Spiritual practice can help one overcome attachment and addiction. The following video explains the root cause of the very mechanism of addiction. I see subjects like Scientology also as addiction to highs.
Ram Dass explains the psychodynamics of the addiction cycle and he suggests that developing a spiritual practice is the best way to ground yourself and rid yourself of unwanted behaviors and anxieties.
His view that all human suffering comes from our feeling of separateness and that all addictions give the person a taste of the Oneness and of being “home” but only for the short term before the person goes into a cycle into self-loathing.
He describes spiritual practice as a way of delaying the gratification we seek in material possessions, relationships, food, drugs and whatever we use to sate the desperate sense of our separateness. He says that as we seek and as we meditate, we can intervene in the cycle of self-punishment and begin to see the emptiness of the whole cycle.
Ram Dass counsels addicted people to start a spiritual practice, saying that eventually, the addictions and anxieties will fall away. He says:
“The minute you get lost in identification with your personality to the exclusion of identification with your soul, you’ve lost it. And there a thousands times each day that you’ve lost it. And if you get caught in identification of your soul to the exclusion of your personality, you’ve lost it, equally as much.”
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Here is a Wikipedia entry on Ram Dass, who was born Richard Alpert.
Ram Dass
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Here are comments of Richard Alpert on “self” after his experimentations with LSD.
It is interesting to compare these comments with what Buddha says about “self.”
KHTK 23: Diamond Sutra of Buddha
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I recommend engaging in spiritual practice of Vipassana Meditation (KHTK), and not drugs. Drugs can cause severe and harmful addictions, as was the case with Whitney Houston.
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Here is another interesting interview with a later Richard Alpert (as Ram Dass). This interview is interesting because it takes up the strange subject of spirituality in politics.
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