After the addiction comes the detox. In last week’s blog, I talked about addictions, our ‘urge to’, the physical and mental loops that we feed when the raw, naked stuff is just too uncomfortable. Addictions take the shape of habits, mental chatter, or on its most manifested level, a physical or mental urge to keep doing something over and over, to ‘go somewhere’ over and over. Usually while knowing better.

Every now and then we build up the courage to break our addictions. But do we go from being completely stuck to being completely unstuck, as Pema Chodron calls it, overnight? Of course not. We go cold turkey, we detox. I have come to see it like this: when you are feeding your addictive pattern, it’s like building a highway in your neurologic system, in your heart-brain. Karma, baby.

First we were speeding on this highway ourselves like the Fast and the Furious, now we have to pull over and see who else is driving there. Then, the shit really hits the fan since we see that all our neurosis, all our fears, and every insecurity we have ever experienced, are racing on our precious highway. Ignoring or denying its existence doesn’t help and only makes it worse. To the extent that we are willing to pull over and stand still on our neurotic highway, it will become less dangerous.

Although we will still feel that ‘urge to’ do this/feel that/think that/go there, by standing in de middle of our crazy highway, we build up the confidence and courage to not need a fix, to not seek resolution. Because, to end with Pema Chodron’s* words:

“ We don’t deserve resolution; we deserve something better than that. We deserve our birthright, which is the middle way, an open state of mind that can relax with paradox and ambiguity.”

Tell it like it is, Pema!

(* I know, it’s increasingly turning into a Pema fanclub here, I can’t help that the woman is so brilliant)