Last night I was strongly inclined to run out and grab some beer. The mountains, as I’ve written many times before, is a place I strongly associate with drinking. Sometimes when I’m up here, I feel like I’m in some kind of drinking autopilot.
Zero ; 11teen & Dozen ; M: 137 ; C: 100!! ; P/U: 60 ; W : 5 mi
Health R.O.S.
- Weight: 206.0
- BMI: 27.9
- Fat %: 21.2
What stopped me was my ’11teen’ and being on the verge of hitting a ‘Dozen’. I did not want to break the chain. If I can get to Tuesday, I’ll have a new sobriety total of a 15er. That would also mean that I would have only drank once over the course of a month.
However, I did cheat a little, and did a little addiction head fake with my old friend sugar. Being fully aware of my tactical use of ‘addiction replacement’, I plan to continue to use sugar sparingly and with mindfulness.
Autopilot & The World of Illusion
I took advantage of the extra quietness of early morning to practice an extended meditation. Today’s focus was Loving Kindness and Compassion. This Lojong guided meditation ran about 23 minutes. By the end of the meditation, I felt very distinctly a warm, healing light emanating from my heart.
I decided to continue on silently after the initial 23 minutes ended. During this extended meditation, the warm, healing light grew stronger and the fog, mitote, maya, and illusion encircling me began evaporating. Openings appeared.
Through the openings, through the breaks in the fog, I caught glimpses of a truer reality. One without a self to take things personally or feel anxiety about the temporary and transitory challenges that come with being alive. I saw a reality where all things are connected. Separateness melted away.
The Buddhists & The Toltecs
I recently finished rereading The Four Agreements after having read several Buddhist and Taoist themed books. Revisiting Don Miguel Ruiz’s excellent book of Toltec wisdom with this new perspective as I meditated and witnessed the fog (mitote’) melt away filled me with powerful emotion.
Several intellectual dots connected. I suddenly saw the alignment between ancient Toltec wisdom and Buddhist philosophies. This, despite their being separated from one another by vast amounts of time (thousands of years) and space (thousands of miles and several oceans).
Both philosophies deal heavily in the concept of the illusion of self. Buddhists call this maya. Toltecs call it mitote’.
Whatever you call it, the idea is that we all live under an illusion of ‘I’ whose primary purposes are self preservation and ego protection. What peaked at me through the holes in the fog was the understanding that these purposes, particularly ego protection, may be some of the primary drivers of my addictive tendencies. The very things that have put me on addiction autopilot and conspire to keep me there.
The Judge & The Victim
As Don Miguel Ruiz relays in his books, the Toltecs believed that there is a Judge and a Victim who share residence within the human psyche. The Judge is the voice that incessantly reminds you of every mistake you’ve ever made. It is a force that punishes you over and over again for mistakes you made over a lifetime. It’s that voice that constantly reminds you of the stupid things you did when you were a kid or that time you embarrassed yourself at your best friend’s wedding.
The Victim, then, willingly receives this mistreatment. The Judge dishes it out and the Victim takes it. But what justice is there in for punishing yourself in perpetuity for a mistake you made when you were a kid, or many years ago? What is the purpose of punishing yourself for the sum of a lifetime of mistakes?Especially, when you’re probably the only one who remembers or ever thinks about the vast majority of them.
It’s no wonder so many of us find solace in alcohol and drugs. The Judge and the Victim have us on some kind of self flogging autopilot. So, we willingly embrace the pain relief to be found in the numbness of self medication, artificial and fleeting as it is. The irony is that this cycle of the judge, the victim, and the numbing only thickens the fog of illusion and puts you at risk of never finding your way out.
Liberating Yourself From The Judge’s Autopilot
I’ve found a huge benefit of daily meditation, mindfulness, and RAIN has been a steady quieting of The Judge’s nagging voice. These tools have broken the cycle of what I like to call ‘looping regrets’ – those crazy reruns of your life’s worst moments that play over and over again in your head with no resolution. With the end of my looping regrets came the end of my brutal self judgement.
I have learned that if the Victim stops listening, the Judge stops talking. Full stop.
As my mindfulness deepens and my intellectual curiosity grows, I am discovering that there is no solace to be found in external numbing agents such as alcohol and marijuana. Instead, I am able to develop it internally as I banish the Judge and further distance myself from the Victim. I’ve stumbled upon the intersection of two ancient contemplative traditions that appear to be incredibly complementary.
With each passing day I feel an inner freedom blossoming in the wake of my liberation from the Judge and the Victim. The patches in the fog continue to grow wider. I am remaking my ‘dream of the world’ without the mitote’ inducing agents (alcohol and pot) obscuring my way.
Today I am 100 days free from pot! I’m convinced that smoking pot places a huge fog machine in the brain and clouds the mind for many days following its use. After 100 days, my mind is sharper, my memory is vastly improved, and my productivity is through the roof. I’ve found a new kind of happiness.
While I continue to struggle with alcohol, I cannot ever see myself using marijuana ever again.
