After your death you will be what you were before       your birth.    

Everyone takes the limit of his own field of vision for the limit of the world.

The conscious mind may be regarded as a kind of parasite of the organism, a pensioner, as it were, who dwells within the body.

If you want to know your true opinion of someone, watch the effect produced in you by the sight of a letter/email from that person.

The two enemies of human happiness are pain and boredom.

We forfeit three-fourths of ourselves in order to be like other people.

Console yourself by remembering that the world doesn't deserve your affection.

Change alone is eternal, perpetual, immortal.

There is no absurdity so obvious but that it may be firmly planted in the human head if you only begin to introduce it before the age of five, by constantly repeating it with an air of great solemnity.

The closing years of life are like a masquerade party, when the masks are dropped.

Compassion is the basis of all morality.

Wicked thoughts and worthless efforts gradually set their mark on the face, especially the eyes.

The greatest of mistakes is to sacrifice health for any other kind of reward.

There is no doubt that life is given us, not to be enjoyed, but to be overcome.

"If we were not all so interested in ourselves, life would be so uninteresting that none of us would be able to endure it."

That he was a freak (from childhood he was hideously disfigured by facial scars and most likely he also had Tourette's syndrome). 

That he was an outcast (he was forced to leave Oxford University due to poverty)

That he had to be wiser than everybody else.

The result was that he spent his life secretly loathing himself and using his brilliant mind to dominate other people. But the net result was that he grew more and more lonely, more and more self-judgmental, and more and more depressed.

In Reverse Therapy I work every day with people who are trapped in personal misery. Sometimes that unhappiness is linked to external events: death, separation, illness, redundancy, abuse, conflict, etc. Even so, I try to teach my clients that you can remain positive, self-nurturing, outgoing and self-accepting even while you are dealing with adversity. Not to mention grounded, working with emotional intelligence, and striving to live in the now.

In my view the troubles of life are not the cause of personal misery. That is shown by the fact that many people have come through terrible circumstances but remain cheerful, optimistic and an inspiration to others (think Nelson Mandela).

The main cause of personal suffering is that we are trapped in the ego. If this is so then the solution is to escape from the ego. I have already described how people can achieve this in a previous article - Downsizing the ego but I will add a few more points to what I wrote there:

Try to see life as a game which you play for the pleasure of doing so, not to prove anything to others.

Don't take yourself too seriously. Laugh at yourself, often.

Whatever your bananas are - do the opposite.

Don't dwell on past experiences.

Keep your focus on other people, not on yourself.

Experiment with new personalities. Don't settle for one way of being.

Always tell the truth. Only the ego lies.

Nurture your Personal Genius - it is the antidote for small-mindedness.

Practice Awareness - always.

1. His appearance frightened people. He was seriously overweight with bad facial scars, talked to himself and  was constantly twitching, muttering and suddenly shouting out loud. It's probable that he had Tourette's syndrome.

2. He was an obssessive-compulsive. Meaning he walked along the street counting the paving stones. If he made a mistake he had to go back and do it all over again. On one occasion he was seen bouncing over a door-step like a kangaroo so as not to have to step over it the wrong way.

3. He had at least two nervous breakdowns - one at age 21 and the other at age 55. During the 2nd breakdown he was discovered crawling along the floor after a priest begging to be given back his sanity.

4. He was plagued by major depressions throughout his life, in which he imagined that he was damned and cast into hell-fire for all eternity.

5. His marriage - to a widow twenty years older than himself - was a failure. Partly due to the fact that he spent all her money and he was himself almost unemployable, earning very little money, she became an alcoholic and they lived apart.  After her death he again became morbidly depressed.

6. He was terrified of being left alone. It was for that reason he would talk until dawn with people he had just met rather than go home. That's one reason why the conversations recorded by Boswell take place at night.

7. His mood swings were extreme to say the least. In the course of one evening he might get melancholy and withdrawn, then jolly, then, verbally assault a fellow guest, then obsessional, then depressed.

8. He was plagued by fantasies of sado-masochism, in which he was soundly whipped by one of his closest female friends. This friend (Esther Thrale) was asked to keep handcuffs, chains and other 'restraints' in her home in a locked drawer should he require  'chastisement'.

I have never been that thrilled by Charlie Chaplin. I get that lots of people admire his films but the little tramp and his amazing adventures leave me cold.

