This book will be of great benefit both to millions of people who are trying to get rid of bad habits themselves, and to millions of their relatives and friends who seek to help these people solve their problems.
Dr. Deepak Chopra offers a completely unexpected look at bad habits, on what they are, and on the people who succumbed to them. Despite the fact that bad habits bring us both physical and emotional suffering, this book is about pleasure and prosperity, love and hope, health and happiness.
In essence, a person suffering from bad habits is a seeker of happiness, but he is looking for it in the wrong place, and wanders - perhaps for many years - in roundabout ways.
True happiness is a return to the deep harmony of the body, mind and spirit - the harmony that was characteristic of you at birth and can be found again. Having restored it, a person will no longer feel the need for stimulants, depressants and all that needs to be bought, hidden, stabbed, inhaled, turned on and off. None of this was necessary for you in childhood, when a sunny day and the love of loved ones were enough to overwhelm you with happiness. This openness to love, this ability to connect with the outside world is still with you, and you can easily and painlessly revive it.
PART ONE
WHAT ARE BAD HABITS
LOST IN SEARCH
Among the most serious problems of our society concerning human health, bad habits and their consequences are, in my deep conviction, far from the last place. Cardiovascular diseases, respiratory diseases, many forms of cancer, AIDS - these are just some of the ailments that are directly or indirectly caused by bad habits. This little book is thus an attempt at a very concise treatment of an extremely large and complex problem. At first glance, this may seem like a daunting task. Perhaps someone will consider trying to figure out the most difficult issues related to addictions in a couple of hundred pages as a certain self-confidence. And yet I am sure that even such a small book will be of great benefit both to millions of people who are trying to get rid of bad habits themselves, and to millions of their relatives and friends who seek to help these people.
In other words, realizing how diverse the difficulties that arise in our society due to the bad habits of millions and millions of people, I nevertheless proceed to implement my plan with optimism and zeal. The reason for this is quite simple: despite the fact that we have to talk here about the deepest physical and emotional suffering, this book is about health and happiness, pleasure and abundance, love and hope.
I understand that in itself such a positive attitude is somewhat unusual. Too often, our efforts to deal with bad habits are poisoned by anger, intolerance, and desperation. Sometimes it sounds open, as, for example, in expressions like the “war on drugs” or scary stories about how addiction ruined someone's career and ruined someone's life. In other cases, this negative orientation is not so direct: consider, for example, the dreary setting of many "centers" where patients are asked to deal with their problems on their own and where a circle of plastic chairs awaits them in a room with linoleum on the floor and fluorescent lighting.
Fear of the past, fear of the future, fear of using the present moment to find true happiness - how many fears the path of a person prone to bad habits is littered with! Integral part many methods of getting rid of such habits is also fear. However, for most people, a fear-based approach cannot be a means to long-term success. Therefore, I intend to offer here a completely different view of bad habits and addictions - what they are, and the people who succumbed to them.
The addicted person appears to me as a seeker who, alas, has gone astray. This is a person who is looking for pleasure, and maybe even some kind of transcendental experience - and I want to emphasize that such a search is worthy of every encouragement. Such a person seeks in the wrong place and in the wrong place, but he strives for things of great importance, and we cannot afford to ignore the significance of his search. At least at first, the addict hopes to experience something wonderful, something beyond the unsatisfactory, if not intolerable everyday reality for him. There is nothing to be ashamed of in such an endeavor. On the contrary, it becomes the basis for true hope and true transformation.
EDUCATION OF THE SPIRIT
Man does not live by bread alone.
This well-known image appears in both the Old and New Testaments, and its meaning is quite clear. In fact, it means that our needs are not limited to satisfying only material needs. However, it is worth paying attention to how categorical this statement is. Spiritual satisfaction is presented as a fundamental vital need, comparable to the need for food. In essence, all other religions and spiritual traditions are on the same positions: in order to live, we need "food for the soul."
In my opinion, this is true in a completely literal sense. The state of our spiritual life is directly related to the functioning of our body, including metabolism, digestion, respiration and all other types of physiological activity. But we often neglect our spiritual needs or underestimate them. Of course, there are some signs that such behavior is gradually being replaced by something else - people are regaining awareness of spiritual values. And yet, the materialistic orientation under which we have been under the influence for so long has had very serious consequences, closely related to the prevalence of addictions in modern society.
Since we are not fully aware of the need for spiritual attainment, it is not surprising that many people misunderstand the true needs of the human spirit. They discover a myriad of hyper-stimulating activities and just as many ways to relieve tension, replacing them with a state of "really high class" - exactly the deep experience that Robert Johnson calls ecstasy.
This is a pity, because we need ecstasy. We need it as much as we need food, water and air. But in modern Western society, this fundamental human need is not fully recognized. Over the past thirty years, we have made significant progress in understanding how much our physical environment has deteriorated, and in overcoming these kinds of trends. But so far we have not succeeded in realizing our spiritual needs with the same decisiveness. I see the problem of bad habits as a direct consequence of this fundamental oversight.
ACTION, MEMORY, DESIRE
Whenever I want to understand what a miracle and happiness is, I mentally return to that bright and beautiful day when I went for a walk with a little three-year-old girl, my neighbor's daughter.
Despite the fact that we then only walked around our cozy, but nothing particularly remarkable residential area, it took us almost an hour. It turned out that everything we saw and heard became for us a joyful discovery and an occasion for enthusiastic discussion. Again and again we stopped to look at the cars parked on the curb. My young friend chirped happily about their color, size, shape, and even wanted to touch each of them. Equally enthusiastic attention she paid to the flowers growing in the flower beds, and the sounds of a fire engine reaching us from afar. When an airplane flew over our heads, we immediately stopped and began to look at the sky until it, turned into a tiny speck of dust, melted into the distance. And, of course, we waved after him.
This walk around the block led me to some very important conclusions. So, it was obvious that in fact the source of pleasure for the girl was not at all what we encountered, in itself. Pictures, sounds, objects - all this was for her only an excuse to express the feeling that was already present in her. This feeling did not come from something in outside world; on the contrary, it was projected onto the world from her heart and soul. In my opinion, happiness is exactly the word that best characterizes this state of self-generating pleasure.
Most people, at least adults, do not experience happiness walking around the block, and for good reason. Children live in a world of pure contemplation. For them, visual images, sounds and objects exist in order to enjoy them, to play with them, and not at all in order to use them. But in the life of adults, everything is subject to duties. Walking on a sunny day, we perceive the world around us as an illegible mosaic of colors and patterns, while our consciousness is focused on one or another problem, which we currently consider the most acute. Whatever this kind of experience is called, it is anything but happiness.
But imagine that such a preoccupied adult, walking, staring at the sidewalk, suddenly discovers something completely unusual in his field of vision. A hundred dollar bill! The effect will be almost magical! Problems that seemed so all-consuming until now, from such luck immediately - at least for a while - disappear somewhere. If this happened to you, a list of things that can be done with this hundred dollar bill would immediately flash before your eyes. Perhaps you will not regard this incident as something that has changed your life, but you will surely begin to think of it as something very good - and your state of consciousness will change dramatically. What will you feel? I'm sure you immediately thought of this word: joy.
DEFINING YOUR MENTAL-BODY TYPE
Ayurveda is the world's oldest system of knowledge about human health, designed to prevent and cure diseases. It arose two and a half thousand years before our era and existed for many centuries before Hippocrates and other ancient Greek healers. In fact, it is very likely that the ancient Greeks were influenced by the ideas of Indian medicine, brought to Europe from the East along busy trade routes. Today, when the limits of what can be achieved with a purely mechanistic view of the human body are already being seen, the powerful ideas of Ayurveda and other traditional health systems are regaining great importance for the West.
Perhaps the most important of the ideas of all Ayurveda is the principle that one can understand and tame the disease only by first knowing the patient. This view, shared by healers of many traditions, sometimes finds no support in modern medical practice, which has too many patients and relies on widely available medicines, and therefore, it happens to lose sight of the individual needs of the patient. In order to really find out the condition of a person, along with his height, weight, blood pressure and other physiological parameters that are usually guided by modern medicine, you need to take into account his mental, emotional and even spiritual constitution.
Ayurveda teaches that it is very unreasonable to distinguish between mind and body, since these are two inseparable elements of a single whole, which is any human being. When it comes to addictions, the subtle connection between consciousness and body becomes especially important. The thought of action, the desire to carry it out, is the real source of this problem. The notion of a rigid division between emotional state and physical illness, in the end it turns out to be completely useless in relation to addictive types of behavior.
Over the centuries of its existence, Ayurveda has developed an extremely effective terminology for expressing the relationship between mind and body and described the types of manifestation of these relationships in each individual person. According to Ayurveda, the Universe is created, shaped and organized by consciousness manifesting itself through the five elements: Ether, Air, Fire, Water and Earth. In the mental-corporeal system of a person, these five elements are embodied in the form of three fundamental governing principles, called doshas. It is thanks to the doshas that the energy and information of the Universe are present in the body and life of every person.
Each of the three doshas has a characteristic effect on human physiology:
AYURVEDIC QUESTIONNAIRE FOR DETERMINING MENTAL-BODY TYPE
This questionnaire consists of three sections. The first 20 questions are related to Vata dosha: read each sentence and note (on a scale of 0 to 6) how it applies to you:
0 - this does not apply to me;
3 - relates to me partially (or sometimes);
6 - applies to me almost completely (or almost always).
At the end of the section, write down the total score for your Vata. For example, if you marked 6 on the first question, 3 on the second and 2 on the third, then in total for the first three points you score 6+3+2=11 points. In the same way, give answers to all other questions of the section and get the full amount of points for your Vata. Then move on to the next 20 questions in the Pitta section and then the Kapha section.
HOW TO DETECT YOUR BODY TYPE
Now that you have received three sums of points, you can determine your body type. Although there are only three doshas, remember that Ayurveda distinguishes ten combinations of them and, accordingly, ten body types.
If one of the three amounts received significantly exceeds the others, then, therefore, you are uniquely related to the corresponding body type.
THREE DOSHAS AND THEIR CHARACTERISTICS
According to Ayurveda, knowing your body type is the first and most important step towards true health. This is especially true of bad habits. Although all three doshas must be present in order to maintain the life of the body, they are extremely rarely present in an individual person in equal proportions. Therefore, it is extremely important to know which of the doshas - Vata, Pitta or Kapha - has the main influence on you. By figuring out your dominant dota, you will be able to recognize in which areas you are most vulnerable to physical or emotional stress. You will also be able to determine what activities and lifestyle changes will best help you restore balance to your mind and body.
cotton wool
Like the prairie wind, Vata is constantly moving, moving, changing direction. Vata is much more variable than Pitta or Kapha, and it is much more difficult to predict what his behavior will be the next day. Vata-type people are characterized by sudden bursts of energy, both emotional and physical, which stop just as quickly. Whether walking, eating, deciding whether to go to sleep, people of this type are consistent only in their inconsistency. This variability is also characteristic of their digestion, mood, emotions, and their general health. The Vata type, for example, is particularly vulnerable to minor illnesses such as colds and flu.
Lightweight, skinny
Everything is done quickly
Irregular appetite and digestion
PITTA
Pitta is like a hot, violent flame; its distinguishing feature is pressure. This resemblance to heat comes through even in the physical characteristics of Pitta-type people, often red-haired and red-faced. By nature, these people are ambitious, sometimes even obsessed, tend to express themselves boldly and argue fiercely. Being in a state of balance, Pitta-type people are gentle and affectionate, their face radiates warmth; they are simply permeated with happiness. However, when stress, malnutrition, or another destabilizing factor comes into play, the aggressive, critical side of Pitta begins to assert itself.
Medium build
Acute hunger and thirst, powerful digestion
Tendency to anger and irritation in stressful situations
KAPHA
Kapha is the most calm and stable dosha, it is far from being out of balance as easily as Vata or Pitta. Kapha brings order and vitality to the body; this is evident in the stocky build of many Kapha people. By nature, Kapha people are calm and optimistic. They are not easily angered. Before taking their own position on any issue, they prefer to take into account all possible points of view. Out of balance, Kapha-type people, however, are inhibited and indecisive. They benefit from diet and vigorous exercise to counteract their natural tendency to become obese. Despite this kind of weakness, Ayurveda considers Kapha people to be very happy: they are usually loving and attentive, and their innate physical stamina protects them from all kinds of diseases.
Strong, powerful physique; great physical strength and endurance
stable energy; slowness and grace in action
Calm, relaxed character; don't get angry
PART TWO
The experience of addiction
ALCOHOLISM
BENEFITS OF ALCOHOL
In discussing the story of my young patient Ellen, I have already spoken of my conviction that, in dealing with addiction to a particular substance, it is important to be aware of both its harmful effects and the pleasure it provides. Undoubtedly, many pleasant sensations are associated with alcohol. There is even documented evidence of its health benefits. And at the same time, when "use" turns into "abuse", the harm from alcohol greatly exceeds the benefits, which, of course, makes itself felt very soon.
One might wonder how people came to drink alcohol in the first place? Historians believe that a primitive man could pay attention to how dramatically the behavior of animals that ate fermented fruits changes. Perhaps someone especially curious decided to find out what makes, say, a deer walk with a staggering gait. And from here, perhaps, it is not far from the skill, even the art that people have achieved in the production of alcoholic beverages.
For many thousands of years, alcoholic beverages and the technique of their preparation have been woven into the fabric of human civilization. Not so long ago, a jug with traces of alcohol was found in Iran - this confirms that wine was produced in the Middle East more than seven thousand years ago. One historian noted that there are only two inventions that are equally common to all cultures: one or another kind of bread or pasta and "the discovery and use of the natural process of fermentation." Wine, of course, is often mentioned in the Bible, both positively and negatively.
The ancient Greek historian Herodotus reports that the rulers of the Persian Empire did not make a final decision on any of important issues without discussing it both in a sober and in a state of intoxication. And in one of Plato's most beautiful dialogues, "Symposium", where questions of love are discussed, we become witnesses of a casual conversation of drinking buddies; The Greek word symposium itself literally means "to drink together." Drinking is also frequently mentioned (and celebrated) in Shakespeare and has figured prominently in the work of countless other writers and artists - not to mention what it has meant in their own lives.
In addition to the historical significance of alcohol itself, drinking underlies social institutions that remain important to this day. TV show "Let's be healthy!" depicts a small tavern as a kind of paradise: a warm atmosphere, old friends meet, talk, get into funny situations ... Very rarely the action of the show is taken outside this tavern, and this would nullify the whole idea of the program. A zucchini can become a refuge, a safe place where you can hide on occasion: this is the meaning of the title of Ernest Hemingway's story about a Spanish cafe - "Where it's clean, it's light."
