From Russia Without Love 2: A Textbook Example of Addictive Behavior

I was beginning to feel a bit like one of the Volga Boatmen running back and forth to the Russian Embassy in Rome. Another day there, a little more suffering. A little more suffering, a little more insight. I'm living a Dostoevsky novel, apparently--The Idiot, perhaps.

Check out this video to get the full flavor of my morning:

The Vice Consul was unaware when he sold me the 95-Euro visa that the new computer system at the consulate could not be coaxed into issuing a visa on a passport that had less than six months to live. It was an honest mistake. "So since it was your honest mistake," I asked politely, "hows about a refund?" The response was a resounding "Nyet."

On the brighter side, it looks like I will get most of my money back on my apartment reservation and air fare. The airfare requires some sort of documentation from the Russian Consulate for a full refund. Stay tuned for "From Russia Without Love 3."

Hot on the heels of yesterday's pain-body attack, I managed to remain conscious throughout all of this bad news, laughing off the visa's final death knell.

But on the way home, I'd had enough. I needed to take some personal time, do something just for me. That's where the addictive behavior came in.

It was funny because just the day before, I had read this passage from Eckhart Tolle's The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment:

Another aspect of the emotional pain that is an intrinsic part of the egoic mind is a deep-seated sense of lack or incompleteness, of not being whole. In some people, this is conscious, in others unconscious. If it is conscious, it manifests as the unsettling and constant feeling of not being worthy or good enough. If it is unconscious, it will only be felt indirectly as an intense craving, wanting and needing. In either case, people will often enter into a compulsive pursuit of ego-gratification and things to identify with in order to fill this hole they feel within. So they strive after possessions, money, success, power, recognition, or a special relationship, basically so that they can feel better about themselves, feel more complete. (pp. 45-46)

This was exactly it! After weathering the diminishment of my ego all day, I engaged in "a compulsive pursuit of ego-gratification" on the way home.

What was this compulsive pursuit? It doesn't matter. It could have been anything from throwing back several beers to doing some unnecessary shopping to wearing women's lingerie (it wasn't this one; "Methinks thou dost protest too much"; seriously dude, it wasn't this one). What exactly it is that will strengthen an ego is as varied as people are.

The hallmark of addictive behavior is that it takes you over and makes you do things you wish you wouldn't do, and those things, whatever they are, make you feel unique or special--and that doesn't necessarily have to be in a good way.

A woman might have sex with random men, for example. A man might get off on shouting at servers in a restaurant. You just never know with addictions. Many are benign. Some, like crystal meth, are toxic.

Eckhart has more to say on addictions in A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose:

A long-standing compulsive behavior pattern may be called an addiction, and an addiction lives inside you as a quasi-entity or subpersonality, an energy field that periodically takes you over completely. It even takes over your mind, the voice in your head, which then becomes the voice of the addiction. It may be saying, "You've had a rough day. You deserve a treat. Why deny yourself the only pleasure that is left in your life?"

Yes! That's exactly what it said this afternoon. Sorry, Eckhart. Pardon the interruption. Please continue:

And so, if you are identified with the internal voice due to a lack of awareness, you find yourself walking to the fridge and reaching for that rich chocolate cake. At other times, the addiction may bypass the thinking mind completely and you suddenly find yourself puffing on a cigarette or holding a drink. (pp. 246-247)

This wasn't exactly how it went down for me because, having just read The Power of Now passage above, I was completely aware of what was going on. And as always, awareness brought one critical fact to my attention: I don't consciously feel "a deep-seated sense of lack or incompleteness, of not being whole," as Eckhart put it.

So working backward from the fact of this addictive behavior I don't like, that must mean that I have this deep-seated sense of lack or incompleteness running around inside me . . . and it's un-conscious.

I didn't realize that. I honestly didn't realize it. This is good. This is really good stuff.

Because now that I do realize it, the light of awareness will burn that silliness away in short order.

And that's how it works.

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