Tara Brach - Pt1 - Releasing the Habits That Imprison Your Spirit

Episode Date: May 11, 2023

Pt1 - Releasing the Habits That Imprison Your Spirit - Addictions of all levels of intensity arise from disconnection and are spiking globally. Humans are experiencing epidemic levels of loneliness, and this combined with engineered products and substances that are highly addictive leads to great suffering. In these two talks, we explore how we get hooked on behaviors that we know cause harm, and how mindfulness and self-compassion can serve our freedom. Key to this process is reconnecting with our inner life, and remembering we are in this together, awakening together.

Greetings. We offer these podcasts freely and your support really makes a difference. To make a donation, please visit tarabrock.com. Namaste, welcome, friends. There's an experience most of us are familiar with and it's knowing that there's something we do that's not good for us but not being able to change it. And, you know, it could be some behavior related to eating or drugs or slings. sleeping, are working, video games. It could be an inner behavior that we do fantasizing or worrying or obsessing. But whatever it is, some part of us knows it's keeping us from being all we can be.

It's keeping us from really living the life that's most aligned with our heart and our spirit. and these habits are all forms of addiction, compulsively doing something that causes harm. And even though the degree of the compulsion and the harm varies greatly, on a path of healing, on a path of awakening, these inner and outer behaviors are a call for attention. There are a signal of trance, really, that we're in some habitual way leaving who we are, leaving our full presence, leaving wholeness. And if we identify these places and offer our attention and our care, the places of trance become this very powerful portal to insight, to heal.

layers of our being we hadn't been really paying attention to, and really to true spiritual transformation. So we'll be exploring this, how we unhook from unhealthy behaviors, the subtle and more obvious addictions. We'll be doing it this week and next, maybe even another. I'm not sure how long it'll take. Maybe it's a starting place in Buddhist mythology. the suffering of addictions described in this very vivid way as the realm of hungry ghosts.

Some of you may be familiar with this. So it's the imagery as creatures with these scrawny necks and these bloated empty bellies. And they're trying to seek gratification from the outside to quiet this insatiable yearning they have. So it's wanting and grasping and nothing they do can really satisfy. And so this really comes out of understanding what are described as the first two noble truths in Buddhism and the first one is that dissatisfaction and unease, this is this deep yearning for something stable and secure, it's universal. It's the nature of being alive in these ever-eased.

changing forms. I think of it as life-loving life, that there's just something basic in us that's trying to sustain life. And the second noble truth, when out of that existential insecurity, we grasp after some outside thing to try to satisfy and relieve us after money or power or alcohol or whatever the thing is, not only does it not work, it gives a temporary kind of hit, but it doesn't work, it actually imprisons us in feeling disconnected and insecure. So in a way, this is a description of trance. These addictive behaviors come from trance. They come from living in a contorted...

contracted, distorted reality, and as we do them, they deepen trance. Because we're being controlled or governed as we're involved with addictive behaviors by a very small limbic part of our being. And the more we inhabit trance, you know, grasping after the temporary pleasures and relief, the more we're cut off from our wholeness, from the love and the awareness and spirit that we really, you know, long to realize. I like the way Zen Master Ryokin puts it. He says, it's quite simple. If you want to find freedom, stop chasing after so many things. So I remember when I was a junior in college and I had just started yoga and meditation and I ran into the phrase, how you live today is how you live your life. And that night I started reviewing the day

and the day before, you know, well, how did I live today? And I realized I had stayed up the prior night, you know, I was on some sort of speedy diet pill or something, caffeine to, because I wanted to ace an exam I had that morning. And then that day afterwards, I was kicking. myself for having this ice cream binge after the exam. And I was also obsessing on a relationship where I was really wanting more intimacy. And, you know, it was really, life wasn't enough. I was that hungry ghost realm. I wasn't content. I wasn't at home and myself. I wasn't living from presence, from heart. And the notion that this discontent, these habits reflected my life was really disturbing. Just kind of reaffirmed I was not on track. I wasn't at home. I was falling

short. I was chasing after too many things. You know, I often think about it in our lives, we know when we're hooked on unhealthy behaviors, we're just not living from who we can be. We're not living the life that we long for. The good news and science describes it in terms of neuroplasticity is that our brains and our habits can change. That's the bottom line. This is really the culminating message of the Buddha's noble truths. Freedom is possible and that we each have the potential to awaken from trance.

