Deeksha and Addictions

When I wrote about my personal experiences at the Oneness University, I mentioned how skeptical I was before I first went to India to see Sri Bhagavan. What helped convince me that this "enlightenment thing" might work was the 300+ accounts of others who had experienced Bhagavan's deeksha energies of enlightenment. (Thank goodness I like to read.)

One of the accounts that impressed me so much was from a young man in Scandinavia who had been instantly healed of his drug addiction after he received a deeksha (Oneness Blessing). A similar account is documented here by a psychotherapist.

Another man, who attended a deeksha event with severe doubts as to the effectiveness of deeksha, went from smoking over two packs of cigarettes a day to having no desire for them at all after receiving the Oneness Blessing.

Many others have reported the same experiences of deeksha ending their addictions, so I was especially excited when one of the dasas from the Oneness University recently explained the physiology of how this actually works in the body.

He also suggested the following, interesting two-step approach. (I edited his words for brevity and clarity).

--P. J., July, 2007

Healing Addictions Through Deeksha:

Oneness Blessings will definitely help your addictions, but there is something else you can do. That is to simply pay attention to what is happening inside of you when you are in the process of indulging in the addiction.

There is always a psychological trigger that is producing the physical addiction. We don't pay attention to the psychological trigger because it is painful. It is the emotional pain that is pushing us into the addiction. So when you're indulging in the particular process of addiction, pay attention to what is happening inside of you.

You will see fear, or you will see some past memory that you're trying to run away from. You will see guilt or hatred, or something else that you don't want to see.

Since the mind is unable to deal with this problem, or to give a solution to this problem, it is creating another problem for itself--mainly the addiction. The problem that needs to be solved is not the addiction, it's the internal problem the mind is finding hard to face.

When people aren't able to face a painful crisis in their lives, they start dreaming and fantasizing a very beautiful future for themselves. This is how an addiction begins.

So start paying attention to yourself; see how your body feels; see what is happening inside yourself. As you're picking up a cigarette or a drink of alcohol, or whatever, is your heart pounding? Are you feeling uncomfortable? Do you feel as if you are going to cry, or something?

Watch all that. That is your story that you are running away from. Pay attention to all this, then ask AmmaBhagavan, "Please remove the charge in all these memories. Please help me become free of the pain."

Normally people don't want to get out their addiction because it helps keep them from feeling their negative past or fear or whatever. But what happens in the long run is that the addiction becomes a neuron track. The neurons in the brain keep firing in the same way, and the addiction becomes biological. It is now no longer just psychological.

Addictions in the beginning stages are emotional or psychological, but eventually they become biological. That is when the neurons take over, and it starts becoming biological. When it becomes biological you may finally come to the realization that you're going down a wrong path, and you want to back out. But you find it's too late, because the body has taken over.

Once the addiction becomes biological it is an external problem, not an internal, emotional problem that you can become aware of and just stay with to heal. This is an external problem, and it helps to take action and fight it.

As long as it is emotional or psychological we can still help ourselves easily, but when the body starts getting involved then it becomes more difficult. But it can still be helped, because the deeksha can actually effect the neurons and make them flow differently.

If you have the awareness in the internal world, that will actually give you the motivation to develop the willpower in the external world. So we are talking of a combination of the two--awareness for the internal world, and willpower for the external world. Between these two Grace will also be happening to help heal you.