THE DANGER OF ALCOHOL
Alcoholic products can be considered drinks, but they can also be considered drugs. Essentially, alcohol is a drug that is more abused in the United States than any other drug. According to one remarkable study, alcohol accounts for 85% of all drug addictions in America. In addition, there is evidence that about 13.5% of the total US population is under the influence of alcohol addiction at one time or another in their lives.
The consequences of this sad statistics are extremely serious both for each individual and for society as a whole. Some forms of cancer, for example, are directly associated with heavy drinking, and in esophageal cancer, alcohol consumption accounts for as much as 75% of deaths. It is also not uncommon for excessive alcohol consumption to lead to liver cancer. The result of prolonged drunkenness can be the destruction of the pancreas, stomach, small intestine, not to mention the weakening of the mental ability. Indeed, a detailed list of the destruction produced by alcohol, as well as the bill for the corresponding treatment, would take up more than one page.
The dangers that alcohol brings with it are not limited to its biochemical effects. Despite significant progress in recent years, the high degree of alcohol-related car crashes remains well known; about half of road deaths are still related to drunkenness. Alcohol is involved in one way or another in sixty percent of deaths on the water. In addition, about 30,000 people die each year in non-mechanical alcohol-related accidents of various kinds. vehicles. It is important to note that these figures do not only refer to heavily intoxicated victims. Ultimately, any use of alcohol significantly increases the likelihood of suffering an accident.
The problems generated by addiction to alcohol are very significant in a less sinister sphere. So, drunkenness often causes insomnia. Obesity can also be associated with drinking, and a type of food aversion common among bitter drinkers who sometimes eat nothing, getting calories only from alcohol. A hangover can also be quite unpleasant, the biochemical mechanism of which, despite the abundance folk remedies from this scourge, has not yet been fully explored.
Again, this is only a glimpse into the abyss of misfortune that brings on oneself who is overly fond of alcohol. We would, however, need to take a closer look at what the word "too much" means here, and what the differences are between alcohol craving and truly addictive behavior.
ALCOHOL NEED AND ADDITION TO ALCOHOL
As a physician familiar with Ayurveda, I am not particularly fond of the assertion that there is a clear boundary between the physical and mental, emotional and spiritual components of human nature. Since every thought, every feeling somehow physically manifests itself in our body, it is clear that consciousness and body are in fact a single whole. Nevertheless, it would be useful to make some distinction between the need for alcohol and addiction to alcohol by separating the experience that is perceived as emotional and the experience that gives rise to well-defined physical sensations. In addition, the term "addiction to alcohol", in contrast to "alcohol need", implies the presence in the life of a drinking person of pronounced negative elements, such as troubles at work, legal and financial difficulties, family problems. The need for alcohol, on the other hand, is a more vague concept, meaning a situation where the use of alcohol in one way or another interferes with a person's freedom to enjoy life, no matter how insignificant such interference may seem.
One day I was traveling with a friend of mine who, like millions of people around the world, had a habit of drinking wine with meals. When, by chance, we found ourselves in a restaurant that did not have a license to sell liquor, I realized that my friend did not just enjoy wine at dinner - rather, he was not able to enjoy dinner without wine. When he realized that wine would not be served in this restaurant, such genuine suffering was written on his face that it was out of the question to stay here for dinner. "I just can't eat without wine," he apologized in a drooping voice as we set out to look for another restaurant. He had an inexorable, unchanging craving for alcohol at certain hours.
If there was no alcohol during the meal, my friend felt extremely uncomfortable and felt the need to somehow correct this situation. Unlike complete alcoholics, however, he did not become physically unhealthy without alcohol; such an absence had no noticeable effect on the external circumstances of his life. But despite the fact that alcohol played a relatively small and specific role for him, in my understanding this was already an alcoholic need.
Unlike alcohol craving, addiction to alcohol, i.e. complete alcoholism, can be defined more specifically using a limited number of well-known symptoms and characteristics.
Priorities.
FROM NEED TO addiction
There is nothing surprising in the fact that the need for alcohol often develops into a full-fledged alcohol addiction. This process was described in detail in a series of lectures given at Yale University by researcher E.M. Jellinecom. The results presented by him were obtained by processing questionnaires filled out by more than two thousand alcoholics, and served as the basis for constructing a "model of the disease of alcoholism", which gave a very effective approach to solving this problem. Thanks to his research, Jellinek was able to identify specific and predictable stages of the “alcoholic disease”, sometimes lasting for months or even years. From this point of view, alcoholism can be seen as a chronic system-wide degenerative health disorder, similar to diseases such as syphilis and multiple sclerosis. Recognizing that some drinkers never go beyond the “habit” stage, similar to what we have called the need for alcohol, Jellinek concludes that alcohol addiction goes through four short stages in its development.
ADDITION TO DRUGS
The dream of some substance that would transform reality is deeply rooted in the human imagination. In Vedic literature, a mystical liquid called soma is repeatedly mentioned - the nectar of the gods, which grants immortality to anyone who tastes it. Ambrosia has the same power in Greek mythology. In the Old Testament Book of Exodus, the Israelites were dying of hunger in the wilderness, but God sent them manna that fell from heaven like snow and tasted better than any food imaginable.
Some biblical episodes help us understand what addiction is - in particular, addiction to drugs. Drug addiction seizes people whose life is like wandering in the desert and is devoid of all pleasures and spiritual food. When something is found that promises to take these people to a completely different reality, many of them agree to it simply because, in their opinion, nothing else promises them anything like that. But as we have seen in the case of alcohol, this is the irony of addiction - what begins as a search for pleasure soon turns into a long struggle to avoid suffering.
In the case of a far-reaching drug addiction, the torment caused by stopping the use of the drug far exceeds the pleasure from the resulting euphoria - and even that, when the body gets used to the drug, becomes almost unattainable. Soon it turns out that a person takes drugs only in order to avoid these torments. What seemed to be the gates of paradise, in the end leads only to another desert.
The notion of addiction as a futile but understandable quest contradicts some aspects of the theory that underpins many treatment programs and that addictive behavior is a disease. This theory emphasizes a genetic predisposition to the "addictive behavior infection", which affects its victim in exactly the same way as any other contagious disease. Some supporters of such views argue that a single use of the drug causes irreversible chemical changes in the human brain, thereby giving rise to an irrepressible desire for new portions of the potion. Taking the drug in this case is likened to the bite of a mosquito carrying malaria or yellow fever - once this has happened, the further course of action is predetermined.
However, there are quite obvious differences between the development of drug addiction and the development of an infectious disease. For the development of the disease from the victim of a mosquito bite, no conscious participation is required. The addict, on the other hand, needs to perform a whole series of more or less purposeful actions, and at each stage there is an opportunity for him to "exit", at least physically. After all, he must find a supplier, money to pay, and often also make a whole series of preparations for the use of the drug. The addict also has to decide whether to engage in activities that are strongly restricted by society, both legally and morally, and therefore may result in severe punishment. All of these steps require a choice. I prefer to think that this choice is always conscious, because this means that at each of these stages it may turn out to be different.
KEY POINTS OF NARCOTIC ADDICTION
From the point of view of Ayurveda, the lack of happiness in a person's life is the most important cause and at the same time the main consequence of his addiction. At the same time, there are also a number of well-defined signs of addiction to drug use that manifest themselves in the everyday life of an addict. It is worth paying attention to them both for diagnostic purposes and because they can tell a lot about the psychological state of such a person.
The list of substances that can in principle be addictive is very extensive. Different substances, in addition, differ significantly in their biological, psychological and social characteristics. Powdered cocaine, for example, is generally considered a medium-to-high category drug. In terms of its effect on the body, it differs from its related, but cheaper crack, which is popular mainly among less wealthy people. Amphetamines are more commonly used by long-haul drivers and university students, while opiates, in particular heroin, are used to varying degrees by almost all segments of the population. However, despite the differences between drugs and people who use them, there are certain key elements that characterize addiction as such. Therefore, instead of considering separately each drug or their pharmacological group, we will focus on the general points that are characteristic of addictive behavior in general.
As with alcohol, the use of drugs to change the state of mind or to "relax" has been a part of all human cultures for thousands of years. An analysis of the texts of clay tablets made almost seven thousand years ago in the Sumerian kingdom makes it possible to associate the meaning of one of the hieroglyphs with opium. The context shows that this word, in addition, had the meaning of fun and joy. There is also evidence that the lake dwellers of Switzerland, whose culture originated around 2500 BC, ate poppy seeds, which are natural sources of opium and its derivatives. Saying that drugs have been used since ancient times, however, I do not at all intend to justify their use.
The desire of human society to restrict or prohibit certain types of behavior is no less ancient than the desire to use drugs or alcohol. We find one of the first evidence of this in the biblical story of Adam and Eve, who violated the prohibition of God and ate the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge. Thus, we cannot justify the use of drugs on the grounds that it is completely “natural” for a person, because it is just as natural for him to consider some actions good and others evil. Sometimes, however, these labels have been applied quite arbitrarily, and what was considered good in one century turned into evil in another. Therefore, to speak rationally and objectively about drug use, we need to take into account not only changing social and historical circumstances, but also medical and psychological factors.
Thus, coffee is not considered an illegal drug in modern Western society, despite the fact that strong coffee can cause both physical and emotional disorders. When coffee first appeared in Europe in the 17th century, it immediately became extremely popular. The civil authorities tried to restrict and even prohibit its use, but this proved beyond their power. Across the continent, coffee houses have become favorite meeting places. Coffee lovers were Voltaire and other figures of the Enlightenment, and the French novelist Balzac literally died as a result of his addiction to this drink, which was so strong that at the end of his life he drank coffee as thick as soup.
Eligibility Criteria for GSR-IV
Whether it's gambling addiction, heroin addiction, refined sugar addiction, or cocaine addiction, the experience is akin to a rollercoaster ride—brief periods of gratification are submerged in the larger context of the agonizing expectation of wish fulfillment. However, in the case when the object of addiction is among the prohibited ones, the situation is more psychologically complex. Involvement in illegal activity inevitably raises a serious barrier between such a person and people alien to this activity. From the point of view of the addicted to the illegal, all the people with whom he contacts are divided into friends and foes - into those who can help him get the drug, and those who can give it to the police. Each person is either a friend or an enemy - while most people turn out to be enemies, simply because of the illegal nature of the addict's activities.
An addiction to an illegal substance becomes a defining part of an addict's life. It is through this prism that he views his existence. This is neither a biochemical property of an addiction, nor a feature of the substances that caused it. In hospitals, it is not uncommon for patients to become addicted to morphine or other pain medications used in the course of treatment, but these people do not come to the “me against the world” psychology of illegal drug addicts, for whom the antisocial and mysterious aspects of addiction are a fundamental component of this experience. As one researcher writes in this regard, “For those who have never experienced addiction to [illicit] drugs, it is difficult to understand the importance that addicts attach to their drug of choice ... It is not uncommon for cocaine addicts to admit that if they have to choose, they will prefer cocaine to friends, lovers, and even their family.”
“I can abstain, but I cannot practice moderation,” declared the 18th-century scholar Samuel Johnson. Considering drunkenness immoral, he shifted his choice to tea - and he happened to drink sixty cups a day. However, few of the "addictive personalities" are distinguished by Johnson's insight in terms of their inability to self-control. No one starts using drugs with the conscious intention of becoming an addict, and many drug "experimenters" never get addicted. But usually the addict tends to overestimate his ability to self-control and underestimate the strength of the attachment that has arisen in him. Until the fact of addiction becomes undeniable, the drug user will most often define an addict as "someone who uses drugs more than I do."
DRUGS AND DOSHES
The addiction to drug use begins as a kind of bargain, where momentary, short-term pleasure comes at the cost of risking serious and long-term physical, emotional, and legal problems. An impatient anticipation - sensations, excitement, recognition from one's own kind - is a characteristic element of human behavior in the early stages of drug use. As you get used to it, such impatience often becomes violent, although later it can turn into a dull, apathetic predilection. From the point of view of Ayurveda, the impatience that accompanies the use of drugs indicates an unbalanced Vata. Recall that Vata comes from the air element, and like the wind, this dosha often changes direction and strength, as if it is unable to calm down or be satisfied. To denote a calm and clear state of mind, Ayurveda uses the Sanskrit word sattva, meaning purity.
Drugs have an artificial, external influence on mental activity. Depending on the type of drug, the result of such an influence can be both dulling and temporary exacerbation of feelings. However, the end effect is always a disturbance of the mental balance and the manifestations of restlessness and unpredictability characteristic of an unbalanced Vata. Vata is also a very dry dosha, and the diuretic action of many drugs can dehydrate the body. The resulting constipation and kidney problems are already characteristic of people with unbalanced Vata.
Amphetamines and other stimulants, getting into the human body, strongly and instantly irritate Vata. However, even sedatives and opiates, despite the short duration of their effects, can lead to the same result. In any case, the various symptoms associated with abstinence from addictive drugs are based on Vata disorders, and they must be eliminated with the help of Vata-balancing techniques (presented in the third part of this book).
SMOKING addict
THE HISTORY AND APPEAL OF TOBACCO
Like alcohol, tobacco has had a ritual function throughout its history. The ceremony of smoking the "pipe of peace", which was widespread among some Indian tribes, is well known. It is probably in this context that early European explorers such as Sir Walter Raleigh encountered tobacco. It is Raleigh who is usually given the credit for bringing tobacco to England in the 17th century, although this is, generally speaking, historically unreliable. Smoking has been known in Europe since the first expeditions of Columbus in New World undertaken a century before Raleigh. It is known that one of the members of the Columbus team was imprisoned "for the good of his soul" when, upon returning to Spain, he lit a cigar. By the time he was released, smoking had become popular throughout Europe.
It is interesting to note that smoking from the very beginning caused ambiguous attitude and even protest from secular authorities and religious institutions. In Germany, smoking began to be punished shortly after its introduction. death penalty. In Russia, a smoker could be castrated, and in America as early as 1909, ten states had laws against cigarettes. However, the popularity of smoking among the majority of the population has always been high. None of the harshest government measures could prevent the spread of tobacco smoking; the impossibility of a complete official ban quickly became apparent. Unlike today, the medical community was less anti-smoking than the moralists; European doctors saw in tobacco not so much a vice as a powerful drug. But no matter how officialdom treated it, where tobacco got in, it was impossible to stop smoking.