I love the way the Buddha put it, he said, I would not teach you this path if it were not possible to awaken. And the fourth of the noble truths is, it's described as the eightfold path and each of the steps really are grounded in training awareness. That's the heart of it. We can train our awareness. For me, about, I think it was about a year and a half after facing how stuck I was, you know, in that cluster of addictive. behaviors. I joined a spiritual community, an ashram. You might even think of it as addiction rehab in the most deep sense of it. And there, and in the decades that followed for myself and with

working with others, I really saw how meditation practices can release the grip of habits that imprison our spirit. You know, so whether it's the inner habit of judging and doubting ourselves, are the ways we go and seek approval from others or the habits of over-consuming alcohol or other substances, whatever it is. Mindfulness and compassion, there are superpowers. Speaking personally, since I was a child, addiction played a significant role in my life. My mother was an alcoholic. She went into recovery via A.A. 12-step program when I was 16. For many years, I struggled with an eating disorder,

other addictive tendencies and habits. My siblings all had their own struggles, saw the same and extended family and friends and fellow teachers and clients and students. It's a very real part of this path that most of us have to look at if we want to really go deeper. As we explore unhooking together, I'll be drawing on examples from my own life and I'll be drawing on examples, others that I've worked with. And I want to invite you to, if you're up for this, you know, to choose something you're working with that you'd like to go deeper on, you know, and some habit you'd like to have more freedom around. And you might choose in these weeks and beyond to more intentionally experiment with the

superpowers of mindfulness and compassion, you know, in service of having more choice. And again, as we do this, I'm using a kind of broad approach. language-wise to addiction, which is whatever unhealthy habit you want to change. Whatever habit feels hard to change and yet you know is not good for you. So if you choose to do this, I really encourage you to enroll a friend or a few people, a friend, someone in the family, whatever, who are also on for working in this way. And if no one comes to to mind, keep reflecting that you're exploring this with a large number of us, those of us online around the globe who really are, you know, consciously seeking more freedom. And I'll suggest,

as we go, some ways that you can actually continue to explore with others more directly. But right now, I'm bringing up the relational element on purpose and from the get-go. In Buddhism and many spiritual paths and also in most addiction and recovery programs, it's clear that we heal and we wake up together. We need each other. We need to realize our togetherness that we're not alone. In the deepest way, addiction arises from feeling disconnected. you know, it's a dis-ease around disconnection.

Our core longing is to belong. We want to know our connection. We want to feel a sense of oneness. And, you know, the words epidemic of loneliness have almost become cliche and yet their truth. More and more people are feeling isolated, that they're not special to others. that they aren't close to others, that they can't trust others, really alone. And the suffering in our world comes from forgetting our belonging to each other, to our earth,

to life. So if we look at the behaviors that we feel are unhealthy, that are hard to change, the addictive behaviors, we may begin to sense more and more that disconnections there and that what's happening is we're actually latching onto substitute ways to feel the pleasures of connectedness, to feel relieving of the pain of separation. And then suffering actually deepens as we pursue those substitutes because then we feel judgment and shame around our behaviors and then that in turn makes us feel even more separate. it. Addiction spiking. This again is not news. It's spiking. We know that it's related to more loneliness, more addiction, but there's something else too that I want to name, which is that we are intentionally

