Explore and overcome your addiction
A cat
Nowadays, cat is not forced not to be a cat anymore.
It used to be like that in the circuses. Remember? But it is a dying business. We care for the animals too much to support such treatment any longer.
Cat is now allowed to be a cat no matter what happens to it. Somewhere the cat is accepted the way it is and is loved, elsewhere it is not being accepted at all. The cat stays where it is welcomed and accepted for what it is. Unless you close it behind walls, in an appartment, for example.
A dog
Dogs are the opposite. They stay with their masters no matter what. They are pack animals, not individuals like cats. They allow us to conform them to our norms, expectations, to treat them badly, but they still stay with us and love us as they think they did something wrong to make us gods angry at them.
Each individual dog decides which dog will be it’s master, by giving into ways of the dog they select as superior one. They conform. Find their place and live this way. Sometimes they try again to rise to top but they are sure they will meet hard opposition that will threathen their existance in the worse case. No pack, no survival. Better a bad pack, then no pack at all.
A human being
What am I then? Human being they say. What is then a human being, if cat is a cat, if dog is a dog? In this circus of life who am I and what have I been trained to be?
In essence, human being has a free and individual soul like a cat. And it works, lives and enjoys in packs. A mix of somekind I would say. Hmmm. What? How does this work? Let’s think about some of famous quotes I have remember lately. Somewhere in the line of:
»Be what you are and find your pack.«
»Find a group of people where you belong without conforming.«
»If you need to change the way you are to belong, then this is not where you belong.«
As a child you are not able to have this perspective, as you need to be accepted in order to survive. So »life training« for the circus the life is, starts from the moment we are born. So we do not even see what is being done to us. Unless we are blessed with parents who encourage us to find our calling and support us without criticism, we do not even stand a chance to know who we are.
A human soul
Human being is responsible to take care of their soul themselves. No one else can do it for them. No matter how many arguments are there to support belief others are creating their destiny. Each human being is given a unique soul, unique set of capabilities, talents. Each human being is to define themselves, regardless of the human being body we have been given.
»Human soul is an unique package we carry inside a human body.« Miha Kožuh
Our souls have outgrown our limited human bodies. All due respect to my body, it is a marvel of nature’s engineering, but it is true. We enhance and extend our bodies using parachutes, planes, cars, prosthetics, clothes, plastic nails, flippers, glasses, surgeries etc. We have taken our bodies where our soul already exists and where it wants to go.
It is up to the individual to find their own extension of the soul. Their own »path«, their own »purpose«, however you would like to call it. Their own soul’s true »shape«, »form«, »size«, »weight«, »colour«,…
An addiction
Remember the cats and dogs in the circus? They need to comply or else. We all know what else. But the questions is, how old are you when you decide you will not go for »else« option. When you are a child, of course you do not choose the »else« option.
»Addiction is caused by the circus of life we have joined at birth.« Miha Kožuh
Majority of our lives appear as perfect to people around us. House, wife, kids, car, vacations, photos on social media. We perform according to expectations. But we usually live an inner hell. At least I did. Therefore we compensate with addictions to calm down our urges to break free of inner hell. We eat too much, use anti-depressants, smoke, drink, neverending list.
»Addiction is a call for something else. Addiction is when I am doing something I don’t want to do and I can’t stop doing it regardless of the consequences.« Dean Taraborelli
I see addiction as a resistance method to avoid my soul’s evolutionary step forward. Soul is a cat. On the other hand my ego is a dog, which wants to make sure I am safe, a part of a pack, Ego is terrified of the steps into the unknown a cat wants to make. It cannot protect me as good as it could if I remained in a pack.
Being a cat in a pack based dog world is dangerous. One against a pack. That’s how our ego understands the world around us.
Addiction is a means of controling the future outcome of my actions. When the feeling of something not being ok is too strong and I get an urge something needs to change, I get a craving for my addiction. If the first craving doesn’t work out, there are other addictions in store in case my ego needs them. Funny. :)
Food serves a purpose. It allows my ego to have control over my life. Ego is aware there is a soul inside me as well, but does not care as it only serves their own needs. You can see such an example in climate change. Egos are working overtime to provide best possible future to themselves, but they did not care nature was hurting. Now they are aware, but it would be too dangerous to change the system they know, which protects them. Only once they realiye the danger of not changing is greater then the actual change, is when they will change.
It is the same for such a collective ego efforts as for an individual ego effort.