The turning point in the history of tobacco came with the invention of cigarette rolling machines in the 19th century. Prior to this, tobacco was chewed, snuffed, or smoked in pipes and cigars; the bulkiness of these methods limited the volume of its consumption. But even the first seaming machines could already produce more than a hundred thousand cigarettes daily. In addition, cigarettes made in this way were cheaper and easier to transport. They also burned through faster than other types of tobacco products, which contributed to more frequent smoking. It should be noted that the history of ways of using tobacco and cocaine turned out to be similar. Among the general population, powdered cocaine has been largely replaced by crack, which has a lower cost per serving, a shorter duration of effect, and a "convenience" to use. Even this brief overview reveals an important aspect of tobacco's appeal. From the very beginning it was a simple way of trampling the boundaries of official morality, a kind of risky activity borrowed from the "wild Indians". By the 1920s, smoking in the United States was considered a sign of sophistication, just as at the same time, visiting liquor booths gave people an excuse to turn up their noses at the authorities. There is no doubt that for some groups, in particular for teenagers, this aspect is still an important part of the attraction of tobacco. However, smoking was also a way of showing camaraderie, a demonstration of maturity, spirit and personal identity - such thoughts have certainly visited those who have ever watched films with Humphrey Bogart or Bette Davis. Only in recent decades has there really been a change in attitudes towards tobacco among the general population. But even these recent changes in the United States have affected mostly well-defined groups.
ADDITION TO TOBACCO
No matter how physicians of the past treated tobacco, today almost all doctors warn their patients in the strictest way about the dangers of smoking. And although representatives of the tobacco industry continue to dispute this to this day, the addictive nature of smoking is no longer in doubt.
Tobacco smoke contains about four thousand different chemical compounds - including carbon monoxide, ammonia, hydrocyanic acid and formaldehyde - but it is well known that nicotine is the source of the main psychotropic effects of smoking. Researchers disagree on the potency of nicotine compared to substances like cocaine or amphetamines, but there is no doubt that it has the strongest addictive potential. Of those who have ever tried cocaine, from three to twenty percent eventually become drug addicts, while from a third to a half of those who "experiment" with smoking become heavy smokers. According to studies, the likelihood that smoking will become an integral part of the life of a teenager who smokes only four cigarettes a day is 94%.
There are many approaches to getting rid of tobacco and nicotine addiction. Almost all of them are effective for some smokers and absolutely not effective for everyone else. This suggests that the secret here lies not so much in the approach to treatment, but in the mind and soul of the smoker - and I came to this conclusion based on my own experience.
I started smoking when I was seventeen years old. As the years went by, I made several attempts to quit, but none of them lasted for long. I despised my smoking habit and was angry with myself for giving in to it. Many times, in a rage, I threw away the remaining five cigarettes in the pack, making a promise to myself to end the bad habit. But after an hour or so, every time I stealthily opened a new pack. I noticed that the vicious circle of self-blame and guilt was somehow the mechanism that fueled my habit, but this discovery had no effect on my addiction to smoking. I just worked this chain over and over again. In the language of Ayurveda, my desire to quit smoking was always overcome by the memory of smoking and the desire to smoke again generated by this memory.
Then one evening I went to the ballet. Sitting in a dark hall and admiring the graceful dancers, I heard my own hoarse and whistling breathing. This contrast made a huge impression on me. Brilliant athletes fluttered across the stage in front of me, and I fought to just breathe.
SMOKING OUT: THE AYURVEDIC APPROACH
The widespread popularity of smoking in the world clearly indicates that this addiction is not limited to any particular group of people. As the Ayurvedic approach allows us to see, people of various mental-body types can become addicted to smoking for one reason or another.
Vata people are more likely to use tobacco as a way to discharge excess energy. Rolling in the fingers of a cigarette gives vent to nervousness and restlessness, the characteristic manifestations of unbalanced Vata. Vata types may be more likely than Pitta and Kapha types to quit smoking, but only because they are generally more prone to change. Although it may be easier for them to quit, they are more likely to start smoking again. Few middle-aged Vata smokers have not thrown away their cigarettes at least three or four times.
In Pitta-type people, smoking expresses the desire for strength and self-affirmation characteristic of this dosha. Pitta people rarely allow themselves to be controlled, therefore, no matter how negative a reputation smoking is created, it is unlikely to have any effect on them. In fact, in itself, "playing with fire" - both literally and figuratively - is very attractive to Pitt people. They also tend to have scheduled and ritualized behavior, and are likely to have strong cravings for a cigarette at certain hours, especially after meals.
For Kapha-dominant individuals, smoking is most often the result of their measured and contemplative lifestyle. Many Kapha men are especially attracted to cigars. Sit in a comfortable chair with a huge cigar more Kapha flavor than Vata or Pitta. Like Pitta people, Kaphas can stubbornly brush off advice to stop smoking.
I am sure that the four-step smoking cessation technique described below will be useful for everyone, regardless of their mental-body type. However, as in the case of alcohol, success here depends on the spiritually based confidence that you really want to replace smoking in your life with pleasure of a different kind - satisfaction of a higher order. Before you try to quit, find out what smoking gave you and what it cost you. Get to the point of sincere intention, and then use the method below as a practical guide to putting that intention into action.
addicted to food
It is known that during the years he spent at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton (New Jersey), Albert Einstein was completely absorbed in his scientific reflections. In his book about the history of this institute, "Who took the place of Einstein?" Edward Regis tells of an incident that happened to the great physicist when he was one day walking near his house. He met his junior colleague at the institute, they talked for several minutes and were about to go their separate ways. However, Einstein hesitated:
I'm sorry, but I have one last question for you," he said. - When we stopped to talk, was I walking towards my house or away from it?
Many would probably be surprised by such a question, but those who worked with Einstein were used to such things.
You were walking away from your house, the young professor answered. - I remember exactly.
Fine," Einstein replied with a smile. - That means I've already eaten my lunch.
FOOD AND ADDICTION BEHAVIOR
Newborn babies cry. They don't understand why they are crying, they just feel that something is wrong. But the mother of the newborn knows that the child is hungry, and this matter is quite fixable. When the baby's lips close around the nipple, from which milk begins to flow, something that was wrong begins to be perceived as something good. Where there was pain, there is pleasure. Again, the child does not understand how this happens. He just knows that food makes the world a better place - and hardly anyone will ever forget this connection.
Nature has arranged so that the discomfort caused by hunger is eliminated with the help of food. What about the discomfort caused by hard work, loneliness or irritation? What about the emotional anguish caused by being extremely overweight - can that be quenched with food? Of course, if we are talking about short-term relief, the answer is yes. In the same way, all these problems can be drowned out for a moment by drinking or injecting heroin. But all such half-measures are really a retreat to a state of childhood addiction, an attempt to relive the feeling that a small child experiences when, in some miraculous way, he begins to feel better. Alas, this is one of those areas where we "have no way back." In regards to food cravings, here's the lesson: if you're an adult, don't try to deal with your problems the way you did when you were a child.
If you don't like your job, talk to your boss. If you are unhappy with your loved ones, do not hide your feelings. If you are really hungry, then, no matter how overweight you are, by all means eat. But if you're not hungry, don't eat.
If you are not hungry - do not eat! I want to emphasize this point, because it is in it - the key to overcoming the craving for food. Speaking of alcohol, drugs and tobacco, I tried to draw your attention to both the dangers that these substances bring, and the pleasures they bring. But is it really necessary to talk much about the pleasure that food brings? Of course, there are people like Albert Einstein whose minds are filled with completely different thoughts, but for most of us, food is the most powerful source of well-being. But when food becomes the main source of well-being for a person, or at least the only source of pleasure, he cannot avoid problems.
As with any type of addictive behavior, the main difficulty in overcoming food cravings is finding a positive, truly enjoyable substitute for the craving. It's not just about eating less, it's about doing something joyful instead. In the third part of this book, you'll find some dietary advice, as well as a number of considerations to help you find new sources of joy in your life. You will get a lot of opportunities to try them, because you will free up all the time that you devoted to food without being hungry. Remember: if you're not hungry, don't eat!
FOOD addicts and doshas
Vata, Pitta and Kapha differ from each other in their manifestation in the field of nutrition. But, as in the case of other addictions, a more or less long-term addiction to food usually leads to Vata imbalance. Keep this in mind when reading the descriptions below. Even if you are Kapha or Pitta according to the results of the questionnaire, pay special attention to the information about the eating habits of Vata people. In the third part of this book, you will find nutritional advice specifically designed to pacify Vata.
Irregularity is a hallmark of Vata people's eating habits, especially when this dosha is out of balance. Sometimes such people decide to follow a very strict diet; they may even suddenly become interested in the nutritional value of various products, the possible harm of pesticides and other impurities. However, just as suddenly, they can crave something completely inconsistent with this - ice cream, cakes, red meat, chocolate bars - and it can be quite difficult for Vata-type people with unbalanced doshas to resist such temptations. Such throwing from one extreme to another is somewhat similar to the behavior of a drunken alcoholic and gives rise to the feeling that the life of such a person is not subject to him. Paradoxically, it happens that Vata-type people have a habit of eating something all the time. As in the case of heavy smokers, lighting one cigarette after another, this simply indicates general nervousness.
As in all other areas of life, a characteristic of Pitta in matters of food is the need for organization and predictability. Most Pitta people prefer to eat three meals a day at the same time. At the same time, the composition of the menu is much less important for them than its constancy. Philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, whose ideas are the extreme expression of the views of Pitt-type people, once remarked: “I don’t care what I eat, as long as I eat the same thing every day.” Most Pitta people may not go that far, but they do tend to get frustrated if they have to change their eating habits - just like any other course of action in their life. When such changes occur (which is, of course, inevitable), the irritation that is usually very shallow in Pitta personalities is ready to splash out. Many Pitta food addicts use their food cravings to vent their anger by literally "swallowing their anger". Without realizing it, Pitta individuals with unbalanced doshas may well regard their habitual overeating as an act of rebellion, some kind of challenge to the injustice of this world.
HEALTHY EATING: AN ALTERNATIVE TO FOOD addicts
In the West, foods are classified according to their fat content and calorie content. In recent years, we have also begun to distinguish between so-called natural products and those that are heavily processed and contain various additives. But despite the fact that we use these words when deciding what to eat, most people hardly really understand their meaning. As a rule, people act according to the principle "less is more"; in other words, the lower the calorie and fat content, the better. Given the needs of the individual, this may not always be the case. If, for example, you need to stock up on energy quickly and for a long time, you just need high-calorie foods. Ayurveda uses a food classification system that has stood the test of centuries of experience. It has no numbers, no grams or calories per ounce. Ayurvedic categories are based on how certain foods taste when we put them in our mouths. According to this elaborate system, Ayurveda recognizes six taste categories. By becoming familiar with the six basic tastes and following the important Ayurvedic principle of including all of these tastes in every meal, you can avoid much of what is at the root of food cravings. In addition, food will bring you more pleasure.
These six tastes are: sweet, sour, salty, pungent, bitter, and astringent. Four of them, of course, are familiar to you, but the sharp and astringent may seem like something new. Here are some simple examples of all six flavors:
sugar, honey, rice, flour products, bread, milk, cream;
cheese, yogurt, lemons, plums and other sour fruits;
all salted dishes;
LIMITS OF BEHAVIORISM
Being so prevalent in our society, eating disorders have become the subject of intense scrutiny from both the scientific and business communities. Huge profits await whoever can come up with a quick and easy way to curb overeating, and there are cases of great success in this area - at least in terms of short-term success. However, I would like to re-emphasize the importance of sincere intention and spiritual awareness for any long-term solution to the problem of addictive behavior of any kind.
I want to tell a story that I think perfectly illustrates the limits of a purely mechanical approach to food addiction. It is given by Andrew Weil and Winifred Rosen in their excellent book From Chocolate to Morphine.
The young woman had an irresistible craving for chocolate for a number of years. By all means it was necessary for her to eat chocolate several times a day, and her whole life was literally subordinated to this attraction. If she woke up in the middle of the night and found that there was no chocolate in the house at all, she would not hesitate to get into the car and look for a 24-hour supermarket in order to satisfy her need.
This went on for several years, and she turned to a clinic that dealt with eating disorders. The treatment was not at all what she might have expected, but nonetheless very effective. The clinic made her an obligation to attend ten sessions. She was asked to sit in front of a large mirror, and then handed a portion of chocolates and attached to her wrist a device that continuously applied weak, completely painless electrical shocks.
For thirty minutes she had to watch in the mirror how she eats chocolates - however, she was ordered not to swallow them, but to spit them on a paper plate. At first, this procedure seemed to her something absurd. The first seven sessions did not bring any result. The young woman's craving for chocolate was as strong as ever, and it was only the advance payment that kept her going to the clinic. But after the eighth session, she noticed that her interest in chocolate waned, and by the end of the tenth session, her addiction, however incredible it seemed, disappeared completely. Several years have passed and it has not recovered. Alas, after some time she became addicted to cakes!
OTHER SOURCES OF ADDICTION
So far, we have dealt with addictions due to this or that substance, and found out how they became part of human history almost from the very beginning. Modern society, however, is an environment in which completely new categories of addictive behavior have emerged. In this chapter, we will briefly look at three examples of such "modern" addictions. And although they are not associated with the abuse of certain substances and do not pose an immediate threat to life, these behaviors have all the characteristic features of classic addiction. Recognizing them and resisting them, meanwhile, is almost more difficult. An addiction to work, promiscuity, or television does not imply any illegal activity. Such patterns of behavior are addictive in the sense that they can capture a disproportionately large part of a person's life - if not all of it.
LOVE TO WORK
The word "workaholic" is known to everyone, but this term seems to me not quite accurate. He suggests an analogy between work and alcohol addictions, but they are clearly very different things.
So, we can say about a person who drinks too much that he is "out of control." An alcoholic is unable to control his drinking behavior. As addiction to alcohol progresses, this lack of self-control begins to manifest itself quite visibly: trembling hands, incoordination, difficulty falling asleep or waking up, indicating that the person’s physical, intellectual and emotional control systems are not working properly. For some alcoholics, the inability to control oneself may even represent a kind of subconscious goal or strategy - for example, in psychoanalysis, alcoholism is seen as an attempt to cope with unmet needs that are rooted in early childhood. Losing control over himself, the alcoholic returns to a state in which other people are forced to take care of him. They may or may not agree to do this, but an alcoholic who does not control himself asks them for help in solving elementary life problems, and even insistently demands to help him.
A workaholic behaves in a completely different way. While alcoholism is often an almost childish way of approaching people, continuous work is a way of moving away from them. This is a departure into that area of \u200b\u200blife where self-control is required from a person and skill is highly revered. The behavior of an alcoholic may be based on childhood fantasies, while a workaholic imagines himself to be absolutely adult.
The underlying fantasy that gives rise to an addiction to work almost always comes from a person's feeling that all other areas of life lie outside his influence. A more concrete example here is that the workaholic is often unprepared to cope with the vicissitudes of family relationships: his "don't touch me, I'm working" seems like a completely worthy and even admirable way to get away from them. “Mow the lawn,” “pay the bills,” “buy the dog,” and “don’t forget our anniversary” all pale in comparison to “I’m working! It is very important!".