and regularly being exposed to substances and products that are super addictive, all of us. and so I want to spend a little time on this and I hope you'll bear with me because I feel like it's really important and it's interesting. Our survival brain, this is our old brain, the first part of our brain to evolve, our survival brains are dedicated to making sure that we eat and that we are not eaten. Okay? And this is done, the survival brain learns. It makes habitual behaviors that nourish us, that reward us,

where we get the sense of pleasure, of feeling good. So you might think of a cave person pursues calorie-dense food, is rewarded by pleasure, and that reward is strong enough so that that person will remember where it was found and do it again until it becomes a habit. So we're geared to learn behaviors, develop habits that give us pleasure. And we're also geared to learn behaviors and develop habits that help us avoid danger, because that also is a reward to not feel bad. It's a negative reinforcement to not get hurt. So we establish habits that have us pursue what feels good and avoid what feels bad. That's the way the brain learns.

It's reward-based learning. So it makes sense, but here's the glitch, that our old brains programming to pursue the reward of pleasure has not adapted today's world. While some in today's world are an environment of scarcity, that's not the case for most people. And instead, we're exposed regularly to rewards that are designed to be irresistibly strong that lead to overdoing, overconsuming, overusing, and are creating an alarming, you know, spike in addictive behavior. I want to read you a quote. This is from Dopamine Nation by Anna Lemke.

She writes this. We're living in a time of unprecedented access to high reward, high dopamine stimuli, drugs, food, news, gambling, shopping, gaming, texting, sexting, Facebooking, Instagramming, YouTubeing, tweeting, the increased numbers, variety, and potency are staggering. The smartphone is the modern-day hypodermic needle

delivering digital dopamine 24-7 for a wired generation. If you haven't found your drug of choice yet, it's coming soon to a website near you. So the message there, that in addition to the stress of our contemporary world, in addition to our epidemic of loneliness, we're all increasingly at risk because of being exposed daily to highly addictive experiences. And business industry is using technology, is using science, to intentionally addict us.

It's in service of profit. So, since suffering around overconsuming food is one of the most pervasive, I'll take the example of the food industry. And as mentioned, our survival brain emerged in times of scarcity and still acts as if we're at risk of starving, meaning it motivates us to seek out calorie-rich food and gives us an unusually strong and thereby addictive reward for high density ratio of sugar and fat. So, high reward causes addiction. The brain craves for more. It drives us to consume way past when we're full. It creates the compulsive behavior that causes harm. It has us overeating the foods that increase the risk

for heart and circulatory disease, diabetes, obesity. It's called hedonic hunger. It's not related to what our body really needs, but it's the way the brain's been designed to guide us. So again, it's totally appropriate for times of scarcity where there's not much calorie-rich food and the brain's designed to encourage us to load up and it's geared to fight if we tried to lose weight. And in recent decades, what's happened is food industry's hired scientists to engineer food with the exact ratios that set up this reward circuitry.

in the brain and makes us want and eat more and more. Potatoes evolved into potato chips and oats into rich sugary granola. And these are examples with food, but it's not just food that's been engineered to addict us. It happens with anything where pleasure and reward has been hypercharged. So, drugs. You know, we've gone from morphine to heroin, toxicodon, and fentanyl, increasingly addictive, causing the still-growing opiate epidemic, which is affecting all of us, not just certain communities. We can see it in the way technology has been used to addict us to digital drugs, to keep us scrolling online, to keep us playing the video games. We can see it in the addiction to gambling, to pornography, and to technology.

itself. The purpose is to capture our attention, manipulate our attention, and addict us. You know, I always think it's interesting that the two industries where consumers are called users, digital and drugs. So, the addictive capacity of any substance or behavior, it's related to how fast dopamine, which that's the transmitter that's related to reward, how fast it's released into the reward pathway. And I thought this is interesting, just to give you a sense that in a rat, chocolate increases the basal level of dopamine by 55 percent, sex increases that level by 100 percent, nicotine by 150 percent, cocaine by 225 percent, amphetamines, a thousand percent. Just think of that.

