At the mercy of things
Do you or a loved one need addiction services right now?
Feeling at the mercy of things is a sign of “mithya yoga,” wrong Yoga, a state of connection to what will bring us away from Yoga and disconnect us from the self. The way the mind interacts with the world is through the senses. This is exactly why we need to clean our mind of it’s baggage: it causes us to act impulsively. What’s in the mind determines how we perceive, and how we act, and it all happens at warp speed, bypassing reason.
Something within us is always looking and seeing. Just like us when we wear glasses, it sees and interprets the outer world through the lens, in our case, of mind. Included is all we’ve been through, all we’ve been taught, all we’ve learned, as well as it’s impact on our emotions and nerves. So, the chain of command is faulty, and we don’t see clearly.
The boss may represent someone who hurt us, we may act childlike, lose a job, then use a substance to numb and thwart the potential we have to heal instead of addressing our way of processing authority figures. The drink, substance, device, food, shopping, sex represents a false savior that will temporarily render us free of the pain we experience as we stress, often deep down inside. But every time we reach for it, what is in the lens thickens, and our senses obey its command. “help, save me!” by using and abusing.
This Yogic model of perception turns the tides from being seduced by the objects of our desire to choosing wisely. When we empower the self through daily mental hygiene, the clearer mind sees external objects of desire exactly as they are, not as a self-medicative remedy. They loose their seductive powers as we learn to sooth our nervous systems, process our trauma and heal. The cookies aren’t the remedy, nor are the smokes, drinks, porn, shopping websites or pills. The remedies are what Yoga helps us to find, day by day, night by night, as we recover.
There is no moral defect associated with addiction. Addiction is a symptom. Trauma experienced in the past is a root cause. We want to heal; however, ongoing coping mechanisms lead us to connect to the wrong things, even when we intellectually know they are harmful.
Yoga works at the level of dysregulation that remains from the stress we have not yet alleviated, the stress that remains from childhood, adolescent and adult traumatic experiences. The stress that we desperately want to remove, that drives addictive behavior.