A few years ago I had a patient - a girl who required long-term treatment and several major surgeries. In the end, everything ended well, but the girl each time had to spend several weeks in the hospital, where the only entertainment was walking along the corridor and visiting the playroom there. Despite the fact that the girl's family lived in small town, located not too close to the hospital, her mother was with her every day, and her father came every weekend.
addicted to sex
Throughout the history of the West, sex has been so condemned and persecuted that criticism of anyone's sexual behavior should be approached with the greatest caution. There are, however, people whose preoccupation with sex is so great that it undoubtedly creates difficulties for them in life. This can be spoken of as an addiction to sex, remembering, however, that there is a dangerous tendency among people to sharply condemn any sexual behavior that is different from their own. On the other hand, we have nowhere to go either from the importance of discussing issues related to human sexual behavior, or from the fact that the latter is a favorite target of moralists.
Sexuality is an extremely interesting and complex subject. Given that we can devote only a small part of the volume of this book to sexual addiction, we will focus here on only two images of the human being that seem to result in such behavior. The first of these is characterized by an overexcited emotional and physical state with a desperate search for a way to discharge it. The second is almost the opposite of the first: a dull existence with an irresistible need for any thrill.
The human nervous system is not capable of simultaneously experiencing pain and orgasm. Since there is no pain at the moment of orgasm, both emotional and physical, this means that the more orgasms a person has, the less pain he will have. I mention this because I noticed that many of those who are addicted to sex are constantly in suffering. Often, especially in men, this suffering is physical. Apparently, therefore, men who have serious health problems are very often addicted to sex. So, the great poet Lord Byron suffered from clubfoot and suffered from severe pain all his short life. And according to current ideas, Byron could well be called sexually preoccupied.
Sex is able to relieve physical and emotional pain not only at the moment of orgasm, but also at all stages of search and seduction. Quite often, a sexually preoccupied person feels the desire and need to be liked, but being deprived of this, sees an alternative for himself in being loved, at least in a physical sense. For people who have found in sex a way to get rid of pain, it brings something like solace. The body of such people is constantly overexcited - in Ayurvedic terms, Vata is significantly unbalanced in them - and they need sex rather to extinguish their inner fire than to rekindle it.
Sexual addiction of the second type arises from a lack of sharpness, the highest manifestation of which is depression. A person sometimes needs to find some way out of his meaningless existence, and sex gives the impression of such a way out. One of my acquaintances was able to end his addiction to sex when he realized this. One of those spiritual transformations happened to him, which, in my opinion, leave a person practically no chance to continue addictive behavior. This acquaintance of mine inherited a large sum of money, so he could afford to spend all his time hunting for women. He favored intrigues that required extraordinary ingenuity, vigorous pursuit, and intercontinental travel. Once, in search of a certain woman, he was rummaging through the islands of the Greek archipelago on a yacht, and then an amazing guess dawned on him. He wasn't looking for a woman - he needed the tension, the ingenious planning, the purpose that women had given to his life. Being deprived of sex and all that it entails, this person really could not find a worthy occupation for himself.
addicted to TV
Television was invented in the 20s of our century, and in ten years the technology for the production of this means of communication was fully developed. Sixty years ago, television was capable of essentially everything that it is capable of today, but the Second World War prevented its wide distribution. Having become available to the public in the late 40s and early 50s, television immediately gained immense popularity. And as soon as televisions began to appear in homes, significant changes began to occur in the lives of millions of people. These changes have continued at an accelerated pace right up to the present day.
Today, millions of Americans spend up to eight hours a day watching television. But can we say that this activity meets the criteria for addictive behavior? Most of the signs say that this is the case. We have found, for example, that the presence of withdrawal symptoms is one of the defining characteristics of addiction, and that television does cause such symptoms. A study was conducted in which randomly selected families were paid several hundred dollars a month to not watch television. However, in many cases the study had to be interrupted prematurely because these people were unable to endure such deprivation. The results of the study showed that, as in the case of heroin, withdrawal symptoms in avid TV viewers appear in the most severe form after five to seven days. These symptoms include feelings of aggression, anxiety, depression, and difficulty making use of the free time. Those who managed to live without seeing the screen for a week later gradually got used to a new way of life for themselves.
Another characteristic feature of addictive behavior is the feeling of guilt associated with it, which in a sense feeds addiction rather than suppresses it. A study of how people spend their free time has shown that of these ways, only watching TV causes feelings of guilt. Other activities were more enjoyable the more time was devoted to them. TV, instead of pleasure, gave rise only to guilt.
There are many other parallels between avid TV viewers and other addictions. Like smoking, it is prevalent mainly among the poor. Like heroin and other drugs, it offers a person an imaginary world, which over time can turn into a different reality for the viewer. And like all addictions, it comes from a lack of genuine pleasures, joys, and accomplishments in other areas of life.
Why do people watch TV for many hours a day? Research conducted among avid TV viewers revealed four main motivations: the desire to escape from the boredom of everyday life; the desire to get something that could be talked about with other people; the pleasure of watching people and events on the screen and the opportunity to compare what you see with your own experience; the desire to keep abreast of news and events taking place in the world. With the possible exception of the last one, all these reasons to watch TV clearly testify to the loneliness and deprivation of an avid TV viewer in real life. When there is real beauty and real adventure in a person's life, he does not need to dramatize it by comparing himself to characters in comedies or soap operas. But if there is nothing but boredom in his life, the fictional adventures of formulaic characters can be a worthy alternative.
Deepak Chopra
How to overcome bad habits
Spiritual path to problem solving
PART ONE
WHAT ARE BAD HABITS
LOST IN SEARCH
Among the most serious problems of our society concerning human health, bad habits and their consequences are, in my deep conviction, far from the last place. Cardiovascular diseases, respiratory diseases, many forms of cancer, AIDS - these are just some of the ailments that are directly or indirectly caused by bad habits. This little book is thus an attempt at a very concise treatment of an extremely large and complex problem. At first glance, this may seem like a daunting task. Perhaps someone will consider trying to figure out the most difficult issues related to addictions in a couple of hundred pages as a certain self-confidence. And yet I am sure that even such a small book will be of great benefit both to millions of people who are trying to get rid of bad habits themselves, and to millions of their relatives and friends who seek to help these people.
In other words, realizing how diverse the difficulties that arise in our society due to the bad habits of millions and millions of people, I nevertheless proceed to implement my plan with optimism and zeal. The reason for this is quite simple: despite the fact that we have to talk here about the deepest physical and emotional suffering, this book is about health and happiness, pleasure and abundance, love and hope.
I understand that in itself such a positive attitude is somewhat unusual. Too often, our efforts to deal with bad habits are poisoned by anger, intolerance, and desperation. Sometimes it sounds open, as, for example, in expressions like the “war on drugs” or scary stories about how addiction ruined someone's career and ruined someone's life. In other cases, this negative orientation is not so direct: consider, for example, the dreary setting of many "centers" where patients are asked to deal with their problems on their own and where a circle of plastic chairs awaits them in a room with linoleum on the floor and fluorescent lighting.
Fear of the past, fear of the future, fear of using the present moment to find true happiness - how many fears the path of a person prone to bad habits is littered with! An integral part of many methods of getting rid of such habits is also fear. However, for most people, a fear-based approach cannot be a means to long-term success. Therefore, I intend to offer here a completely different view of bad habits and addictions - what they are, and the people who succumbed to them.
The addicted person appears to me as a seeker who, alas, has gone astray. This is a person who is looking for pleasure, and maybe even some kind of transcendental experience - and I want to emphasize that such a search is worthy of every encouragement. Such a person seeks in the wrong place and in the wrong place, but he strives for things of great importance, and we cannot afford to ignore the significance of his search. At least at first, the addict hopes to experience something wonderful, something beyond the unsatisfactory, if not intolerable everyday reality for him. There is nothing to be ashamed of in such an endeavor. On the contrary, it becomes the basis for true hope and true transformation.
Calling the addict a seeker, I want to go even further. In my opinion, a person who has never experienced cravings for addictions is one who has not taken the first timid step towards knowing the true meaning of the Spirit. Addiction may not be something to be proud of, but it represents a desire for higher level experiences. And although it is impossible to reach such a level with the help of pills and various kinds of obsession, such an attempt itself indicates the presence of something truly spiritual in a person.
According to Ayurveda, the traditional Indian doctrine of human health, each of us keeps a memory of perfection. This memory is imprinted in every cell of our body. It cannot be erased, but it can be drowned out by poisons and various kinds of pollution. In considering the question of addictions, our real task is not to describe the destructive effect of addictive behavior, but to awaken the consciousness of perfection that we always retain. As a schoolboy, I read the poem Paradise Lost, which is undoubtedly one of the greatest works written in the English language. But I also realized that the paradise that is within us can never be lost in the full sense of the word. We may stop noticing it, but it is always achievable for us.
It has often occurred to me that music is the art form that can most effectively bring us in touch with our inner perfection. Of course, it can be approached from the standpoint of the mind and even perceived as a branch of mathematics, but music, in addition, takes us to a level that is in some way deeper than our conscious thought processes. This can be experienced by listening to music, and even more fully by playing it. Every time I attend a concert, I am struck by the obvious impact that music has on the performer. What he experiences can be called ecstasy. The musician, in the full sense of the word, absorbed in the performance, moves into another reality and experiences completely unaccountable happiness and joy. It's a breathtaking, amazing sight. Such an experience, of course, can become a worthy goal for aspirations in your own life.
In this regard, I recall the once read biography of Charlie Parker, a talented musician who shone in the jazz world of New York in the 40s and early 50s. The best of his saxophone improvisations were not just stunningly fast and intricate - they had a logical coherence and unity. The young musicians who idolized Parker were ready to do anything to play like him, but his musical abilities seemed almost supernatural. What was the secret of his game, his ability to enter that space, not accessible to everyone, where he, no doubt, stayed during the performance?
It so happened that Charlie Parker was not only a great musician, but also a heroin addict. And although his best solos were played when he was not addicted to drugs, it became fashionable among a generation of jazz musicians to use heroin in imitation of their idol. Their impulse is quite understandable and even admirable: they wanted to immerse themselves in that supernatural experience in which another person was before their eyes. However, for many talented people, this had disastrous consequences. Heroin not only failed to lead them to main goal life - to become outstanding musicians, but also turned out to be disastrous for them. They wanted to find a shortcut to paradise, but they obviously turned onto the wrong path. When it comes to addictions, this is the most important point, whether it's drugs, food, alcohol, smoking, gambling, television soap operas, or a thousand other temptations that are present daily in our lives. Addiction begins when you look for the right thing in the wrong place. As the Jungian psychologist Robert Johnson showed in his excellent book Rapture, addiction is nothing more than a degenerate substitute for the true experience of happiness.
EDUCATION OF THE SPIRIT
Man does not live by bread alone.
This well-known image appears in both the Old and New Testaments, and its meaning is quite clear. In fact, it means that our needs are not limited to satisfying only material needs. However, it is worth paying attention to how categorical this statement is. Spiritual satisfaction is presented as a fundamental vital need, comparable to the need for food. In essence, all other religions and spiritual traditions are on the same positions: in order to live, we need "food for the soul."
How to overcome bad habits.
Spiritual path to problem solving
http://www.universalinternetlibrary.ru/
"Deepak Chopra. How to overcome bad habits. Spiritual path to problem solving”: Sofia; Kyiv; 2003
ISBN 5-9550-0149-2
annotation
This book will be of great benefit both to millions of people who are trying to get rid of bad habits themselves, and to millions of their relatives and friends who seek to help these people solve their problems.
Dr. Deepak Chopra offers a completely unexpected look at bad habits, what they are, and people who succumb to them. Despite the fact that bad habits bring us both physical and emotional suffering, this book is about pleasure and prosperity, love and hope, health and happiness.
In essence, a person suffering from bad habits is a seeker of happiness, but he is looking for it in the wrong place, and wanders - perhaps for many years - in roundabout ways.
True happiness is a return to the deep harmony of the body, mind and spirit - the harmony that was characteristic of you at birth and can be found again. Having restored it, a person will no longer feel the need for stimulants, depressants and all that needs to be bought, hidden, stabbed, inhaled, turned on and off. None of this was necessary for you in childhood, when a sunny day and the love of loved ones were enough to overwhelm you with happiness. This openness to love, this ability to connect with the outside world is still with you, and you can easily and painlessly revive it.
Deepak Chopra
How to overcome bad habits
Spiritual path to problem solving
PART ONE
WHAT ARE BAD HABITS
LOST IN SEARCH
Among the most serious problems of our society concerning human health, bad habits and their consequences are, in my deep conviction, far from the last place. Cardiovascular disease, respiratory disease, many forms of cancer, AIDS are just some of the ailments caused directly or indirectly by bad habits. This little book is thus an attempt at a very concise treatment of an extremely large and complex problem. At first glance, this may seem like a daunting task. Perhaps someone will consider trying to figure out the most difficult issues related to addictions in a couple of hundred pages as a certain self-confidence. And yet I am sure that even such a small book will be of great benefit both to millions of people who are trying to get rid of bad habits themselves, and to millions of their relatives and friends who seek to help these people.
In other words, realizing how diverse the difficulties that arise in our society due to the bad habits of millions and millions of people, I nevertheless proceed to implement my plans with optimism and zeal. The reason for this is quite simple: despite the fact that we have to talk here about the deepest physical and emotional suffering, this book is about health and happiness, pleasure and abundance, love and hope.
I understand that in itself such a positive attitude is somewhat unusual. Too often, our efforts to deal with bad habits are poisoned by anger, intolerance, and desperation. Sometimes it sounds overt, as in phrases like the “war on drugs” or scary stories about how addiction ruined someone's career and ruined someone's life. In other cases, this negative orientation is not so direct: consider, for example, the dreary setting of many "centers" where patients are asked to deal with their problems on their own and where a circle of plastic chairs awaits them in a room with linoleum on the floor and fluorescent lighting.
Fear of the past, fear of the future, fear of using the present moment to find true happiness - how many fears the path of a person prone to bad habits is littered with! An integral part of many methods of getting rid of such habits is also fear. However, for most people, a fear-based approach cannot be a means to long-term success. Therefore, I intend to offer here a completely different view of bad habits and addictions - what they are, and the people who succumbed to them.
The addicted person appears to me as a seeker who, alas, has gone astray. This is a person who is looking for pleasure, and maybe even some kind of transcendental experience - and I want to emphasize that such a search is worthy of every encouragement. Such a person seeks in the wrong place and in the wrong place, but he strives for things of great importance, and we cannot afford to ignore the significance of his search. At least at first, the addict hopes to experience something wonderful, something beyond the unsatisfactory, if not intolerable everyday reality for him. There is nothing to be ashamed of in such an endeavor. On the contrary, it becomes the basis for true hope and true transformation.