The addictive potential. Video games vary, but for some they're as addictive as cocaine and crack and gambling. I read a few months ago in the UK that more people are now seeking online help for Minecraft, it's a game, than crack cocaine addiction. More people for this video game. So it's a serious suffering. I've read stories about how people's careers and schooling and relationships go down the drain due to gaming.

One friend just to share was telling me a couple of weeks ago he realized with his children how much he keeps being drawn to check his phone, you know, to check for emails and texts. And this is when he's on with his children and his deepest self wants to be present and his attention gets hijacked and fractured. So now he's practicing leaving his phone in his home office while he's with his family in the evenings. It's just easy to underestimate the toll that digital addictions take. So, friends, I'm taking time with this because societal forces are fueling these behaviors in all of our lives. And none of us are immune. This is the air we breathe. We're all living in an individualistic society where there's much

deeper sense of separation, of being alone, of being lonely, and we're living in a society that values profit over well-being, which means allowing the development of these readily accessible, highly addictive substances that become substitutes for the real connection. we seek. So it's easy to get hooked and then we take it as a personal failing. Let's ground this in how the trance of the hungry ghost shows up in our own lives. And you might think of all habits no matter which one you're working on as including having a trigger, something that gets us going into it, then the enacting, the actual doing of the behavior, and then some result or reward. And if you take the time to begin to investigate what's going on inside

during this process, you'll see three key signs of trance. And I want to walk through these with you so we can explore them together. The first sign of trance is that we're caught in a compulsion, in a strong urge that's very hard to resist. The second, that we'll look at is disconnection. We're in some way disconnected from our body and our heart and our awareness. And the third is shame that we turn on ourselves in some way. And these are not often part of our awareness during the acting out but we can see retrospectively. So we'll take each one. Let's say you're into video games and tend to overdo them taking time away from directly engaging in important relationships or in your work or sleeping or whatever

it is. And the tricker could be getting restless at a certain time of day or anxious or wanting to procrastinate on something that's unpleasant and in some way you're reminded of the game that you like the best. So there's that compulsion then that arises like, I want to do this. It's got a grasping and there's not so much choice. You're kind of drawing. on to it. And that wanting to do is not just initially with the video game, but you'll notice that you keep wanting to do more. I want to go to the next level. I want to play more. Even though part of you knows that it would be better if you didn't. So that's compulsion. In the world of alcohol, AA, there's a saying that one drink may make you feel like a new person.

and then that new person needs to have a drink. So that's the first sign of trans, compulsion. The second sign, that disconnection, we're not embodied usually and also disconnected from the heart from what really matters to us. In the moments of trance, our executive functioning is not as online, which means that we don't have the big picture. We're not connected to a larger sense of what matters. and we're not being guided by that.

And in a deep way, we're not connected with a sense of our own presence. The Buddha described this as the deepest suffering, forgetting who we are. That's really what trance is about, that we're living in kind of a fragment of ourselves, a driven, wanting self. So often, as I mentioned, when we're in the thick of it, we're not aware of disconnection. disconnected to be aware. But it's not hard when we look back to sense this sign of trance, how during that time are being shrunk. And we can sense it when we were drawn into that wormhole of the video game or YouTube's or caught up in having to check tweets and texts and so on,

or are focused on having another serving of ice cream or another drink. We've lost sight. were shrunken, we're living in a smaller sense of our being. I remember a story that was a conversation between a man and God and the man saying, well, how long is a million years to you, God? And God said, one second. And then he said, well, how much is a million dollars? And God said, it's a penny. And then the man got up his courage and said, God, can I have one of your pennies? Response? sure, just a second. So we've just lost sight. The classic example is when a pickpocket sees a saint, they see the saint's pocket. So we can sense disconnect looking back when we consider that question,

