Excerpt from The Seat of the Soul
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Excerpt from The Seat of the Soul
I have owned Gary Zukav's book The Seat of the Soul for years and every so often I pull it off the bookshelf and read it again. This passage is so powerful to me, and I thought it might be helpful to someone out there today trying to break their addiction. The whole book is fantastic and I highly recommend it.
Mods I hope it's ok that I've posted this. If it breaks any rules please remove it.
The greater the desire of your soul to heal your addiction, the greater will be the cost of keeping it. If your soul has chosen to heal an addiction now, you will find that the decision to maintain your addiction will cost you the things that you hold most dear. If that is your wife or your husband, your marriage will be placed in the balance against your addiction. If that is your career, your career will be placed in the balance.
This is not the doing of a cruel Universe or a malicious God. It is a compassionate response to your desire to heal, to become whole. It is the compassionate Universe saying to you that your inadequacies are so deep that the only thing that will stop you will be something of equal or greater value in opposition to your inadequacies. This is the same dynamic that is expressed in terms of space and time and matter by the second law of motion: "A change in the momentum (mass, direction of movement, and speed) of a body in motion is directly proportional to the force affecting the body in motion, and takes place in the direction that the force is acting." By the magnitude of the costs of your addiction you can measure the importance of healing it to your soul, and the strength of your own inner intention to do that.
Try to realize, and truly realize, that what stands between you and a different life are matters of responsible choice. In your moments of fear, what you are obscure about in your thinking is the power and magnitude of your own choice. Recognize what your own power of choice is. You are not at the mercy of your inadequacy. The intention that will empower you must come from a place within you that suggests that you are indeed able to make responsible choices and draw the power from them, that you can make choices that empower you and not disempower you, that you are capable of acts of wholeness. Test your power of choice because each time you choose otherwise you disengage the power of your addiction more and more and increase your personal power more and more.
As you work through your weaknesses, and you feel levels of addictive attraction, ask yourself the critical questions of the spirit: If, by following those impulses, do you increase your level of enlightenment? Does it bring you power of the genuine sort? Will it make you more loving? Will it make you more whole? Ask yourself these questions.
This is the way out of an addiction: Walk yourself through your reality step by step. Make yourself aware of the consequences of your decisions, and choose accordingly. When you feel in yourself the addictive attraction of sex, or alcohol, or drugs, or anything else, remember these words: You stand between the two worlds of your lesser self and your full self. Your lesser self is tempting and powerful because it is not as responsible and not as loving and not as disciplined, so it calls you. This other part of you is whole and more responsible and more caring and more empowered, but it demands of you the way of the enlightened spirit: conscious life. Conscious life. The other choice is unconscious permission to act without consciousness. It is tempting.
What choose you?
If your decision is to become whole, hold that decision. You will not be as tempted or as frightened as you think. Hold it and remind yourself again and again: You stand between your lesser self and your whole self. Choose with wisdom because the power is now fully in your hands. Do not underestimate the power of consciousness. As you live and make conscious choices each moment and each day you fill with strength and your lesser self-disintegrates.
As you choose to empower yourself, the part of you that you challenge, the temptation that you challenge, will surface again and again. Each time that you challenge it, you gain power and it loses power. If you challenge an addiction to alcohol, for example, and you are drawn twelve times that very day to have a drink, challenge that energy each time. If you look upon each recurrence of attraction as a setback, or as an indication that your intention is not working, you choose the path of learning through fear and doubt. If you look upon each recurrence as an opportunity that is offered to you, in response to your intention, to release your inadequacy and to acquire power over it, you choose the path of learning through wisdom, for that is what it is.
The first time that you challenge your addiction, and the second, and the third, you may not feel that anything has been accomplished. Do you think that authentic power can be had so easily? As you hold to your intention, and as you choose again and again and again to become whole, you accumulate power, and the addiction that you thought could not be challenged will lose its power over you.
Mods I hope it's ok that I've posted this. If it breaks any rules please remove it.
The greater the desire of your soul to heal your addiction, the greater will be the cost of keeping it. If your soul has chosen to heal an addiction now, you will find that the decision to maintain your addiction will cost you the things that you hold most dear. If that is your wife or your husband, your marriage will be placed in the balance against your addiction. If that is your career, your career will be placed in the balance.