Calling the addict a seeker, I want to go even further. In my opinion, a person who has never experienced cravings for addictions is one who has not taken the first timid step towards knowing the true meaning of the Spirit. Addiction may not be something to be proud of, but it represents a desire for higher level experiences. And although it is impossible to reach such a level with the help of pills and various kinds of obsession, such an attempt itself indicates the presence of something truly spiritual in a person.
According to Ayurveda, the traditional Indian doctrine of human health, each of us keeps a memory of perfection. This memory is imprinted in every cell of our body. It cannot be erased, but it can be drowned out by poisons and various kinds of pollution. In considering the issue of addictions, our real task is not to describe the destructive effect of addictive behavior 1 but to awaken our ever-preserving consciousness of perfection. As a schoolboy, I read the poem Paradise Lost, which is undoubtedly one of the greatest works written in the English language. But I also realized that the paradise that is within us can never be lost in the full sense of the word. We may stop noticing it, but it is always achievable for us.
It has often occurred to me that music is the art form that can most effectively bring us in touch with our inner perfection. Of course, it can be approached from the standpoint of the mind and even perceived as a branch of mathematics, but music, in addition, takes us to a level that is in some way deeper than our conscious thought processes. This can be experienced by listening to music, and even more fully by playing it. Every time I attend a concert, I am struck by the obvious impact that music has on the performer. What he experiences can be called ecstasy. The musician, in the full sense of the word, absorbed in the performance, moves into another reality and experiences completely unaccountable happiness and joy. It's a breathtaking, amazing sight. Such an experience, of course, can become a worthy goal for aspirations in your own life.
In this regard, I am reminded of the once read biography of Charlie Parker, a talented musician who shone in the jazz world of New York in the 1940s and early 1950s. The best of his saxophone improvisations were not just stunningly fast and intricate - they had a logical coherence and unity. The young musicians who idolized Parker were ready to do anything to play like him, but his musical abilities seemed almost supernatural. What was the secret of his game, his ability to enter that space, not accessible to everyone, where he, no doubt, stayed during the performance?
It so happened that Charlie Parker was not only a great musician, but also a heroin addict. And although his best solos were played when he was not addicted to drugs, it became fashionable among a generation of jazz musicians to use heroin in imitation of their idol. Their impulse is quite understandable and even admirable: they wanted to immerse themselves in that supernatural experience in which another person was before their eyes. However, for many talented people, this had disastrous consequences. Heroin not only did not lead them to the main goal of life - to become outstanding musicians, but also turned out to be fatal for them. They wanted to find a shortcut to paradise, but they obviously turned onto the wrong path. When it comes to addictions, this is the most important point, whether it's drugs, food, alcohol, smoking, gambling, television soap operas, or a thousand other temptations that are present daily in our lives. Addiction begins when you look for the right thing in the wrong place. As the Jungian psychologist Robert Johnson showed in his excellent book Rapture, addiction is nothing more than a degenerate substitute for the true experience of happiness.
EDUCATION OF THE SPIRIT
Man does not live by bread alone.
This well-known image appears in both the Old and New Testaments, and its meaning is quite clear. In fact, it means that our needs are not limited to satisfying only material needs. However, it is worth paying attention to how categorical this statement is. Spiritual satisfaction is presented as a fundamental vital need, comparable to the need for food. In essence, all other religions and spiritual traditions are on the same positions: in order to live, we need "food for the soul."
In my opinion, this is true in a completely literal sense. The state of our spiritual life is directly related to the functioning of our body, including metabolism, digestion, respiration and all other types of physiological activity. But we often neglect our spiritual needs or underestimate them. Of course, there are some signs that such behavior is gradually being replaced by something else - people are regaining awareness of spiritual values. And yet, the materialistic orientation under which we have been under the influence for so long has had very serious consequences, closely related to the prevalence of addictions in modern society.
Since we are not fully aware of the need for spiritual attainment, it is not surprising that many people misunderstand the true needs of the human spirit. They discover a myriad of hyper-stimulating activities and just as many ways to relieve tension, replacing them with a state of "really high class" - exactly the deep experience that Robert Johnson calls ecstasy.
This is unfortunate, because we need ecstasy. We need it as much as we need food, water and air. But in modern Western society, this fundamental human need is not fully recognized. Over the past thirty years, we have made significant progress in understanding how much our physical environment has deteriorated, and in overcoming these kinds of trends. But so far we have not succeeded in realizing our spiritual needs with the same decisiveness. I see the problem of bad habits as a direct consequence of this fundamental oversight.
In every culture, in every era of human history, people have felt the need for an ecstatic experience - for enjoyment of one kind or another that goes beyond everyday reality. Various cultures have tried to satisfy this need in many different ways, and some of these ways have turned out to be much more spiritually oriented than others.
In the 19th century, the Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevsky argued that a person can feel satisfied only by receiving three types of experiences from society - miracles, sacraments and spiritual guidance, and that these experiences are much more important for him than the satisfaction of material needs. A person who is addicted to this or that addiction seems to believe that through it he can gain miracles and mysteries, and the lack of spiritual guidance makes such a view all the more seductive. Instead of considering addicts as simply weak people, or even criminals, I prefer to see in them those who are destructive to themselves, but still quite understandably respond to the spiritual vacuum hiding behind our material abundance.
We all feel the effects of this spiritual vacuum. Depending on who we are and the circumstances we find ourselves in, we respond to it in one of many ways. However, in our society, the human response to essentially spiritual aspirations often takes on material forms.
I remember a friend of mine who, as a very young man, achieved impressive success in business. In his early 40s, he had the means to do or have literally anything he wanted. And he really wanted something, but he wasn't sure what it was. Anyway, he bought a summer house by the lake. To get to this house, he bought an expensive jeep, and so that, when he got there, he had something to do, he bought a boat. In addition, he acquired a state-of-the-art cell phone in order to be able to monitor the progress of his business from a jeep or boat.
In a word, the usual story that happened many times with financially successful individuals. By purchasing a house, a car, a boat, and a telephone, my friend was in no way closer to true self-realization than he had been before. The result was only that he fell into an even more oppressed state of mind, and the long-term consequences of this are still observed. So, for example, the boat turned out to be a very convenient place for quite plentiful libations.
My friend is a wealthy man and, by and large, a strong personality. That's probably why his obsession with acquisitions didn't hurt him much. But for a person with less financial resources or, say, for a more vulnerable person, this could have rather detrimental consequences in the form of unpredictable mental addictions. Alcohol, drugs, sexual recklessness are essentially material responses to needs that are not inherently physical. But if a person cannot imagine where, apart from the sphere of simple sensuality, he should look for true pleasure, it is not surprising that he does not find it.
In his book The Lost World of the Exhibition, published in 1939, computer scientist David Gelenter uses the New York World's Fair as a starting point for his analysis of the then society. His conclusions seem to me quite clear and convincing. Toward the end of the Great Depression and just before the start of World War II, the World's Fair painted a picture of the future that staggered the imagination of most people of that time. A little more, said this picture, and everyone will have their own car. Moreover, everyone will have a garage where he can keep this car. Housing, electric refrigerators and even televisions will become available to everyone.
According to Gelenter, this seemingly improbable prospect energized American society during the war years and the period of prosperity that followed. Gradually, what seemed like an unattainable ideal turned into a real way of life for many people. But as more and more success was achieved in matters of satisfying material needs, the number of things to strive for naturally decreased. Since things were what our hopes were turned to and for which we worked, with the achievement of each new material goal, we had less hopes and fewer goals.
Today, the dream that inspired us half a century ago has become a reality. And if this reality did not bring happiness to many Americans, then is it because the dream was based on what we needed then! Now, when many of us have received everything in full, we need something qualitatively different. We need something more.
For the millions of people who have not yet achieved the financial and material success that we associate with today, the situation is even more difficult. Addiction to bad habits is undoubtedly more common among the poor than among the affluent sections of society, and its consequences for people with limited social and personal resources are much more detrimental.
By telling people who feel outside of material well-being that they should become aware of their spiritual needs, I am touching on very difficult issues. I may be asked, for example, if this is not reminiscent of exhortations addressed to a small child that being an adult is not at all as wonderful as it might seem? Kids will still want to experience it for themselves! And yet I am sure that the awareness and development of the Spirit is necessary for everyone, regardless of their current position in society, since such awareness is the only true and unchanging alternative to addictions.
On the pages of this book, I tried to show that spiritual perfection is available to every person, whatever his personal history or material security. Of course, your individual circumstances will inevitably have an impact on the choice of the path to spiritual perfection. However, one of the greatest virtues of Ayurveda is its flexibility and ability to meet the unique needs of each individual.
I hope that the subtitle of this book adequately emphasizes the strength of my feelings about bad habits. I'm talking about the spiritual path to solving the problem because I'm sure that's the real answer. In the third chapter, I will explain in more detail why I am sure of this; In the coming chapters, we will look at how you can apply the spiritual path in your daily life.
ACTION, MEMORY, DESIRE
Whenever I want to understand what a miracle and happiness is, I mentally return to that bright and beautiful day when I went for a walk with a little three-year-old girl, my neighbor's daughter.
Despite the fact that we then only walked around our cozy, but nothing particularly remarkable residential area, it took us almost an hour. It turned out that everything we saw and heard became for us a joyful discovery and an occasion for enthusiastic discussion. Again and again we stopped to look at the cars parked on the curb. My young friend chirped happily about their color, size, shape, and even wanted to touch each of them. Equally enthusiastic attention she paid to the flowers growing in the flower beds, and the sounds of a fire engine reaching us from afar. When an airplane flew over our heads, we immediately stopped and began to look at the sky until it, turned into a tiny speck of dust, melted into the distance. And, of course, we waved after him.
This walk around the block led me to some very important conclusions. So, it was obvious that in fact the source of pleasure for the girl was not at all what we encountered, in itself. Pictures, sounds, objects - all this was for her only an excuse to express the feeling that was already present in her. This feeling did not come from something in the outer world; on the contrary, it was projected onto the world from her heart and soul. In my opinion, happiness is exactly the word that best describes this state of self-generated enjoyment.
Most people, at least adults, do not experience happiness walking around the block, and for good reason. Children live in a world of pure contemplation. For them, visual images, sounds and objects exist in order to enjoy them, to play with them, and not at all in order to use them. But in the life of adults, everything is subject to duties. Walking on a sunny day, we perceive the world around us as an illegible mosaic of colors and patterns, while our consciousness is focused on one or another problem, which we currently consider the most acute. Whatever this kind of experience is called, it is anything but happiness.
But imagine that such a preoccupied adult, walking, staring at the sidewalk, suddenly finds something completely unusual in his field of vision. A hundred dollar bill! The effect will be almost magical! Problems that seemed so all-consuming until now, from such luck immediately - at least for a while - disappear somewhere. If this happened to you, a list of things that can be done with this hundred dollar bill would immediately flash before your eyes. You may not regard this incident as something that changed your life, but you will certainly begin to think of it as something very good - and your state of consciousness will change dramatically. What will you feel? I'm sure you immediately thought of this word: joy.
Finding a hundred dollars will make you happy. Money is an external cause, and the feeling of joy is an internal response to it. Happiness can be described as feeling joy for no reason. Happiness is a pre-existing inner state that determines our perception of the world. Happiness is the cause, while joy is the effect.
This is not to say that we adults should always strive to act like we are little children, but we do need to remember that happy state of being that we once had. It is always achievable, although it is often confused with a completely different state, which I have called the feeling of joy. Joy is what we are looking for, what we are striving for, perhaps even what we are fighting for. Joy is something that we are trying to find or rather buy. Happiness is what we are.
People seek to avoid suffering and to get pleasure, and they take pleasure in any form available to them. If a person has lost touch with his inner sources of happiness, if the joy that comes to him from external sources is the only happiness he knows, then he is looking for just such an experience. Depending on the circumstances, this search can be very valuable and fruitful. But, unfortunately, it can also turn into addiction in any of its many guises.
Let's replace our history with finding the $100 bill with some other opportunity. Suppose a certain young man living in a world of suffering and cruelty finds a substance that can instantly transfer him, even if only for a short time, to a completely different life. Suppose some other young man, whose promotion has stalled and his family is in financial trouble, is relieved by putting his wife to bed and drinking a bottle of beer, and feeling even better after drinking half a dozen.
Others will find a similar outlet in something else among the endless variety of addictive substances and addictive behaviors. Whatever the experience, if it gives pleasure, naturally, one always wants to repeat it. Such repetition, at least initially, is a matter of choice. But when an addiction really takes hold of a person, it turns into a need and even a necessity.
Ayurveda defines these psychological and physiological mechanisms very clearly. When we perform an action, say, picking up a pencil or crossing a river rapid in a rubber boat, we internally establish its place in the spectrum of our experience. On one end of this spectrum is unbearable suffering, and on the other - supreme pleasure. Having ended, the action continues to exist in our minds - as well as in our body - in the form of a memory, to which this or that degree of suffering or pleasure is attributed. If the level of "suffering" is high enough, we will do everything in our power to avoid repeating this action. If the action brings us great pleasure, we will just as desperately strive to do it again.
The Sanskrit word karma means action. It can refer both to physical activity and to this or that mental process, say, to thinking or feeling. Every action contains the seeds of remembrance, called in Sanskrit samskara, and the seeds of desire, called vasana. Essentially, the difference between the two is that one of them is facing backwards and the other is facing forward. If the memory of an action is pleasant, it gives rise to a desire to perform a new action that gives at least the same pleasure. A new action can either simply repeat the previous one, or be an attempt to get even more pleasure.
The essence of this paradigm was recognized as true even in philosophical traditions that are very far from Indian. The French writer Honore de Balzac noticed that in the lives of some especially emotional people - he talked about players and lovers - there is often some extremely acute experience that begins to weigh on all their subsequent actions, giving rise to the desire to reproduce the excitement once experienced. Perhaps without even realizing it, Balzac gave an excellent description of addictive behavior, because gambling and sex addictions are among the most widely known addictions.
Ayurveda specifically emphasizes that after we perform this or that action, it is forever imprinted in us along with the equally irremovable elements of memory and desire. Whatever we do, say or even think, the triad "action - memory - desire" is encoded in our cells, and this code simply cannot be erased. This has major implications for the approach to bad habits proposed in this book. We will not seek to "get rid" of the memories and desires behind addictive behavior. Instead, we will focus on creating new, highly positive experiences that are stronger than the destructive urges of addiction and render those urges powerless.