you know, well, what if today was the last day of your life? And if you look through today and see those moments when you were caught in online shopping or a video game or kind of mentally obsessing or caught in eating more than you wanted to be eating, that you weren't connected with presence, that there was trance, that this is not how you'd want the last day of your life to be. So that's disconnection. So the first of the signs of trance compulsion, we're compelled to do something we don't things good for us, and the second is disconnection from our body and our heart. The third sign that I mentioned is shame, being down on ourselves. We did the behavior,

you know, we got the temporary reward of pleasure or relief, but then a bit after, or maybe the next morning or whatever, enter shame. And I like the way it's described as a second arrow. In Buddhism, the first arrow is when we feel that initial pain that something's missing, I need to have something, that compulsion. You know, that's the initial unease and the first arrow. We act out, we do it. The second arrow is, I'm bad for this. I should have been able to control it. Something's wrong with me. I have a cartoon that I like where you see this discouraged young dog on the therapy couch. And the therapist, which is an elderly, shaggy-looking dog, is saying, you're not a bad dog. You're just a dog who does bad things. And I'm not

sure that I picked up the nuance. It's looking pretty shamed. That's the second arrow. It's self-aversion. and it actually leads us to doing more of the same, for the young pup to jump up and eat off the table even more, because we feel bad about ourselves and that badness wants relief, or it leads us to another video game or the next drink. So the important thing about this part of the trance is there's no way to break the situation, of addictive behavior if we are living in self-aversion about the addiction. In other words,

hating the hungry ghost keeps us in the hungry ghost trance. So tag that in your mind because that's really key as we move forward. So these are the signs of trance, compulsion, disconnection, disconnection, shame. Here's the deal. Trance can only exist if it's outside. of our conscious awareness. Now, you might be thinking, yeah, well, I'm aware of the harmful habit, you know, the way I overeat or use pain pills or whatever it is. But when we're in the thick, we go offline, we disconnect, and there's not that much awareness of what's really going on. And without awareness, no choice. We can't make changes. Joseph Campbell has a metaphor that is really, really valuable. He describes what he calls

the circle of awareness. It's a circle and there's a line going through the middle and whatever's above the line is in awareness and whatever is below the line is outside of awareness. It's what we'd call trance. And to the degree that we have beliefs, emotions, feelings of loneliness, longings, urges that are below the line. They not only control our behavior, they trap our sense of identity, they shape who we feel like we are. And in this case, they keep us feeling like we're separate, like we're a wanting, addicted self. they perpetuate trance. So the pathway of awakening from trance is to bring above the line, what is below the line, with mindfulness, with compassionate awareness. It's those two questions,

you know, what is happening right now? And of course we have to pause to find out. And can I be with this? can I meet this with kindness? These are the two questions that help us bring it above the line. So I really do think it's helpful to consider that the beginning of healing the hungry ghost is to bring above the line these basic features of trance, of suffering, to really start noticing the compulsiveness, to start noticing, oh, disconnected, and to start noticing the self-aversion and realizing this hurts. This is keeping me from what I long for, really.

This is keeping me from inhabiting my wholeness. So for me, this became a conscious process bringing above the line. after I joined a spiritual community, I'll share that one event that was particularly notable, I was on a retreat, and this is what unfolded around overeating, that, first of all, to say that in Buddhist retreats, mindful eating is a part of the retreat, is to really notice the whole process of eating. But in the instructions for mindful eating, it doesn't always include all the layers that are truly below the line that need attention. So there I was and I was supposed to be eating mindfully, which means on retreats people eat very slowly and it's all in silence. So there's

a lot of attention to being present. It revealed a lot. First, what I noticed was, The meal, the lunch meal was the big meal and it served I think at 1230. And as we approached that time, I actually could feel my body getting anxious and restless and wanting food, like kind of leaning towards the dining room. And I noticed that I was always trying to be in the front of the line so I could be there right at the beginning. And while eating, I had to go somewhat slowly because it would have been really obvious and weird for me to eat fast when everybody else is eating slowly. But I started

noticing how much I wanted to eat faster and more. And I started noticing that I had to finish whatever was there. I just didn't matter how full it was. And that the richer the food or the more tasty, the more I wanted of it. So I'm seeing the compulsion. I'm seeing, okay, wanting, wanting. And I was definitely disconnected. The signs of it were, and many of you probably can relate to this, I would taste the first few bites and then as I was getting to the last few bites I'd noticed them, but then I'd realized I hadn't really been tasting in between, mostly disconnected from my body, from my senses, more in my mind, busy thinking about things.

