Addiction: A failure of Eros: Post Three: Marc Gafni

marc gafni
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ADDICTION: A FAILURE OF EROS

Addiction is, at its root, the inability to stay in the emptiness. So we rush to fill the emptiness with whatever gives us the quickest hit of pseudo-eros. Pseudo-eros is virtually always addictive. Sex, food, public acclaim, drugs, work; pseudo-eros has many disguises. We are all addicts. Until we are not. Goethe was right when he defined addiction as anything you cannot stop doing.

Eros is the ability to stay in the emptiness and from that place drop down in the fullness of who are you and what you are. Which is no less then a gorgeous being who is Part of God.

Any realization which is less then this simple understanding leads directly to destructive addiction.

The realization that you are a “part” of the God must be held not only in your mind but in your heart and body. A great teacher who gave me beautiful blessings at his grave in Warsaw two weeks ago, the master of Slonim writes that are three levels of realization. Three levels of Knowing.

The realization of the mind. To Know. You know it, not a a fact, but as the carnal knowledge of your life. The knowing that you are part of God is the carnal knowledge of your life.

The word know – in hebrew – is to be erotically merged, to be one with the knowledge. To know biblically…this is the knowing of the mind.

THIS KNOWLEDGE OF YOUR MIND THAT YOU ARE PART OF GOD, IS THE GOAL OF ALL SPIRITUAL PRACTICE.

{in the original hebrew of the kabbalistic master of Slonim -Emunat Ha-Moach}

The realization of your heart. Your emotion. E-motion = energy in emotion. You must FEEL the truth of your identity. It must give you a felt sense of joy and love for you and others.

When you say “I love you” to a friend

{not merely a romantic friend- we have limited love to romance- what a tragedy- love is to love many people with all your heart and all your soul},

when you say I love you- you gotta FEEL IT.

THIS FELT KNOWLEDGE OF YOUR HEART THAT YOU ARE A PART OF GOD, IS THE GOAL OF ALL SPIRITUAL PRACTICE.

{in the original hebrew of the kabbalistic master of Slonim- Emunat Ha-Lev}

The realization of your body. Drop down into your body. From your heart to your Hara.

Hara is the belly place… beneath your belly button above your genital area. You cannot realize your identity merely with your heart. You must connect heart and hara. Drop into your body and feel your identify in your arms, legs, neck, back, thighs, legs, feet, down to your toenails!

THE KNOWLEDGE IN YOUR BODY THAT YOU ARE PART OF GOD IS THE GOAL OF ALL SPIRITUAL PRACTICE.

{Jn the original hebrew of the kabbalistic master of Slonim – Emunat Ha-Eyvarim}

The realization of the who and what you are which must be held in both your body, mind and heart, leads to a massive identity crisis.

The way most people solve their identify crisis is through ADDICTION. Fill up the emptiness with substitute gratifications, with pseudo eros and you will find the source of ADDICTION.

Now watch this simple human move. When Eros fails, Thanatos steps in. Thanatos is the force of destruction but it is really eros in disguise. It seeks to destroy all that is false in order to call you home to what is true. It seeks to undermine all false identies in order to realize the joy of the supreme and most gorgeous identify of the human being as a baby faced divine.

The core truth of living is not that the human being is God. But that the human being is Part of God. It is the realization that changes everything, the gives birth to authenticity, ethics, love, gratitude, wonder, and all that is good.

The twelve step program cannot be successful unless it addresses this root level of addiction. It is not enough to bow to higher power. One must strip away the veil that separates the heart from the heart of God, the mind from the mind of god, the body from the body of god.

marc gafni
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