This is not the doing of a cruel Universe or a malicious God. It is a compassionate response to your desire to heal, to become whole. It is the compassionate Universe saying to you that your inadequacies are so deep that the only thing that will stop you will be something of equal or greater value in opposition to your inadequacies. This is the same dynamic that is expressed in terms of space and time and matter by the second law of motion: "A change in the momentum (mass, direction of movement, and speed) of a body in motion is directly proportional to the force affecting the body in motion, and takes place in the direction that the force is acting." By the magnitude of the costs of your addiction you can measure the importance of healing it to your soul, and the strength of your own inner intention to do that.
Try to realize, and truly realize, that what stands between you and a different life are matters of responsible choice. In your moments of fear, what you are obscure about in your thinking is the power and magnitude of your own choice. Recognize what your own power of choice is. You are not at the mercy of your inadequacy. The intention that will empower you must come from a place within you that suggests that you are indeed able to make responsible choices and draw the power from them, that you can make choices that empower you and not disempower you, that you are capable of acts of wholeness. Test your power of choice because each time you choose otherwise you disengage the power of your addiction more and more and increase your personal power more and more.
As you work through your weaknesses, and you feel levels of addictive attraction, ask yourself the critical questions of the spirit: If, by following those impulses, do you increase your level of enlightenment? Does it bring you power of the genuine sort? Will it make you more loving? Will it make you more whole? Ask yourself these questions.
This is the way out of an addiction: Walk yourself through your reality step by step. Make yourself aware of the consequences of your decisions, and choose accordingly. When you feel in yourself the addictive attraction of sex, or alcohol, or drugs, or anything else, remember these words: You stand between the two worlds of your lesser self and your full self. Your lesser self is tempting and powerful because it is not as responsible and not as loving and not as disciplined, so it calls you. This other part of you is whole and more responsible and more caring and more empowered, but it demands of you the way of the enlightened spirit: conscious life. Conscious life. The other choice is unconscious permission to act without consciousness. It is tempting.
What choose you?
If your decision is to become whole, hold that decision. You will not be as tempted or as frightened as you think. Hold it and remind yourself again and again: You stand between your lesser self and your whole self. Choose with wisdom because the power is now fully in your hands. Do not underestimate the power of consciousness. As you live and make conscious choices each moment and each day you fill with strength and your lesser self-disintegrates.
As you choose to empower yourself, the part of you that you challenge, the temptation that you challenge, will surface again and again. Each time that you challenge it, you gain power and it loses power. If you challenge an addiction to alcohol, for example, and you are drawn twelve times that very day to have a drink, challenge that energy each time. If you look upon each recurrence of attraction as a setback, or as an indication that your intention is not working, you choose the path of learning through fear and doubt. If you look upon each recurrence as an opportunity that is offered to you, in response to your intention, to release your inadequacy and to acquire power over it, you choose the path of learning through wisdom, for that is what it is.
The first time that you challenge your addiction, and the second, and the third, you may not feel that anything has been accomplished. Do you think that authentic power can be had so easily? As you hold to your intention, and as you choose again and again and again to become whole, you accumulate power, and the addiction that you thought could not be challenged will lose its power over you.
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Thank you zenchaser. I had a feeling for a number of years before I quit that it was a life mission for me to learn finally to reject alcohol.
It was a very important thing to do and when I finally managed to do it, things began to shift (in some ways quickly and in some ways less perceptibly).
Now that I have spent more than a year free from alcohol, I am learning there is another mission for me in this life, and I am finally ready to take it on.
It is my belief that I could not ever fulfil my deeper purpose here until I had ridden myself of alcohol. It may well be the same for many of us here who are alcoholics. There is that one test - and if we can rise to meet it - we can then go on to do something even more meaningful.
That is why I will never go back to drinking.
It was a very important thing to do and when I finally managed to do it, things began to shift (in some ways quickly and in some ways less perceptibly).
Now that I have spent more than a year free from alcohol, I am learning there is another mission for me in this life, and I am finally ready to take it on.
It is my belief that I could not ever fulfil my deeper purpose here until I had ridden myself of alcohol. It may well be the same for many of us here who are alcoholics. There is that one test - and if we can rise to meet it - we can then go on to do something even more meaningful.
That is why I will never go back to drinking.
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I believe that my soul is here to learn and heal from addiction. It is why I was born into a family of addicts and why I've experienced it in my life.
What will come next for me now that I've quit for good is a mystery! Time will tell.
