Art: @plumvillagefrance

Japanese Imperial Palace photos: Sam Abell

Recently I've really had strong urges to drink and smoke. By telling you I guess I'm hoping you have a little advice or something insightful to say, and hopefully it will help anyone else who might have similar urges. Btw I don't have any addictions to either one, just new and strange urges to indulge.

“Where attention goes, energy flows.”

I’m not sure who said that, but it’s a poeticparaphrasing of what many sages have been saying for years; and it can help toexplain how any thought or urge, indeed any movement of the mind, gets itspower. At the point a thought or urge arises it’s powerless and, bereft ofattention, it will quickly dissipate;however, when given attention, energy pours into it and then it’s going to be hard to get rid of.

What usually happens is this: an urge arises for analcoholic drink and we react to it, and think, ‘that would be nice, it’s a warmday and a cold beer would be good, I’ve not had one for a while, and on andon…’ or, we might think, ‘where’s this coming from, I don’t want alcohol, it’snot good for me, where is this urge coming from..?’ Either way, we’ve engagedwith it, we’ve given it attention and our energy is pouring into it, as eachthought gives rise to another, and then to another, and so on…

Instead, what we can do is acknowledge the urge as it arises,without engaging with it: an analogy we can use for this, is to imagine theurge comes in the form of a text message to your phone; so, a notification popsup, which allows you to see a part of the message, and you can see it says,‘lets have a drink’ but you can’t see all the whys-or-why-nots. Now, the moment you open that message you are engaging with it, the sendercan see you opened it and so a response is needed; however, if you don’t openit, you’re not engaging with it and so no response is needed and it can beignored and eventually be forgotten about. And if the urge to open it comes in,we again just see the notification, but don’t open the message…

If we engage with the urge, it will quickly bring thoughtafter thought, which are the whys-and-why-nots, which are mostly unconscious thought;by not engaging with it, we take away it’s power and create a space in which wecan consciously think about whether we really do want to drink and smoke. Andin that space, we’re less likely to be influenced by outside factors, such aspeer-pressure, and so make a conscious decision.

I hope that helps. Namaste, Dave

You have to stop ruining things for yourself preemptively because you believe they’ll fail anyway. Give yourself a chance to succeed.

Today, I found myself heading to a Buddhist temple for an addiction recovery meeting and meditation session. Initially, I was overwhelmed with anxiety, my mind racing with all the ways things could go wrong. Why? Because the mind, though a powerful tool, is just that—a tool. It should be used only when needed; otherwise, it will create problems simply to justify its own activity, becoming an addiction in itself. As I made my way there, I became aware of the vibrations of the music resonating in my ears, the wind brushing against my face, the comfort of my seat—each moment was rich with joy. Yet, we so rarely tap into the immediate joy available to us in the present.

-Griff

"When you become aware of silence, immediately there is that state of inner still alertness." - Eckhart Tolle