Bad habits and self-love
Knowledge removes ignorance (3min read)
This week, I’m sharing my response to a very profound question I received from a student, which I felt would be widely relevant and relatable.
The student was having some concerns over his struggles with substance addiction—specifically cannabis—and asked how I might go about kicking the habit.
Every single one of us has a relationship with something or other, be it sugar, television, Instagram, or toxic relationships, which would meet the definition of an addiction, in that we know it is destructive to our life and well-being, but continue doing it anyway.
As it happens, I was an avid daily cannabis user for about 13 years, so I’m intimately familiar with the way that can go, but the concept is easily applicable to any kind of thoughts, behavior or action we wish to cease.
My answer was as follows:
Your questions about substance addiction are profound and indicative of an already well-developed level of awareness.
It is that same awareness that will be the key for you to nivar tatvam or 'transcend where you are.'
Awareness begets knowledge. And knowledge removes ignorance.
As we continue to meditate and remove stress from the psycho-physiology, our conscious awareness grows. Our vision becomes not only broader, but sharper—we become aware of more while also becoming more finely attuned to each phenomenon.
As this happens, we become more aware of the principle of cause and effect.
We become more aware of the relationship between specific thoughts, behaviors, and actions and specific outcomes in our lives.
Right now, you're doing great "research" on the topic of substance addiction, and it sounds like you've already begun to notice the unwanted effects it’s causing in your life. You are gaining knowledge about this relationship.
As your awareness continues to develop, you'll become even more aware of this relationship, and you'll start to notice it in more ways and in more places.
So, you're already well on your way.
The next step is making a conscious decision about what you're going to do with that knowledge.
This decision is ultimately an act of love for yourself.
I also had a very close relationship with both of this same vice in my own life, for many years. I used cannabis every day for about 13 years.
I had some degree of awareness that it was causing negative effects in my life, and for a long time, I wanted to stop, but not quite badly enough to actually stop.
That's because for a long time, I had convinced myself that the negative effects were outweighed by the positive.
But in hindsight, I was simply ignorant to the most important negatives.
I was what people would call a functional stoner—I got my work done and was successful, so it was hard to question.
But I didn't have the knowledge about what it was really doing to my brain and body.
Eventually though, as my meditation journey continued to expand my awareness, I found my teacher Thom and was called to train as a teacher with him.
Thom is a PhD in neuroscience, in addition to being a maharishi, and during the first year of my training, he shared with me the neuroscientific perspective on the biochemical effects of cannabis usage.
I have published that information in its entirety here in a separate post.
Once I read it, I decided right there that I was done, and I never looked back or even thought about smoking again.
It was a very easy decision, once this knowledge had removed my ignorance.
Many people think the key to successfully making a life change like this is about suppressing your desires, but it's not. That can work, but it's the long, hard, difficult road often paved with struggle and relapse.
This is why so many people who join addiction groups wind up simply transferring their addictive energies to something else—binging on candy instead of cocaine, smoking cigarettes instead of using drugs, etc.
To be clear, I am not discounting the value of those groups, but rather suggesting that their effectiveness is bolstered significantly when paired with a meditation practice to expand one’s awareness of cause and effect.
The real key is becoming aware of your Big-Self desires and deciding that you love yourself enough to prioritize those desires over your small-self desires.
For me, I wanted sustainable, lasting happiness, not the cheap rollercoaster highs and lows.
I wanted to have more time to work on creative projects and become a morning person and actualize my full potential.
Those are Big-Self desires.
So I never needed to suppress my desire to use cannabis—it simply took a backseat to more important desires, once my awareness brought me knowledge of the full scope of the cause and effect of my actions.
Today, your rapidly expanding awareness has facilitated your arrival at this same knowledge.
Love is a verb. It's easy to say we love ourselves, but how do we show it?
What better way than to make decisions for ourselves that will make us happy for the long term instead of the short?
And now that you have the knowledge, the decision will be an easy one.
What does Big You want for your life?
Let’s discuss these ideas and others during Collective Effervescence, our online group meditation series, this Sunday March 12 at 8am PT / 11am ET / 5pm EU. Drop in for meditation only (first 30 min) or stay for discussion + Q&A on this and other life topics from the Vedic perspective.
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This week’s music by one of my favorite artists of all time, notorious cannabis user A$AP Rocky, who quit smoking when he realized it was messing with his mind. Pharsyde is a record about finding home in yourself and the unmatched value of self-love compared with anything else in life.