A human being’s choice
»Addiction is a symptom caused by fear holding me back from taking the human being’s decision to be my true self and find a pack I belong to.« Miha Kožuh
Hope you had an opportunity to read Jorge Bucay’s book called The chained elephant. The moral of the story is you need to reconsider your age and capabilities in this moment and realize you are a grown up person now and stronger then when you were a child. You do not need to accept the status quo.
There comes a time when you ask yourself: »A cat, a dog or a human being?« Usually we are presented with two options since we are born, a cat’s and dog’s option. It is one of the first lessons we are tought:
A: Conform to expectations, norms and obligations to be a part of a pack
B: Behave your unique way and have a lonely existance outside protection of a pack.
There is also a less known third alternative that needs no compromise, a human being option, it only requires courage:
The 3rd Alternative: “Behave your unique way and find a pack you belong to. If there is none, create one.”
Express what you trully are, without confinements of your birth given circumstances. Remember the tree at the beginning of this article. Regarding the confinements it found it’s way to grow.
You know you are moving into the right direction when you feel fullfilled, when you can breathe freely, when you do not feel the pressure, when you are not under stress, when you are »at home with ourselves«. When you are yourself.
The goal is to be accepted into a pack for being what you trully are. You feel at home there. People are in search of such packs throughout their lives but often lack courage to join them and be what they trully are.
I only takes courage, nothing else.
No money needed.
Explore your addiction and overcome it
Overcoming your addicitions clears your path to exploration. Clears the road for you to find what you trully are. It helps you break free from your inner hell if you decide to do so.
The way I approached my addiction was a standard diet way many many times. Like wast majority of people. Of course, did not work out. Now I turned the table. I called it a FOOD EXPERIMENT.
STEP 1: Make an experiment
What happens if I do not comply with my urge? What happens if I persist and not give in? What will I see that I am so afraid to see and acknowledge?
When you get the urge, stick right through it and look what’s on the other side. As it is an experiment, it is fun, as you are an explorer. You do not need to do anything, just watch what happens and follow the toughts. Write them down each time. I did it on a daily basis, sometimes skeeping few days when there was nothing new to write, but once I made progress I wrote it down at the end of the day.
An example, you quit watching TV. What will you use this time for? You cannot just sit down and do nothing. Or can you? Or I do not eat a snack when I get the urge to snack. What do I do then? Well in my case, I paused. Waiting what will come out of it. What will happen. What will I feel, see, hear, what is there I do not want to know about.
Sometimes nothing happened, the urge just passed away and I calmed down. Other times I got a lot of info why I am doing it. I started to feel why I am doing it. In my case, this was a stress relief technique I learned during my childhood. It was a vent for my feelings I was afraid to express to anyone in my life.
The LEGO thing? Well, it was an imaginary world I entered each time I played, it was my meditation technique I was not aware of. It was my escape.
STEP 2: Acknowledge you are addicted.
I know it is hard.It is the only way. Feel this confession deep down in your gut, heart, you need to feel release of pressure when you do it. If not, you only recogniyed it with your mind, and now with the whole self.
Addiction does not mean you are a bad person. It means you are a human being, who’s only available solution how to cope with life’s challenges was to compensate with food, when faced with feelings that cannot be expressed.
STEP 3: Find alternatives, don’t compromise
What can I do instead, that will help me get better? Of course starting smoking is not the solution here. What non-addictive action I can do, to go through the moment, when I feel the urge?
My choise was to breathe deeply, to walk it out, do some exercise, focus on positive toughts and positive ourcome, think about the solution to this challenge. If it is really hard and your hands might be shaking, mind goes cloudy etc., meditation is the solution for me.
STEP 4: Just keep doing it.
It will become natural way of coping with your feelings after a while. Find a close person to talk to confidentially during this process. Find yourself a life coach, if there is no one you can talk to. We all know the famous statement »Just do it.« Let it be your guide in this process.
Explore all your addictions and evolve
My main addiction is food. In case this one fails to calm me down, there are others in store as mentioned before. Still searching for all there are, but one of them in LEGO. Yes, LEGO blocks. Funny. :)
And then the cactus collection that I lost track off in time. The list keeps growing as I explore my addictions. Anybody biting their nails?
Try to imagine all of the worlds addictions, things people do not to think about how their life is. Things people do to avoid thinking about how do they feel. Running can be a sport or it can be an addiction, for example.
Some addictions might be supportive. Think about which addictions are good for you and support your progress and which ones do not. Get rid of the ones holding back your soul’s evolution. Maybe at one point of life an addiction supports you but later you outgrow it.
Miha Kožuh
March, 2021