But here are some absolutely brilliant thoughts on life written by the man himself, apparently for his 70th birthday celebrations in 1959.

Thanks to Stephan Langguth for sending this to me.

As I began to love myself I found that anguish and emotional suffering are only warning signs that I was living against my own truth. Today, I know, this is “AUTHENTICITY“.

As I began to love myself I understood how much it can offend somebody as I try to force my desires on this person, even though I knew the time was not right and the person was not ready for it, and even though this person was me. Today I call it “RESPECT“.

As I began to love myself I stopped craving for a different life, and I could see that everything that surrounded me was inviting me to grow. Today I call it “MATURITY“.

As I began to love myself I understood that at any circumstance, I am in the right place at the right time, and everything happens at the exactly right moment, so I could be calm. Today I call it “SELF-CONFIDENCE“.

As I began to love myself I quit stealing my own time, and I stopped designing huge projects for the future. Today, I only do what brings me joy and happiness; things I love to do and that make my heart cheer, and I do them in my own way and in my own rhythm. Today I call it “SIMPLICITY“.

As I began to love myself I freed myself of anything that is no good for my health - food, people, things, situations, and everything the drew me down and away from myself. At first I called this attitude egoism. Today I know it is “LOVE OF ONESELF“.

As I began to love myself I quit trying to always be right, and ever since I have been wrong less of the time. Today I discovered that is “MODESTY“.

As I began to love myself I refused to go on living in the past and worry about the future. Now, I only live for the moment, where EVERYTHING is happening. Today I live each day, day by day, and I call it “FULFILMENT“.

As I began to love myself I recognized that my mind can disturb me and it can make me sick. But As I connected it to my heart, my mind became a valuable ally. Today I call this connection “WISDOM OF THE HEART“.

We no longer need to fear arguments, confrontations or any kind of problems with ourselves or others. Even stars collide, and out of their crashing new worlds are born. Today I know THAT IS “LIFE“!

Image by mansionwb

In my last post - What Everybody ought to know about Addictions - I explained how addictions work. In this article I am going to describe how you can get rid of your addictions (if you really want to).

1. Break your slavery to the Dragon.

The Dragon is a creature who works like an Internal Control Freak. It tells you when to use, how to use, where to use, who to use with and why you should never stop. Some Addictions can seem overwhelming but they are only so because we secretly feed them our own power. Like I said in the last article, Attention is your Dragon's fertiliser; while Inattention is its weedkiller.

The simplest way out of an Addiction is to live as if you never had one (this is easier than you might think so long as you ignore the Inner Voice - see below).

2. Reduce the power of the Inner Voice

The Dragon (i.e. your Addiction) works through a seductive Inner Voice that appears to know all the answers. Many people who hear the advice given in No. 1. (above) say things like 'I wish I knew how!' or 'I wish it were that easy!' The reason they find addictions difficult to break is due to the power of the Addictive Voice. Here are some ways to break free from it:

a) Doing something that is the polar opposite of the craving the Inner Voice counsels you to obey

I have described this technique before. You can find it here.

b) Change the Inner Voice over to the Voice of an Idiot.

Listen to the Voice but this time use the accents and tone of someone you consider to be an Idiot. I described how to do this in a previous article on expelling worries.

c) Associate the Voice with someone (or something) very boring

There are endless ways in which you can mess around with the Addictive Voice. Using a voice that puts you to sleep has worked for quite a few of my clients.

3 Reduce opportunities for gratification

Like I said in No. 1 (above) the Dragon feeds on attention. The less you go along with the craving the weaker it gets. Here are some ways to do that:

a) Increase the amount of time between one indulgence and the next. If you consume every day then make it every other day. If you consume every hour then make it every other hour. If you drink alchohol continuously (for example) then have a soft drink between each consumption.

b) Delay consumption. For example, if you think you need a gamble, then go for a walk/talk to a good friend/carry on working for the next 15 minutes or so (you can do this again and again and again...).

c) Avoid situations where temptation could kick in.

Most addictions are tediously predictable. They involve the same substances, in the same quantities, with the same people, in the same places, at the same time of day. If you avoid those places, people and times then you are less likely to use. Period.

d) Stay busy. 

Put it the other way around: if you have time to indulge then you are not busy enough. Or maybe you haven't found something better to do (see No. 7 - below).

