A Note About Addiction

One of the results of focusing so much of our attention on what we achieve in the outside world and not balancing our physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, and social needs is that we become empty shells.  Conditioned to seek financial prosperity and material success, we set aside our need for genuine connection with ourselves and others.  Rather than producing wholeness, seeking to “look good” on the outside leaves an empty hole on the inside.  Addictions and attachments are our well intended, but misplaced, effort to fill the empty hole we feel inside. As a Course in Miracles states, "To heal is to make whole.  And what is whole can have no missing parts that have been kept outside".

The values, beliefs, and norms of the culture we live in breed addiction and dependencies on all sorts of substances and behaviors that we use to temporarily fill the hole or keep us from feeling its loneliness.  While alcohol and drugs make the headlines, many people are addicted to or dependent on food, shopping, gambling, workaholism, controlling other people (co-dependency), spending, and others.

Those who do not meet the criteria for addiction often suffer from what Buddhism calls attachment, the belief that we require certain things or conditions in order to know happiness.  However, "Grasping at things can only yield one of two results: Either the thing you are grasping at disappears, or you yourself disappear. It is only a matter of which occurs first."  (Goenka)

Carol's programs and services are designed to guide people in cultivating the aspects of themselves that they have "kept outside", quite often without even knowing it. After all, no one intends to harm themselves, but we all become hypnotized by the powerful forces of our history, conditioning, and the world around us. As Carol has discovered for herself, each of us can "wake up", become conscious, and point our compass toward our inner home, the only place we can ever experience true wholeness.