Several of those days on retreat, this is a sign of shame here. I would sit at one table for my first portion. I'd get up to the line and get a second serving, but I'd go and find a different place to sit so nobody was aware of how much I was eating. Nobody was seeing me get seconds. And then I'd sit there feeling ashamed, you know, kind of separate and kind of disgusted to myself.

So noticing more during bringing some else, elements above the line was really interesting because one day in particular hours after the lunch meal was probably early evening. I had done some yoga, I had done some sitting meditation. I was outside doing a walking meditation and I was taking in the wonder of the, you know, the deep woods in New England, the great fir trees and the scent and, you know, I stood still by one of them and I could feel that sense of my body and my mind were in the same place, in the same moment. There's really a sense of being at home of connectedness. My senses were

awake, just real basic goodness of being. And then I reflected a bit and I reflected back to a few hours earlier when I was living inside a much smaller place, inside a very tight, compulsive, ashamed sliver of self. And I started weeping just tears for the pain of that forgetting, how the addictive behavior was a kind of forgetting. It was a grasping onto something to make me feel better temporarily, but I was leaving myself. And I felt this real tenderness towards the whole process. And with that, of much more conscious aspiration to wake up from trance and a knowing that the only way I could wake up was through kindness, the only way.

So this became a very active part of my practice and it has gone on and it continues in the ways that there continues to be addictive tendencies and behaviors, bringing the suffering of it above the line. acknowledging, oh, this is suffering and then feeling that aspiration, may I be awake, may I be kind. So I'd like to explore this with you as our reflection, the first in this set of them actually that we'll be doing more next week on really the power of awareness to bring above the line the places that were caught and thereby give us some choice. And in this case, with this particular practice, just to acknowledge the suffering, the three marks of trance, and to feel our aspiration.

That's a very powerful first step. So wherever you are, if you can take some moments to come into stillness, to let the attention go inward, If you're listening to this in a car, you might just listen to it now as you drive, but then come back and do it at a time when you can really let your attention go inward. Take a few full breaths. Really invite yourself right here. And you might choose a behavior that you'd like to deepen attention to, an unhealthy behavior that you know in some way gets in the way of what's possible for you,

might be over-consuming food, or drugs or alcohol, ways that you're hooked on digital kind of screens, internet, texting, YouTube, gaming, maybe it has to do a sleep, or anything that you feel you want to have more freedom around. And with some interest to begin to investigate and bring up a recent time when you realized you were going to investigate. And going to engage with this activity. And just begin with that, where you were and what was going on right before you began the activity as well as you can. And just noticing whatever triggered you got you wanting to do what you were going to do.

And if you can, just to notice the quality of grasping, of wanting, that that kind of drive to go do it, to experience it, to have that pleasure. And it may be before you started or it may be that when you're in the midst wanting more, wanting the second helping or wanting to play another level or wanting to sleep more. And you might even to explore it, sense even the word wanting, feel how it is in your body when you're wanting. Just notice what your body is like. when there's a really compelling wanting. You can almost sculpt it just to feel like, especially if you're in a place where you're alone and can play a little, just get your body into that position of wanting. It may be that you have more fists and you might kind of

have your shoulders hunched and forward and you might feel it kind of tightening through your body or it might be the reaching out for something and trying to grab it. leaning forward, maybe you feel a leaning forward and a grasping with your hands and your fists, but sense what goes on inside you when there's wanting taking over, when you're hijacked by wanting. It's an interesting exploration. Notice the discomfort of wanting. So this is the first part, some compelling experience, some urge, some compulsion. And the second, is to, in a sense, you're looking back when you're doing the behavior, how aware were you of your body sensations, of your emotions? What was the quality of presence? Of relatedness maybe