Perhaps the best way to illustrate this is with the example of one of the patients who came to our correctional center several years ago. I am sure that this case testifies to the effectiveness of a positive approach to addiction, tailored to the individual needs of the individual. My patient was a seventeen-year-old girl; Let's call her Ellen.
From the first glance at Ellen, it became clear to me that she had serious health problems. Subsequently, it turned out that they come from drug use and other kinds of self-destructive behavior that have prevailed in her life since the age of fourteen. Simply put, Ellen became addicted to heroin and became involved in other dangerous and harmful activities such as theft and prostitution.
I decided at first not to bring up the topic of her addictions in a conversation with Ellen. She was already fed up with these conversations. In fact, almost every minute of her life was in one way or another connected with them, either in the form of her participation in this, or in the form of therapeutic intervention. So far, all attempts at such intervention have been largely unsuccessful.
Let's not discuss your current problems for now, I suggested to Ellen in one of our first meetings. - Let's talk about what you were doing before they appeared. Was there anything you especially enjoyed doing when you were a little girl? What were you really striving for then? What interested you the most?
Ellen thought for a moment, as if she were trying to remember some date from a course in ancient history, rather than the events of her own life only two or three years ago.
Well, she said, I really enjoyed horseback riding. But I can't even imagine how I would get on a horse now. I don't even know if I could have passed without falling. Then I was a completely different person.
One glance at Ellen was enough to understand why she got such moods. She looked restless, tired and malnourished. A thick wall of mental, physical, and emotional ill health isolated her from the outside world and even from her own true needs and feelings. Therefore, the first goal of her course of treatment was to remove this barrier.
I suggested that Ellen undergo a five-level Ayurvedic purification procedure called Panchakarma. After a short discussion, Ellen agreed - and, like every past Panchakarma, she felt completely "reborn." Ayurveda considers the mind and body as part of a single whole. When Ellen's body was cleansed at the most basic, cellular level, her emotions and spirit were similarly cleansed and restored. There is nothing mysterious or miraculous about Panchakarma, but the effect was truly amazing. The chemical and emotional barriers that hid Ellen's true self began to crumble.
Ellen then rested from these cleansing routines for a few days, and I decided it was time to get to the problem of her addictions more directly. We really went for a ride, despite her earlier misgivings. And as I expected, Ellen liked it. From the point of view of Ayurveda, this was extremely important, since horseback riding awakened a specific chain of "action - memory - desire", which once played a positive role in Ellen's life. I was convinced that this chain would have its beneficial effect again.
When we got back from our walk, I asked Ellen how she felt. I wanted her to describe to me the sensations she had just received and experience them again. Ellen was surprised and delighted to find such pleasure in an activity that she thought she could not. Then I invited her to come into my office for a while and discuss something there.
We sat down on the sofa, and I sensed that Ellen was preparing herself for some stern lecture. I saw that, out of a habit that she had developed during our first meetings, she silently went into a dead defensive position. But instead of saying anything myself, I offered to speak to Ellen.
I would like you to tell me everything that happens to you when you inject yourself with a drug,” I said. - Everything from start to finish. Please describe exactly how you do it and what exactly you feel as a result.
Do you want to hear about what it's like to take off and then fall? she asked.
No, because this is only the end result. Start from the very beginning. Tell me what the syringe looks like, how you feel when you hold it in your hand. Tell me what the needle looks like and what it feels like to stick it into your arm. If there is any pleasure in all this, describe it to me, and if there is pain, fear, sadness - tell me about it too. Tell me what smell you feel when taking the drug, what is the sound like when you press the plunger of the syringe. Do you have a particular taste, or is your mouth unusually dry? Try with your imagination to go through all this for me.
I had several reasons for making this request to Ellen, but most importantly, it was an exercise in awareness. In Ayurveda, awareness is tantamount to mastering the fullness of information about the current moment. This means focusing on all your sensations and fully experiencing everything that your body tells you about in the course of this or that activity. Injecting herself with the drug, Ellen was not accustomed to awareness. For her, it was something automatic, and the fog that enveloped Ellen when the drug began to take effect further hid from her the actual mechanics of the process. Such a description was a great emotional and mental strain for her, but I wanted her to be accurate in every detail. Ellen finished her story, and I felt that now her experience became more transparent, more real and more conscious to her than it was at the time when she really refilled the syringe and plunged the needle into her arm over and over again.
Well, now that you have told me in detail about the introduction of drugs, I would like you to describe your experiences when we rode today in the same way. Again, remember all your thoughts, all your feelings. How did you feel when you first saw a horse today? What did it feel like when you put your foot in the stirrup? What was the feel of the saddle leather? What was the sound of hooves pounding on the grass? What feelings did you experience at various stages of the walk? Take me through it all from start to finish.
This second description was given to Ellen much easier than the first, and not only because it was about very recent events. This was due to the fact that she fully survived the ride. Her mind and body were released from the numbness that had weighed on her for the past three years. Everything that concerned riding was alive and joyful for this girl; so was her story.
And now you have to choose between these two experiences of yours,” I told Ellen, “and since you just went through them clearly and consciously for me, I know you can make an informed decision. Of course, I'm tempted to moralize you about the difference between heroin and horseback riding, but I'll resist the temptation because I don't think it will do any good. I will only say that the sights, sounds, sensations, thoughts and feelings that you experienced this afternoon will be inaccessible to you - literally impossible for you - if you choose drugs.
I'm happy to report that Ellen has made the decision to quit drugs and has found the strength to stay true to that decision. I know that the approach I took with her was fraught with some risks, but I also know that it was successful for that very reason. I didn't ask Ellen to give up the pleasure she felt from taking heroin. On the contrary, I insisted that in our conversation she clearly focus on these sensations. But at the same time, I asked her to remember the suffering associated with taking drugs. Riding a horse brought only joy. It was an activity she enjoyed even before she got into trouble, and the awakened memory of this stronger pleasure was able to eclipse the comparatively weaker pleasure of the drug.
As soon as the addict gains access to a satisfaction deeper than that which is provided through harmful behavior, the path to freedom from addiction is naturally opened for him. Once awakened, the memory of inner perfection generates a desire that is stronger than this addiction.
The approach to addiction that worked in Ellen's case could be called "pleasure-based" or, say, "pleasure-focused awareness." But it is best to think of it simply as spiritual. I'm sure this approach can work for a great many people, although there may be times when some extra steps need to be included in the procedure. Ellen, despite everything that had happened to her, had an experience of happiness from which to build. But what if, when I asked her if anything really gave her pleasure before she started taking drugs, Ellen would only answer with a helpless look?
There are a great many people who did not have positive moments in their lives, such as those that Ellen was able to use as a source of her healing. Or these moments are so obscured by them that it is no longer possible to revive them with a few pleasant sunny days. But in order to give up the sensations associated with addictive behavior, a person needs to know true pleasure. And the first step to knowing happiness is simply knowing yourself. One of the greatest merits of Ayurveda is that by dividing people into mental-body categories, it adapts to the absolute uniqueness of each individual, allowing him to become aware of his individual needs and qualities in a highly practical way.
In the next chapter, you will have the opportunity to determine your own mental-body type from such an Ayurvedic system, so that you can then learn how this knowledge allows a person to achieve mental, physical and spiritual well-being - in a word, happiness.
DEFINING YOUR MENTAL-BODY TYPE
Ayurveda is the world's oldest system of knowledge about human health, designed to prevent and cure diseases. It arose two and a half thousand years before our era and existed for many centuries before Hippocrates and other ancient Greek healers. In fact, it is very likely that the ancient Greeks were influenced by the ideas of Indian medicine, brought to Europe from the East along busy trade routes. Today, when the limits of what can be achieved with a purely mechanistic view of the human body are already being seen, the powerful ideas of Ayurveda and other traditional health systems are regaining great importance for the West.
Perhaps the most important of the ideas of all Ayurveda is the principle that one can understand and tame the disease only by first knowing the patient. This view, shared by healers of many traditions, sometimes finds no support in modern medical practice, which has too many patients and relies on widely available medicines, and therefore, it happens to lose sight of the individual needs of the patient. In order to really find out the condition of a person, along with his height, weight, blood pressure and other physiological parameters that are usually guided by modern medicine, you need to take into account his mental, emotional and even spiritual constitution.
Ayurveda teaches that it is very unreasonable to distinguish between mind and body, since these are two inseparable elements of a single whole, which is any human being. When it comes to addictions, the subtle connection between consciousness and body becomes especially important. The thought of action, the desire to carry it out, is the real source of this problem. The notion of a rigid separation between emotional state and physical illness, in the end, turns out to be completely useless in relation to addictive types of behavior.
Over the centuries of its existence, Ayurveda has developed an extremely effective terminology for expressing the relationship between mind and body and described the types of manifestation of these relationships in each individual person. According to Ayurveda, the Universe is created, shaped and organized by consciousness manifesting itself through the five elements: Ether, Air, Fire, Water and Earth. In the mental-body system of a person, these five elements are embodied in the form of three fundamental governing principles, called doshas. It is thanks to the doshas that the energy and information of the Universe are present in the body and life of every person.
Each of the three doshas has a characteristic effect on human physiology:
Vata dosha is the beginning of movement: it controls blood circulation, the passage of food through the gastrointestinal tract, and even the movement of ideas and sensations in our thoughts. Vata comes from the elements of ether and air; like the wind, it is unpredictable and constantly in motion.
Pitta dosha is associated with the element of fire and is often referred to in terms of heat. Pitta is responsible for converting food into energy during digestion, as well as for the metabolism of air and water.
Kapha-dosha is the structuring principle of the mental-body system. It comes from the elements of earth and water and is considered the heaviest of the doshas. Kapha is responsible for the formation of muscles, bones, tendons and all cellular tissues of the body, that is, for the physiological structure at the lowest level.
Ayurveda teaches that the mental-body system of a person is determined by the ratio of Vata, Pitta and Kapha in his body - a measure of how much their current ratio deviates from the "ideal" state of dosha balance established at the beginning of life. If Vata was the dominant dosha at your birth, Ayurveda will classify you as a Vata type, since it is the characteristics of Vata that will most clearly manifest in your mental and physical structure.
In the same way, if Pitta or Kapha dominated you initially, this means that they will be the most influential in your constitution. As life progresses, however, stress or illness can cause the doshas to become imbalanced, and one of the minor elements will become dominant. It may also happen that it is the dominant dosha that disturbs the balance. For example, an unbalanced Vata type can have an excess of Vata in the same way as Pitta or Kapha.
Of course, in the body, in each of its cells, all three doshas must be present. Since their ratio is constantly shifting throughout life, it can be very difficult to accurately determine the type of your body and this or that imbalance. It is best if this is done by a doctor who is well acquainted with Ayurveda. However, for the purposes of this book, you will be able to determine your dominant dosha yourself using the questionnaire below. This information will be very helpful to you in recognizing your passions, needs, and resulting weaknesses. Please fill out the questionnaire and only then proceed to further reading.
AYURVEDIC QUESTIONNAIRE FOR DETERMINING MENTAL-BODY TYPE
This questionnaire consists of three sections. The first 20 questions are related to Vata dosha: read each sentence and note (on a scale of 0 to 6) how it applies to you:
0 - this does not apply to me;
3 - relates to me partially (or sometimes);
6 - applies to me almost completely (or almost always).
At the end of the section, write down the total score for your Vata. For example, if you marked 6 on the first question, 3 on the second and 2 on the third, then in total for the first three points you score 6+3+2=11 points. In the same way, give answers to all other questions of the section and get the full amount of points for your Vata. Then move on to the next 20 questions in the Pitta section and then the Kapha section.
When you finish this work, you get three separate points. By comparing them, you will determine your body type.
You will have no difficulty assessing your obvious physical parameters. As for mental and behavioral characteristics, here the assessment will be more subjective; in order to bring it closer to the truth, you should take into account your feelings and actions, if not for your entire life, then at least for recent years.
1. I do everything very quickly - no 0‑1, partially 2‑3‑4, almost always 5‑6;
2. I do not remember well and have difficulty remembering afterwards - no 0‑1, partially 2‑3‑4, almost always 5‑6;
3. By nature, I am a cheerful, cheerful enthusiast - no 0-1, partially 2-3-4, almost always 5-6;
4. I am frail and have difficulty gaining weight - none 0-1, partially 2-3-4, almost always 5-6;
5. I always learn new things very quickly - no 0‑1, partially 2‑3‑4, almost always 5‑6;
6. Usually I have an easy and quick gait - no 0‑1, partially 2‑3‑4, almost always 5‑6;
7. I have difficulty when I have to make a decision - no 0‑1, partially 2‑3‑4, almost always 5‑6;
8. I easily get constipated and have gas in my intestines - none 0-1, partially 2-3-4, almost always 5-6;
9. My feet and palms are often cold - no 0-1, partially 2-3-4, almost always 5-6;
10. I often experience anxiety and anxiety - no 0‑1, partially 2‑3‑4, almost always 5‑6;
11. I hate cold weather, like most people - no 0-1, partially 2-3-4, almost always 5-6;
12. I have a fast speech, and friends consider me talkative - no 0-1, partially 2-3-4, almost always 5-6;
13. My mood changes easily, I am emotional by nature - no 0-1, partially 2-3-4, almost always 5-6;
14. It is often difficult for me to fall asleep, and the night's sleep is not strong - no 0-1, partially 2-3-4, almost always 5-6;