If you challenge an addiction to alcohol, for example, and you are drawn twelve times that very day to have a drink, challenge that energy each time. If you look upon each recurrence of attraction as a setback, or as an indication that your intention is not working, you choose the path of learning through fear and doubt. If you look upon each recurrence as an opportunity that is offered to you, in response to your intention, to release your inadequacy and to acquire power over it, you choose the path of learning through wisdom, for that is what it is.
This part sticks out to me. To look at that attraction as a way to release it and to not fear that the craving means failure, but rather an opportunity to empower your intention. That's big.
What will come next for me now that I've quit for good is a mystery! Time will tell.
If you challenge an addiction to alcohol, for example, and you are drawn twelve times that very day to have a drink, challenge that energy each time. If you look upon each recurrence of attraction as a setback, or as an indication that your intention is not working, you choose the path of learning through fear and doubt. If you look upon each recurrence as an opportunity that is offered to you, in response to your intention, to release your inadequacy and to acquire power over it, you choose the path of learning through wisdom, for that is what it is.
This part sticks out to me. To look at that attraction as a way to release it and to not fear that the craving means failure, but rather an opportunity to empower your intention. That's big.
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Zenchaser, I LOVE Gary Zukav. It was The Seat the Soul that made me believe that I could do this. I love the gentle nature of Gary's words. He spoke to me in terms that reached me and most importantly, he made me feel worthy at a time when I loathed myself.
I have such a debt of gratitude to him and his gentle soul. My copy of the Seat of the Soul is near my bed, dog-eared and marked with highlighter and I always smile when I see it.
I have such a debt of gratitude to him and his gentle soul. My copy of the Seat of the Soul is near my bed, dog-eared and marked with highlighter and I always smile when I see it.
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Originally Posted by zenchaser 
If you challenge an addiction to alcohol, for example, and you are drawn twelve times that very day to have a drink, challenge that energy each time. If you look upon each recurrence of attraction as a setback, or as an indication that your intention is not working, you choose the path of learning through fear and doubt. If you look upon each recurrence as an opportunity that is offered to you, in response to your intention, to release your inadequacy and to acquire power over it, you choose the path of learning through wisdom, for that is what it is.
This part sticks out to me. To look at that attraction as a way to release it and to not fear that the craving means failure, but rather an opportunity to empower your intention. That's big.
When I am 'drawn' to have a drink (craving/AV) I no longer fear that 'craving' (AV) and I internally smile and simply view it as another opportunity to show my power over it and then 'release' it (dismiss the craving/AV).
No more fear - just freedom.
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If your decision is to become whole, hold that decision. You will not be as tempted or as frightened as you think. Hold it and remind yourself again and again: You stand between your lesser self and your whole self. Choose with wisdom because the power is now fully in your hands. Do not underestimate the power of consciousness. As you live and make conscious choices each moment and each day you fill with strength and your lesser self-disintegrates.
This part also reminds me of AVRT. He puts a more spiritual spin on it, but the message is the same. Making that distinction between your lower and higher self and challenging those thoughts/ urges without fear or doubt, but rather empowerment and a way to learn.
Anna is right, he has a gentle, wise way about him that speaks to me as well. Reading it again has me really looking at other aspects of my life, particularly in my reactions to things. No matter what the situation I can choose one way to react and set one response to that reaction in motion, or I can choose another reaction and set a different energy exchange in motion. It can be as small as the words I choose to speak, the energy and intention behind them. It's a solid book.
This part also reminds me of AVRT. He puts a more spiritual spin on it, but the message is the same. Making that distinction between your lower and higher self and challenging those thoughts/ urges without fear or doubt, but rather empowerment and a way to learn.
Anna is right, he has a gentle, wise way about him that speaks to me as well. Reading it again has me really looking at other aspects of my life, particularly in my reactions to things. No matter what the situation I can choose one way to react and set one response to that reaction in motion, or I can choose another reaction and set a different energy exchange in motion. It can be as small as the words I choose to speak, the energy and intention behind them. It's a solid book.
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Join Date: Aug 2003
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Originally Posted by zenchaser
Reading it again has me really looking at other aspects of my life, particularly in my reactions to things. No matter what the situation I can choose one way to react and set one response to that reaction in motion, or I can choose another reaction and set a different energy exchange in motion. It can be as small as the words I choose to speak, the energy and intention behind them. It's a solid book.
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