to other people, to your surroundings? So just scan and sense the degree of disconnected, of cut off, that as you're pursuing what you're wanting, there's a kind of cutoff from your body, maybe from even any sense of what most matters to you in your life. This is the second suffering of trance, that cutoffness, that disconnection. And then recollect what it was like right after doing the behavior or maybe the next morning, how are you relating to yourself vis-a-vis the behavior? Do you like yourself? Is there a sense of judgment of I'm bad or this is bad?

A feeling of badness. If you imagine that others were watching, what's your sense of yourself in the eyes of others? So that to whatever degree, just feel and acknowledge self-aversion, shame, judgment, what that's like. And I'll take a moment to breathe, let the breath help to open you. A few full breaths. You might imagine that you could just in some way transport to sacred space to some place

that's beautiful, safe, inspiring. Just to call forward your wisest, most of the same. loving self. You might call your high self or your future self or your awakened heart to bear witness so that you can look through the eyes and feel with the heart of this awake place. Again, the signs of trance, just recognizing them. Okay, so that's when the small self is caught in compulsion, there's not much choice, when the small self's disconnected, not at home, and when the small self is turned on itself, not liking, and just recognize it, witness it. This is the suffering of trance. And from that place of the awake heart, just feel your care,

the aspiration for freedom. And you might feel it as a prayer in whatever words fit for you. May I be free, may I unhook from this habit. And may I hold what's happening with true kindness, with true compassion. Whatever words fit for you, feel your aspiration now in a deeply sincere way. There's a real power to bringing above the line what's true and holding it with kindness, feeling our aspiration. And if you widen your view right now, just to remember you're not alone that we're exploring this together. And it's a societal suffering.

the loneliness, the stress, the more addictive products. We all have the conditioning, the survival brains that get hooked, and freedom is possible. Freedom is possible. So as you sense, it's just to include others too in your heart, our whole larger society and world, that we all can awaken from trance. we all can open to the potential of awake hearts and minds. Okay, a few breaths if it helps you, if your eyes are closed, opening your eyes, we'll be continuing to deepen our exploration of this next week.

For this week, I invite you to practice bringing above the line the different elements of suffering of the hungry ghost trance. Just witness, notice, and remember your aspiration for awareness and kindness. You don't have to try to change anything. Trust in the power of awareness right now. Awareness will do it. I just want to say once again, friends, that this is an essential part of the spiritual path, mindfully, caringly unhooking, and it's also essential in healing our world. You know, in the shamanistic traditions, healing addiction is considered a path of soul recovery. And it's done in community with the understanding that, you know, we all forget and to some degree lose contact with our essence, our shared essence, you know, with the loving awareness

that is who we are. And the gift of unhooking, it reconnects us. It's soul recovery. It doesn't matter whether you're unhooking from chronic worry thoughts, from smoking, from over-exercising, from romance novels, from drugs, it's the same deep process of recovery, of reconnecting with your own presence and heart and with our living world. So we'll close with a... It's drawn from a poem of a very dear friend poet, Dana Falls, as you might if it helps you just to close your eyes and take it in. Despite illness of body or mind, in spite of craving, despair or habitual belief, who you are is whole.

Let nothing keep you separate from the truth. The soul illumined from within longs to be known for what it is. Undying, untouched by the storms of life, there is a place inside where stillness, and abiding peace reside, you can ride the breath to go there. Despite doubt or hopeless turns of mind, you are not broken. Spirit surrounds, embraces, fills you from inside out. Awaken through all that hides that light. Awaken into the love and fullness that is the truth of who you are.

Namaste, friend. Thank you for keeping company on this path of awakening and freedom. Blessings and love.