15. My skin is clean, especially in winter, I have very dry skin - no 0-1, partially 2-3-4, almost always 5-6;
16. My mind is very active, sometimes restless, but full of imagination - no 0-1, partially 2-3-4, almost always 5-6;
17. My movements are quick and active; my energy usually comes in bursts - no 0-1, partly 2-3-4, almost always 5-6;
18. I am easily aroused - none 0-1, partially 2-3-4, almost always 5-6;
19. I am prone to erratic sleeping and eating - no 0-1, partially 2-3-4, almost always 5-6;
20. I learn easily, but I quickly forget - no 0‑1, partially 2‑3‑4, almost always 5‑6.
Watta score:
1. I consider myself a skillful and intelligent person - no 0-1, partially 2-3-4, almost always 5-6;
2. In any case, I strive for maximum accuracy and order - no 0-1, partially 2-3-4, almost always 5-6;
3. I have a determined, strong mind and assertive behavior - none 0-1, partially 2-3-4, almost always 5-6;
4. I feel more uncomfortable and tired in hot weather than most people - none 0-1, partially 2-3-4, almost always 5-6;
5. I sweat easily - none 0-1, partially 2-3-4, almost always 5-6;
6. I get angry or irritated very easily, although I do not always show it - no 0-1, partially 2-3-4, almost always 5-6;
7. I experience discomfort when the next meal is delayed or canceled - no 0-1, partially 2-3-4, almost always 5-6;
8. My hair is characterized by at least one of the following properties: it turns gray early or falls out; thin, soft, straight; light, red or sandy - no 0‑1, partially 2‑3‑4, almost always 5‑6;
9. I have a good appetite, I can eat a lot if I want - no 0-1, partially 2-3-4, almost always 5-6;
10. Many consider me stubborn - no 0‑1, partially 2‑3‑4, almost always 5‑6;
11. My bowels work very regularly: I may have diarrhea rather than constipation - none 0-1, partially 2-3-4, almost always 5-6;
12. I am impatient - none 0‑1, partially 2‑3‑4, almost always 5‑6;
13. I am meticulous about small things to perfection - none 0‑1, partially 2‑3‑4, almost always 5‑6;
14. I easily get angry, but soon move away and forget the incident - no 0-1, partially 2-3-4, almost always 5-6;
15. I love cold food, especially ice cream and drinks with ice - no 0-1, partially 2-3-4, almost always 5-6;
16. In rooms it is more often too hot for me than too cold - no 0‑1, partially 2‑3‑4, almost always 5‑6;
17. Can't stand hot and spicy food - no 0‑1, partially 2‑3‑4, almost always 5‑6;
18. I should be more tolerant of disagreement - no 0-1, partially 2-3-4, almost always 5-6;
19. I love it when I get tested, and if I want something, I very resolutely achieve it - no 0-1, partially 2-3-4, almost always 5-6;
20. I tend to be critical not only of others, but also of myself - no 0-1, partially 2-3-4, almost always 5-6.
Pitta score:
1. It is natural for me to do everything slowly and calmly - no 0-1, partially 2-3-4, almost always 5-6;
2. I gain weight more easily than most people and lose weight more slowly - no 0-1, partially 2-3-4, almost always 5-6;
3. Usually I have a calm and peaceful mood, and I am not easy to get off balance - no 0-1, partially 2-3-4, almost always 5-6;
4. I can skip meals without experiencing much discomfort - no 0‑1, partially 2‑3‑4, almost always 5‑6;
5. I suffer from a tendency to excessive secretion of sputum and mucus, to congestive asthma and sinusitis - no 0-1, partially 2-3-4, almost always 5-6;
6. I need at least eight hours of sleep to feel comfortable the next day - no 0-1, partially 2-3-4, almost always 5-6;
7. I have a very deep, sound sleep - no 0-1, partially 2-3-4, almost always 5-6;
8. I am calm by nature, and it is difficult to anger me - no 0-1, partially 2-3-4, almost always 5-6;
9. I do not learn as fast as other people, but I remember well and for a long time - no 0-1, partially 2-3-4, almost always 5-6;
10. I have a tendency to be overweight, to quickly become obese - no 0-1, partially 2-3-4, almost always 5-6;
11. Cold wet weather is unpleasant for me - no 0‑1, partially 2‑3‑4, almost always 5‑6;
12. I have coarse, dark, wavy (or curly) hair - no 0-1, partially 2-3-4, almost always 5-6;
13. I have smooth, elastic skin and a pale complexion - no 0-1, partially 2-3-4, almost always 5-6;
14. I have a massive, strong physique - no 0‑1, partially 2‑3‑4, almost always 5‑6;
15. My characteristic features: sincerity, goodwill, tenderness, tendency to forgive - no 0-1, partially 2-3-4, almost always 5-6;
16. I have slow digestion, so I feel heaviness after eating - no 0-1, partially 2-3-4, almost always 5-6;
17. I am distinguished by high vitality, endurance and a stable level of energy - no 0-1, partially 2-3-4, almost always 5-6;
18. My gait is usually leisurely, measured - no 0‑1, partially 2‑3‑4, almost always 5‑6;
19. I have a tendency to oversleep, in the morning I get out of bed for a long time and do not immediately enter into a working state - no 0-1, partially 2-3-4, almost always 5-6;
20. I eat and in general do everything slowly and thoroughly - no 0-1, partially 2-3-4, almost always 5-6.
Kapha score:
Grand total: Vata -... Pitta -... Kapha -...
HOW TO DETECT YOUR BODY TYPE
Now that you have received three sums of points, you can determine your body type. Although there are only three doshas, remember that Ayurveda distinguishes ten combinations of them and, accordingly, ten body types.
If one of the three amounts received significantly exceeds the others, then, therefore, you are uniquely related to the corresponding body type.
Monodos body types:
cotton wool
pitta
kapha
You certainly have a monodosic body type if one of the scores exceeds any other twice (for example: Vata - 90, Pitta - 45, Kapha - 35) or even more so if the excess is even more significant. In the monodosic type, the characteristics of one of the doshas dominate. The second highest dosha also characterizes your natural tendencies, but to a much lesser extent.
If no single dosha dominates, you are a two-part body type.
Dichotomous body types:
Vata-Pitta or Pitta-Vata
Pitta Kapha or Kapha Pitta
Kapha-Vata or Vata-Kapha
If you are a two-dosha body type, then you are dominated by the characteristics of the two major doshas; one of them may predominate, but the other also plays an important role.
Most people belong to this dual type (example: Vata - 80, Pitpga - 90, Kapha - 20; such a result means belonging to the Pitta-Vata type).
If all three scores are about the same, you are obviously a tridosh body type.
Tridosh body type:
Vata-Pitta-Kapha
The latter type, however, is very rare. Check your answers again; it is advisable to involve one of your friends in this test. Finally, read the descriptions of each dosha carefully again to determine the more salient features of your body type.
THREE DOSHAS AND THEIR CHARACTERISTICS
According to Ayurveda, knowing your body type is the first and most important step towards true health. This is especially true of bad habits. Although all three doshas must be present in order to maintain the life of the body, they are extremely rarely present in an individual person in equal proportions. Therefore, it is extremely important to know which of the doshas - Vata, Pitta or Kapha - has the main influence on you. By figuring out your dominant dota, you will be able to recognize in which areas you are most vulnerable to physical or emotional stress. You will also be able to determine what activities and lifestyle changes will best help you restore balance to your mind and body.
cotton wool
Like the prairie wind, Vata is constantly moving, moving, changing direction. Vata is much more variable than Pitta or Kapha, and it is much more difficult to predict what his behavior will be the next day. Vata-type people are characterized by sudden bursts of energy, both emotional and physical, which stop just as quickly. Whether walking, eating, deciding whether to go to sleep, people of this type are consistent only in their inconsistency. This variability is also characteristic of their digestion, mood, emotions, and their general health. The Vata type, for example, is particularly vulnerable to minor illnesses such as colds and flu.
Characteristics of Vata-type
Lightweight, skinny
Everything is done quickly
Irregular appetite and digestion
Light, inconsistent sleep, tendency to insomnia
Enthusiasm, liveliness, imagination
Excitability, rapid mood swings
Grabs information quickly and forgets it quickly
Tendency to worry
Tendency to constipation
Fatigue, tendency to overstrain
Mental and physical energy bursts
Very typical for Vata type:
May feel hungry at any time of the day or night
Likes excitement and constant change
Goes to bed at a different time every night, skips meals, and generally changes habits frequently
Good digestion one day and bad the next
Vivid and unrestrained outbursts of emotions that do not last long and are quickly forgotten
Fast walk
PITTA
Pitta is like a hot, violent flame; its distinguishing feature is pressure. This resemblance to heat comes through even in the physical characteristics of Pitta-type people, often red-haired and red-faced. By nature, these people are ambitious, sometimes even obsessed, tend to express themselves boldly and argue fiercely. When in a state of balance, Pitta-type people are gentle and affectionate, their face radiates warmth; they are simply permeated with happiness. However, when stress, malnutrition, or another destabilizing factor comes into play, the aggressive, critical side of Pitta begins to assert itself.
Pitta Characteristics
Medium build
Acute hunger and thirst, powerful digestion
Tendency to anger and irritation in stressful situations
White or pink skin, often freckled
Avoids the sun, dislikes hot weather
Entrepreneurial character, loves challenges
Sharp intellect
Accurate, expressive speech
Dislikes skipping meals
Blond, blond, red (or reddish) hair
Pitta type people are especially prone to:
Experience excruciating hunger if dinner is half an hour late
Live by the clock, resent the waste of time
Waking up in the middle of the night from heat and thirst
Take control of the situation or feel the need to
Convince by experience that others find him too demanding, sarcastic or uncompromising
Determined gait
KAPHA
Kapha is the most calm and stable dosha, it is far from being out of balance as easily as Vata or Pitta. Kapha brings order and vitality to the body; this is manifested in the stocky build of many Kapha people. By nature, Kapha people are calm and optimistic. They are not easily angered. Before taking their own position on any issue, they prefer to take into account all possible points of view. Out of balance, Kapha people, however, are slow and indecisive. They benefit from diet and vigorous exercise to counteract their natural tendency to become obese. Despite this kind of weakness, Ayurveda considers Kapha people to be very happy: they are usually loving and attentive, and their innate physical fortitude protects them from all kinds of diseases.
Kapha Characteristics
Strong, powerful physique; great physical strength and endurance
stable energy; slowness and grace in action
Calm, relaxed character; don't get angry
Cold, smooth, thick, pale and often oily skin
Slowly learns new things, but has a good tenacious memory
Deep extended sleep
prone to obesity
Slow digestion, moderate appetite
Possessiveness and complacency
Kapha people are especially prone to:
Think long and hard about a problem before making a decision.
Waking up for a long time, lying in bed for a long time, drinking coffee first thing in the morning
Appreciate the status quo and maintain it by pleasing others
Respect other people's feelings (if you feel genuine sympathy for them)
Seek emotional comfort in food
Moist eyes, graceful movements, smooth gait - even with excess weight
In the second part, we will talk about some of the most common bad habits, focusing on their relationship with the doshas. Since unbalanced Vata is responsible for impulsive actions and nervous instability, calming this dosha is of particular importance in overcoming bad habits. An unbalanced Pitta underlies the exaggerated sense of self-control that some addicts have, including confidences such as "I can quit whenever I want" or "I can drink all I want and it won't hurt me." On the other hand, Kapha-type people are often really able to endure exposure to harmful substances longer than others. Combined with their natural propensity for inertia and slowness, this sometimes causes Kaphas to resist treatment.
I strongly recommend that you read all the chapters of the second part, even if you personally do not have any bad habits. Getting to know a different idea of addictive behavior from your own can go a long way in broadening your horizons. It will also help you understand the feelings of non-addicted people—friends, relatives, work colleagues—who have to deal with this complex psychological phenomenon, even though it may be completely foreign to their own life experiences.
In the third part, we will talk about specific strategies for eliminating the Vata imbalance that underlies any bad habit. Ayurvedic methods will completely restore the balance in your body. You can have an experience of genuine happiness that will leave no room for any addictive behavior in your life.
Although this book may be of great benefit to its reader, please bear in mind that it is in no way a substitute for the professional help of a physician when it comes to problems that are fraught with serious health hazards. Bad habits are caused by a combination of personal, social and environmental factors. While urging you to take responsibility for your own health, I also want you to be aware of the possible existence of influences that are beyond your control and even completely unknown to you. In any case, before embarking on a new diet or exercise regimen, including those described in Part 3, please consult your physician. This is especially important if your current state of health is weakened due to ingrained bad habits.
This book will be of great benefit both to millions of people who are trying to get rid of bad habits themselves, and to millions of their relatives and friends who seek to help these people solve their problems.
Dr. Deepak Chopra offers a completely unexpected look at bad habits, what they are, and people who succumb to them. Despite the fact that bad habits bring us both physical and emotional suffering, this book is about pleasure and prosperity, love and hope, health and happiness.
In essence, a person suffering from bad habits is a seeker of happiness, but he is looking for it in the wrong place, and wanders - perhaps for many years - in roundabout ways.
True happiness is a return to the deep harmony of the body, mind and spirit - the harmony that was characteristic of you at birth and can be found again. Having restored it, a person will no longer feel the need for stimulants, depressants and all that needs to be bought, hidden, stabbed, inhaled, turned on and off. None of this was necessary for you in childhood, when a sunny day and the love of loved ones were enough to overwhelm you with happiness. This openness to love, this ability to connect with the outside world is still with you, and you can easily and painlessly revive it.
Deepak Chopra: How to overcome bad habits. Spiritual way to solve the problem»
Deepak Chopra
How to overcome bad habits. Spiritual path to problem solving
"Deepak Chopra. How to overcome bad habits. Spiritual path to problem solving”: Sofia; Kyiv; 2003
ISBN 5-9550-0149-2 Abstract This book will greatly benefit both the millions of people who are trying to get rid of bad habits themselves, and millions of their families and friends who seek to help these people solve their problems. Dr. Deepak Chopra offers a completely unexpected perspective bad habits, what they are, and the people who succumb to them. Despite the fact that bad habits bring us both physical and emotional suffering, this book is about pleasure and prosperity, love and hope, health and happiness. In essence, a person suffering from bad habits is a seeker of happiness, but he is looking for it in the wrong place, where necessary, and wandering - perhaps for many years - in a roundabout way. True happiness is a return to the deep harmony of the body, mind and spirit - the harmony that was characteristic of you at birth and can be found again. Having restored it, a person will no longer feel the need for stimulants, depressants and all that needs to be bought, hidden, stabbed, inhaled, turned on and off. None of this was necessary for you in childhood, when a sunny day and the love of loved ones were enough to overwhelm you with happiness. This openness to love, this ability to connect with the outside world is still with you, and you can easily and painlessly revive it. Deepak ChopraHow to Overcome Bad Habits The Spiritual Path to Solving the Problem PART ONE WHAT ARE BAD HABITS LOST IN SEARCH Among the most serious human health problems in our society, bad habits and their consequences are, in my deep conviction, far from the last place. Cardiovascular diseases, respiratory diseases, many forms of cancer, AIDS - these are just some of the ailments that are directly or indirectly caused by bad habits. This little book is thus an attempt at a very concise treatment of an extremely large and complex problem. At first glance, this may seem like a daunting task. Perhaps someone will consider trying to figure out the most difficult issues related to addictions in a couple of hundred pages as a certain self-confidence. And yet I am sure that even such a small book will be of great benefit both to millions of people who are trying to get rid of bad habits themselves, and to millions of their relatives and friends who seek to help these people. In other words, being aware of how diverse difficulties that arise in our society due to the bad habits of millions and millions of people, I nevertheless proceed to implement my plans with optimism and zeal. The reason for this is quite simple: despite the fact that we have to talk here about the deepest physical and emotional suffering, this book is about health and happiness, pleasure and prosperity, love and hope. I understand that in itself such a positive attitude is somewhat unusual. Too often, our efforts to deal with bad habits are poisoned by anger, intolerance, and desperation. Sometimes it sounds open, as, for example, in expressions like the “war on drugs” or scary stories about how addiction ruined someone's career and ruined someone's life. In other cases, this negative orientation does not manifest itself so directly: consider, for example, the dreary environment of many “centers”, where patients are asked to cope with their problems themselves and where a circle of plastic chairs awaits them in a room with linoleum on the floor and fluorescent lighting. Fear of the past , fear of the future, fear of using the present moment to find true happiness - how many fears the path of a person prone to bad habits is strewn with! An integral part of many methods of getting rid of such habits is also fear. However, for most people, a fear-based approach cannot be a means to long-term success. Therefore, I intend to offer here a completely different view of bad habits and addictions - what they are, and the people who succumb to them. The addicted person seems to me to be a seeker who, alas, has gone astray. This is a person who is looking for pleasure, and maybe even some kind of transcendental experience - and I want to emphasize that such a search is worthy of every encouragement. Such a person seeks in the wrong place and in the wrong place, but he strives for things of great importance, and we cannot afford to ignore the significance of his search. At least at first, the addict hopes to experience something wonderful, something beyond the unsatisfactory, if not intolerable everyday reality for him. There is nothing to be ashamed of in such an endeavor. On the contrary, it becomes the basis for true hope and true transformation. By calling the addict a seeker, I want to go even further. In my opinion, a person who has never experienced cravings for addictions is one who has not taken the first timid step towards knowing the true meaning of the Spirit. Addiction may not be something to be proud of, but it represents a desire for higher level experiences. And although it is impossible to reach such a level with the help of pills and all sorts of obsession, such an attempt itself indicates the presence of something truly spiritual in a person. According to Ayurveda, the traditional Indian teaching about human health, each of us keeps the memory of perfection. This memory is imprinted in every cell of our body. It cannot be erased, but it can be drowned out by poisons and various kinds of pollution. In considering the issue of addictions, our real concern is not to describe the destructive effect of addictive type 1 behavior. Addictive type of behavior - in psychology: due to addiction (usually harmful).
