I would have had the desire to not have these addictions as well.
In that I did not have the desire to know myself all I could do was wish I had the desire to know myself. Repeating this over and over, “I wish I had the desire to know myself”, was what did start me to uncover those lost feelings. This seems too simple but that statement is true, that’s why it works. When I started to feel I also started to see the huge role addictions had in the self-deception.
Lets look at my addictions.
Alcohol. I drank to excess some in my life though I am not alcoholic. I realized after I started uncovering my deep feelings that all it took was one drink and I would not have to feel for the rest of the day. I have had periods where I would have one, two, or three beer after work. I didn’t think was affecting me much, it wasn’t a lot of alcohol and it felt good. I now have stopped that kind of drinking. I will have a drink now on occasion but I won’t have alcohol in the house most of the time. This was not difficult to give up, I had given it up before.
Caffeine. This is very difficult for me to give up. I am unsure how much it affects the amount of feeling suppression it does for me. I do need to completely give it up to know though don’t I? I know it is a powerful substance.
Medications. I gave up Anti Depressants and Blood Pressure medications about 9 months ago, a few months before I knew about The Sovereign’s Way. I took anti depressants for a long long time. What a bad idea. I just was unable to consider feeling my feelings. Of course I didn’t get any layman or professional advice that it would be better for me to feel my feeling rather than mask them with a drug.
Last week I was sick for a few days. I resisted taking any medications. During the night I had a fever and I monitored my thought process during the fever. I couldn’t direct my thoughts away from a scenario going through my mind over and over about me doing some small task with my hands (I don’t know what it was) and being in constant fear that I couldn’t get it right. Very interesting. I am sure that if I medicated the fever away I wouldn’t have allowed that fear to come out.
Cigarettes. Just kidding, I never smoked.
TV. I have given up watching TV a lot of times in my life. Other times I watched something every evening. I stopped almost completely about 9 months ago. I do not miss it. I will occasionally watch a show or movie. It doesn’t matter what the programming is, when I sit in front of a TV my feelings just disappear.
Internet reading/watching. I do watch/read a limited amount of Internet though I have given up most of the doom and gloom scenarios. It is easy to have a broad view of all the stuff going on in the world without spending much time with it. There are certain topics that I like to keep up on, so I have a few blogs that I subscribe to but most of the ones I sourced in the past few years I do not see anymore.
Cellphone. I do have a cell phone but I rarely use it.
Reading? Reading doesn’t take me away from myself like TV watching does so I am not quite sure about this one. I do limit some books because of what they bring up in me…this is one addiction I will look at more closely. Sometimes now I just sit though without doing anything, not meditating, not practicing my breathing, just sitting.
Spiritual program addictions. I had stopped looking for spiritual answers prior to The Sovereign’s Way course. Any spiritual practice I tried in the past continued to mask the feelings I had, they did not allow for the full feelings of myself. Any spiritual program should start by saying, “If you do this you are going to feel like shit for a long time.” It’s not all lovey dovey.
I remember doing Tai Chi with a group of acquaintances and we were in the habit of doing a short warm up and then three sets. I could do two sets but with the third one I would start to have a lot of emotions come up and I knew if I continued I would have a crying breakdown in front of these people. Of course I couldn’t do that so I ended up not going to the group anymore. No one had said anything about feelings coming up when I had been taught Tai Chi. I wasn’t prepared for that so I avoided it.
I have done a fair amount of Yoga, a lot of it on my own. After awhile I couldn’t stay in the meditative place because I didn’t like the feelings I started having. I just felt so uncomfortable that I had to stop the practice. I have a lot of Yoga books here but I don’t remember any one of them telling me I needed to feel a lot of uncomfortable feelings and that is why I would do the practice in the first place.
It is quite possible that because I was not ready to feel my feelings I skipped the part where the practitioner said I was going to feel a lot of crap. I think however that most of the spiritual programs skip over this because everything is all supposed to be and feel good and we are going to wake up and be happy.
The difference with The Sovereign’s Way is that it was suggested it was necessary to get to the bottom of my feelings and that there is no other process that will take me to a place where I will feel safe. There was no promise that it was going to be easy or feel positive, possibly for a long time. To the extent that I deny my feelings is the extent that I feel unsafe in the world.
Relationships. Of course, likely the most difficult addictions to work out are the ones I have with other men and women. It is possible to just stop drinking, but I just can’t stop having relationship with other men and women.
However I am sure that my relationships with men and women are the perfect ones I need for the lessons I need to learn. I think this is a topic for another post.
I do not speak for ‘The Sovereign Way’; I am just sharing some of my experience that has come about because of TSW course and my relationship to it. https://thesovereignsway.com/law-for-mankind-options/?link=45555
thank you for the comment gin, tim
Thanks Rebecca, once I could feel what the addictions were covering up I gained quite a desire to look at them all. I am exploring my addictions to other men and women more now and have a lot to learn. I appreciate your comment.