Hidden Addictions

I was having an argument with my husband today that we'd already had a thousand times before. The same argument. I just couldn't stop spinning out all the reasons I was right, couldn't stop trying to convince him of the validity of my point of view.

Then it hit me: I am addicted to being unloved. Or, more accurately, I am addicted to the story of being unloved. I am addicted to the story of being separate. I am addicted to being right. The addiction to being right is also the addiction to the peculiar satisfaction of being wronged. I am addicted to the story-of-me...drunk on it (without a drop of alcohol).

Way back when I got this notion of being unwanted. The story of lack, the story of not being enough, had been bought into long before I got married.

Now the template is there. My husband has to somehow fit into the story of "Colleen is unloved. Colleen is a unfairly treated."

The deck is stacked and without even realizing it, I am bound and determined for him to play his role of proving the continuing saga of "Colleen the Unloved."

Wow- what a strange addiction. The addiction to suffering. How could I have been so blind to this drama playing itself out again and again in my life with a changing cast of characters? How could I have been so hoodwinked?

And separation seemed so obvious, but is it? Sun, space, air, tree are all separate words; but are they separate things? The sun is in the tree. The air is in the space. Nothing is separate. Separation is a word-created, mind-created mirage. Everything is connected to everything. There is one thing (no-thing) and we are all it appearing with infinite variety.

Seeing my addiction to suffering, my addiction to being separate and unloved, acts as a lever lifting me out of the story.

With enormous joy, the mind in this instant is empty.

I apologized to Greg for type-casting him in the crazy drama of my stories. He accepted my apology and forgave me. The eye contact between us was as clear as the sky. Greg and Jack are warming up for Jack's baseball practice this afternoon, and I'm settling in to enjoy a bit of doing nothing. Sending all love to my friends known and unknown through this medium of cyberspace.

"Touch that in you which does not need to be satisfied by the world of form."  Eckhart Tolle

Realizing our shared divine nature, that which underlies all experience, is what we're here for.

There is one argument: insufficient love. There is one resolution: recognition of the reality of abundance underlying all the stories of lack.
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The attraction of the eternal now

There is a natural love of life.  This love of life may also be called an attraction to the now, for life is now.


Here is a passage from The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle that I came across today (p. 71):

" Question:  Even if I completely accept that ultimately time is an illusion, what difference is that going to make in my life?"

"Answer:  Intellectual agreement is just another belief and won't make much difference to your life.  To realize this truth, you need to live it.  When every cell of your body is so present that it feels vibrant with life, and when you can feel that life every moment as the joy of Being, then it can be said that you are free of time."

Life is not primarily about "getting somewhere".  It is about being here.  When I become overly focused on "getting somewhere" something feels off, like a joint out of socket.  This is feedback from an inner thermostat- it is the call or nudge to return to the true vocation of living fully in the eternal now.  As life becomes more about being and less about "getting", I still move toward future goals, but with joy rather than compulsion.

There is a stronger attraction to what is present here right now than to even the most glorious possible future. 

This is always the case even when the attraction to present reality is obscured by longing for imagined future gain.  When I stop running away, sooner or later I feel reeled in by the attraction to the invisible heart of this moment.

When awareness touches the actuality of being alive in this moment there is contentment.  Not a static contentment, but a dynamic contentment that blooms and shimmers.


"What to do

 but draw a little nearer to

 such ubiquity by remaining still."



(R. S. Thomas, excerpt from poem But the silence in the mind in Roger Housden's 2009 anthology)
(Photo is from Flickr public files)



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