Hotel California
Last thing I remember, I was running for the door. I had to find the passage back to the place I was before. “Relax, ” said the night man, “We are programmed to receive. You can check-out any time you like, but you can never leave!” (Hotel California, The Eagles)
They say once an addict, always an addict. For the record, I am not an addict. Never was and never will be. Yet, I can resonate with that feeling of being stuck to some dark feelings.
In the olden days when the AOL and MSN adult only communities were still going strong, I enjoyed exchanging sexual fantasies with other folks. Nothing ever happened other than talking with other folks who wanted to take a mental trip to the “wild side”. I actually didn’t have a problem with that at the time, but I knew that I had to change directions when my spiritual awakening process started.
Many years have passed since, and I have put this all behind me. Not because I am suddenly so proper, but for the simple reason that I learned the hard way that these sex fantasies caused havoc with my spiritual path.
But having turned my back to it doesn’t mean that I am completely free from it either. Give me a stressful day at work, a sleepless night and the pull of the full moon and all the cravings come back.
Today, however, I just ignore them. Gone are the days when I got drunk and used pornography to let some steam off on these dark soul nights. So my will-power and determination has gone up not to go down that road ever again, but the feeling of restlessness, of emptiness may linger for a while longer. I just accept it. I write, I listen to music, or interact with the folks in Australia, Europe and the few US night owls within the Spiritual Networks community when I wake up at 2am. And after a day or two, the dark feeling is simply gone.
I accept what goes through me without accumulating new baggage; it is as simple as that. The shadow process of saying good-bye to all these compulsive habits lasted a few years. It has to be a process because you have to learn what the demon wants to tell you.
For me it was the realization that I was born a lion even though I was raised a lamb. That I have to honor the desire to be celebrated even though my super-ego tells me to be humble. The shadow images were so different from what I felt I was all about. My demon held up the mirror for me and together we crafted the guy we both like.
Along this rocky road I learned to get in touch with my suppressed feelings and I had to learn how to express myself and how to stand up for myself at work.
That process of becoming a more empowered human being is still going on. It is a process and it is often painful to override life-long habits – but every day I show up at work and do my best to change.
This is how you beat an addiction or a compulsive habit in the end, by overriding the underlying psychological problem.
I have a hunch that when I look back in a few years, many of the inner conflicts I am dealing with will be a distant memory.
“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way”, is the beginning sentence of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. The same with the shadow process! Some people drink too much, some people love too much, and some starve themselves to death. It doesn’t matter what the imbalance on the surface might be, beneath it, there is always a lingering psychological home-work that one hasn’t yet done. But the empowering message of each shadow dance is that the demon with the grotesque facial expression has a beautiful message for you once you are willing to look closely.
If you struggle with some compulsive habits, use the opportunity to become that “better self”. This process of empowerment is mostly behind me and I can honestly tell you that I love what I see in the mirror these days.
Source: spiritualnetworks