But the awakening of the consciousness of perfection that we always preserve. As a schoolboy, I read the poem Paradise Lost, which is undoubtedly one of the greatest works written in the English language. But I also realized that the paradise that is within us can never be lost in the full sense of the word. We can stop noticing it, but it is always achievable for us. It often occurred to me that music is an art form that can most effectively bring us into contact with our inner perfection. Of course, it can be approached from the standpoint of the mind and even perceived as a branch of mathematics, but music, in addition, takes us to a level that is in some way deeper than our conscious thought processes. This can be experienced by listening to music, and even more fully by playing it. Every time I attend a concert, I am struck by the obvious impact that music has on the performer. What he experiences can be called ecstasy. The musician, in the full sense of the word, absorbed in the performance, moves into another reality and experiences completely unaccountable happiness and joy. It's a breathtaking, amazing sight. Such an experience, of course, can become a worthy goal for aspirations in your own life. In this connection, I am reminded of the once read biography of Charlie Parker, a talented musician who shone in the jazz world of New York in the 40s and early 50s. The best of his saxophone improvisations were not just stunningly fast and intricate - they had a logical coherence and unity. The young musicians who idolized Parker were ready to do anything to play like him, but his musical abilities seemed almost supernatural. What was the secret of his playing, his ability to enter that space, not accessible to everyone, where he, no doubt, was during the performance? It so happened that Charlie Parker was not only a great musician, but also a heroin addict. And although his best solos were played when he was not addicted to drugs, it became fashionable among a generation of jazz musicians to use heroin in imitation of their idol. Their impulse is quite understandable and even admirable: they wanted to immerse themselves in that supernatural experience in which another person was before their eyes. However, for many talented people, this had disastrous consequences. Heroin not only did not lead them to the main goal of life - to become outstanding musicians, but also turned out to be fatal for them. They wanted to find a shortcut to paradise, but they obviously turned onto the wrong path. When it comes to addictions, this is the most important point, whether it's drugs, food, alcohol, smoking, gambling, television soap operas, or a thousand other temptations that are present daily in our lives. Addiction begins when you look for the right thing in the wrong place. As the Jungian psychologist Robert Johnson showed in his excellent book Rapture, addiction is nothing more than a degenerate substitute for the true experience of happiness. EDUCATION OF THE SPIRIT Man does not live by bread alone. This well-known image appears in both the Old and New Testaments, and its meaning is quite clear. In fact, it means that our needs are not limited to satisfying only material needs. However, it is worth paying attention to how categorical this statement is. Spiritual satisfaction is presented as a fundamental vital need, comparable to the need for food. In fact, all other religions and spiritual traditions are on the same positions: in order to live, we need “food for the soul.” In my opinion, this is true in a completely literal sense. The state of our spiritual life is directly related to the functioning of our body, including metabolism, digestion, respiration and all other types of physiological activity. But we often neglect our spiritual needs or underestimate them. Of course, there are some signs that such behavior is gradually being replaced by something else - people are regaining awareness of spiritual values. Nevertheless, the materialistic orientation under which we have been under the influence of such a long time has had very serious consequences, closely related to the prevalence of addictions in modern society. that many people misunderstand the true needs of the human spirit. They discover a myriad of hyper-stimulating activities and just as many ways to relieve stress, replacing them with a state of "really high class" - exactly the deep experience that Robert Johnson calls ecstasy. This is unfortunate, because we need ecstasy. We need it as much as we need food, water and air. But in modern Western society, this fundamental human need is not fully recognized. Over the past thirty years, we have made significant progress in understanding how much our physical environment has deteriorated, and in overcoming these kinds of trends. But so far we have not succeeded in realizing our spiritual needs with the same decisiveness. In the problem of bad habits, I see a direct consequence of this fundamental oversight. In every culture, in all epochs of human history, people have felt the need for ecstatic experience - for pleasure of one kind or another, which goes beyond everyday reality. Various cultures tried to satisfy this need in many different ways, and some of these methods turned out to be much more spiritually oriented than others. In the 19th century, Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevsky argued that a person can feel satisfied only by receiving three types of experiences from society - miracles , ordinances, and spiritual guidance, and that these experiences are far more important to him than the satisfaction of material needs. A person who is addicted to this or that addiction seems to believe that through it he can gain miracles and mysteries, and the lack of spiritual guidance makes such a view all the more seductive. Instead of seeing addicts as simply weak or even criminals, I prefer to see them as those who are self-destructive, yet understandably respond to the spiritual vacuum behind our material abundance. We all feel the consequences this spiritual vacuum, depending on who we are and the circumstances in which we find ourselves, we respond to it in one of many ways. However, in our society, the human response to essentially spiritual aspirations often takes on material forms. I remember a friend of mine who, as a very young man, achieved impressive success in business. In his early 40s, he had the means to do or have literally anything he wanted. And he really wanted something, he just wasn't sure what it was. Anyway, he bought a summer house by the lake. To get to this house, he bought an expensive jeep, and so that, when he got there, he had something to do, he bought a boat. In addition, he acquired an ultra-modern cell phone in order to be able to monitor the progress of his business from a jeep or boat. In a word, a common story that happened many times to financially successful individuals. By purchasing a house, a car, a boat, and a telephone, my friend was in no way closer to true self-realization than he had been before. The result was only that he fell into an even more oppressed state of mind, and the long-term consequences of this are still observed. So, for example, the boat turned out to be a very convenient place for rather plentiful libations. My friend is a wealthy man and, by and large, a strong personality. That's probably why his obsession with acquisitions didn't hurt him much. But for a person with less financial resources or, say, for a more vulnerable person, this could have rather detrimental consequences in the form of unpredictable mental addictions. Alcohol, drugs, sexual recklessness are essentially material responses to needs that are not inherently physical. But if a person has no idea where, apart from the sphere of mere sensuality, he should look for genuine pleasure, it is not surprising that he does not find it. In his book The Lost World of the Exhibition, published in 1939, computer specialist David Gelenter uses as a starting point to analyze the then New York World's Fair Society. His conclusions seem to me quite clear and convincing. Toward the end of the Great Depression and just before the start of World War II, the World's Fair painted a picture of the future that staggered the imagination of most people of that time. A little more, said this picture, and everyone will have their own car. Moreover, everyone will have a garage where he can keep this car. Housing, electric refrigerators, and even televisions would become available to anyone and everyone. According to Gelenter, this seemingly incredible prospect energized American society during the war years and in the period of prosperity that followed. Gradually, what seemed like an unattainable ideal turned into a real way of life for many people. But as more and more success was achieved in matters of satisfying material needs, the number of things to strive for naturally decreased. Since things were what we hoped for and worked for, with the achievement of each new material goal, we had fewer hopes and fewer goals. Today, the dream that inspired us half a century ago has become a reality. And if this reality did not bring happiness to many Americans, then is it because the dream was based on what we needed then! Now, when many of us have received everything in full, we need something qualitatively different. We need something more. For the millions of people who have not yet achieved the financial and material success that we associate with today, the situation is even more difficult. Addiction to bad habits is undoubtedly more common among the poor than among the wealthy, and its consequences for people with limited social and personal resources are much more detrimental. Telling people who feel left out of material well-being that they should be aware of their spiritual needs, I am dealing with very difficult issues. I may be asked, for example, if this is not reminiscent of exhortations addressed to a small child that being an adult is not at all as wonderful as it might seem? Kids will still want to experience it for themselves! And yet I am sure that the awareness and development of the Spirit is necessary for everyone, regardless of their current position in society, since such awareness is the only true and unchanging alternative to addictions. On the pages of this book, I tried to show that spiritual perfection is available to every person, whatever his personal history or material security. Of course, your individual circumstances will inevitably have an impact on the choice of the path to spiritual perfection. However, one of the greatest virtues of Ayurveda is its flexibility and ability to meet the unique needs of each individual. I hope that the subtitle of this book adequately emphasizes the strength of my feelings towards bad habits. I'm talking about the spiritual path to solving the problem because I'm sure that's the real answer. In the third chapter, I will explain in more detail why I am sure of this; In the coming chapters, we will look at how you can apply the spiritual path in your daily life. ACTION, MEMORY, DESIRE Whenever I want to understand what miracle and happiness are, I mentally return to that bright and beautiful day when I went for a walk with a little three-year-old girl, my neighbor's daughter. Despite the fact that we then only walked around our cozy, but nothing particularly remarkable residential area, it took us almost an hour. It turned out that everything we saw and heard became for us a joyful discovery and an occasion for enthusiastic discussion. Again and again we stopped to look at the cars parked on the curb. My young friend chirped happily about their color, size, shape, and even wanted to touch each of them. Equally enthusiastic attention she paid to the flowers growing in the flower beds, and the sounds of a fire engine reaching us from afar. When an airplane flew over our heads, we immediately stopped and began to look at the sky until it, turned into a tiny speck of dust, melted into the distance. And, of course, we waved after him. This walk around the block led me to some very important conclusions. So, it was obvious that in fact the source of pleasure for the girl was not at all what we encountered, in itself. Pictures, sounds, objects - all this was for her only an excuse to express the feeling that was already present in her. This feeling did not come from something in the outer world; on the contrary, it was projected onto the world from her heart and soul. In my opinion, happiness is exactly the word that best describes this state of self-generating pleasure. Most people, at least adults, do not experience happiness walking around the block, and for good reason. Children live in a world of pure contemplation. For them, visual images, sounds and objects exist in order to enjoy them, to play with them, and not at all in order to use them. But in the life of adults, everything is subject to duties. Walking on a sunny day, we perceive the world around us as an illegible mosaic of colors and patterns, while our consciousness is focused on one or another problem, which we currently consider the most acute. Whatever you call this kind of experience, it's anything but happiness. But let's imagine that such a preoccupied adult, walking, staring at the sidewalk, suddenly finds something completely unusual in his field of vision. A hundred dollar bill! The effect will be almost magical! Problems that seemed so all-consuming until now, from such luck immediately - at least for a while - disappear somewhere. If this happened to you, a list of things that can be done with this hundred dollar bill would immediately flash before your eyes. Perhaps you will not regard this incident as something that has changed your life, but you will surely begin to think of it as something very good - and your state of consciousness will change dramatically. What will you feel? I'm sure you immediately thought of this word: joy. When you find a hundred dollars, you will be delighted. Money is an external cause, and the feeling of joy is an internal response to it. Happiness can be described as feeling joy for no reason. Happiness is a pre-existing inner state that determines our perception of the world. Happiness is the cause, while joy is the effect. This is not to say that we adults should always strive to act like we are little children, but we need to remember the happy state of being that we once had. It is always achievable, although it is often confused with a completely different state, which I have called the feeling of joy. Joy is what we are looking for, what we are striving for, perhaps even what we are fighting for. Joy is something that we are trying to find or rather buy. Happiness is what we are. People seek to avoid suffering and get pleasure, and they take pleasure in any of the forms available to them. If a person has lost touch with his inner sources of happiness, if the joy that comes to him from external sources is the only happiness he knows, then he is looking for just such an experience. Depending on the circumstances, this search can be very valuable and fruitful. But, unfortunately, it can also turn into an addiction in one of its many forms. Let's replace our history of finding the $100 bill with some other opportunity. Suppose a certain young man living in a world of suffering and cruelty finds a substance that can instantly transfer him, even if only for a short time, to a completely different life. Suppose some other young man, whose promotion has stalled and the family is in financial trouble, is relieved by sending his wife to bed and drinking a bottle of beer - and after drinking half a dozen, he feels even better. Someone else will find a similar solution. in something else from an endless variety of addictive substances and addictive behaviors. Whatever the experience, if it gives pleasure, naturally, one always wants to repeat it. Such repetition, at least initially, is a matter of choice. But when an addiction really takes possession of a person, it turns into a need and even a necessity. Ayurveda very clearly defines such psychological and physiological mechanisms. When we perform an action, say picking up a pencil or riding a rubber boat across a river rapid, we inwardly establish its place in the spectrum of our experience. On one end of this spectrum is unbearable suffering, and on the other - supreme pleasure. Having ended, the action continues to exist in our minds - as well as in our body - in the form of a memory, to which this or that degree of suffering or pleasure is attributed. If the level of "suffering" is high enough, we will do everything in our power to avoid repeating this action. If the action brings us great pleasure, we will just as desperately strive to do it again. The Sanskrit word karma means action. It can refer both to physical activity and to this or that mental process, say, to thinking or feeling. Every action contains the seeds of remembrance, called in Sanskrit samskara, and the seeds of desire, called vasana. Essentially, the difference between the two is that one of them is facing backwards and the other is facing forward. If the memory of an action is pleasant, it gives rise to a desire to perform a new action that gives at least the same pleasure. A new action can either simply repeat the previous one, or be an attempt to get even more pleasure.
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