4 Go to the extreme.

This is the one I would recommend least. One of the few wrong statements William Blake ever made was that 'The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom." It doesn't. The road of excess leads to degradation. But it has become something of a truism that drug addicts and alcholics only turn around and give up when they reach the gutter and there is something in that. But do you need to lose your health, your job, your money, your relationship and your self-respect before you make that decision?

5 Associate gratification with something disgusting.

This is a less dangerous version of No. 4 and is based on reconditioning. For example, a teenager can give up drinking after one bad hangover; someone who is sexually promiscuous can reform quickly after getting a dose of the clap.

But you don't have to go in for misfortunes in order to reform. Instead, dwell insistently on the way you look to others when you self-indulge. Moments when you were degrading, juvenile, bloated, repulsive, ill, contemptible, etc. Or real-life experiences: in jail, in the gutter, in bed with someone you didn't want to be with, getting fired, etc.

6. Rediscover your passion.

In a famous quote Gregory Bateson, the Anthropologist, once said:

'The alcoholic's problem is not alchohol but sobriety.'

What he was referring to was a variation on my theme that people who become addicts are frequently bored. They get bored because they have too much time on their hands. And they have too much time on their hands because they have given up on their Personal Genius. Meaning they aren't doing enough to engage their energy, their passion, their mission in life.

In the long run addictions are a substitute for the life you were meant to live. 

Don't let it happen to you.

In order to eliminate an Addiction you first need to understand how it works. When you see how an Addiction controls you then you are in a position to exercise Awareness over it. From that position you can start to sabotage it.

Human beings can get addicted to almost anything: sex, drugs, rock 'n roll, alcohol, food, weight loss, gambling, therapy, attention-seeking, shopping, stealing, wrist-slashing, surgery (think Michael Jackson), relationships and the internet. Most of what follows applies to Alcohol addiction but most of my observations equally well apply to other bananas.

The first thing to realise is that Addictions are actually obsessions. Obsessions work through tunnel vision, making the problem more important than it actually is. The key to breaking addictions is to break out of the inertia, habit and routine that comes with the addiction and connect back to Bodymind and the wider world.

Addictions are created and maintained in Headmind through a dominating Inner Voice. This Inner Control Freak can be incredibly powerful as well as seductive. It says things like:

'Go on. You deserve it...'

'Just the one won't harm you...'

'No one will know...'

'The alternative is just too boring...'

'You can't make it through the night without a drink...'

'It's no use resisting you know you're going to have one...'

The more you listen to the voice and follow its commands the stronger it gets. I call this 'feeding the dragon'. The Dragon started off as a worm but grew and grew until it had you in its tentacles. Attention is its fertiliser. Disobeying it (or laughing at it/ignoring it) is its weedkiller.

If you do allow the Dragon to get a hold on you then your original liking will first turn into a habit. I have worked with many addicts over the past 20 years and it's just weird how predictable they are. They will use the same beverages, in the same quantities, with the same people, at the same places, at the same times, every day of their lives. But it is easy to break a habit: provided you have something better to replace it with (see next article).

Once a habit turns into an Addiction (meaning that the Dragon has started to control you instead of you controlling it) at that point the problem becomes part of your Personality. Meaning that you start to define yourself as a person who is a slave to something else. This process is helped along by Alcoholics Anonymous and other 'experts' who use labels like 'Alcoholic', 'Drug Addict', 'Sex Addict', 'Kleptomaniac', 'Bulimic', 'Narcissist', 'Wacko Jacko', etc. Readers with long memories may recall my blog article on the Danger of Words in which I explained how labels can induce pathology and keep you in a bad place you no longer wish to be in. Drop the labels and change your personality and you will be free again.

The next thing to understand about an Addiction is that it's not all in the mind. That there is a biological basis for the craving which is relatively easy to understand. So here goes.

When Bodymind notices that you are drinking in large quantities on a regular basis it also notices that the alcohol is depleting the brain of GABA - a neurotransmitter which regulates alertness. And when that happens it seeks to compensate by increasing GABA production. The net result will leave you feeling restless, agitated and uncomfortable. And Headmind - via your Inner Dragon - will interpret that problem as a cue for another drink....which means that, once again, you are feeding that Inner Dragon.

After a while even Headmind starts to realise that the Addiction is creating fresh problems. Like social exclusion, failed relationships, unemployment, crime, financial disaster, sexually transmitted disease, and persistent unhappiness. So it will start to worry about what happens next. But worry won't solve anything - it just confirms your slavery. But more on that in my next article.