Healing Our Inner Emptiness

The world has tried desperately hard to find cures for all our human addictions. We now have detox facilities for alcoholics and drug addicts, nicotine patches for smokers, and all sorts of pills and potions for those addicted to food. But none of these so-called cures or remedies has ever gone to the heart of the problem.

All human beings are addicted to something on the outside of themselves, because all human beings are plagued by a deep down sense of lack and unworthiness, even if they are not consciously aware of this inner emptiness. Until we enable ‘addicts’ to heal this deep layer of inner despair, we will never find a lasting solution to all our self-destructive addictions.

Let us take our addiction to food as a key example. Even people who manage to keep their weight within ‘healthy limits’ tend to be addicted to eating at least two or three times every day. Try not eating anything for 24 hours and you will see what I mean! Of course you may well say, ‘It’s not an addiction it’s just a biological imperative. If we don’t eat, we will die’. But you are hardly going to die by not eating for 24 hours, and yet you may well feel a sense of inner panic even at the thought of fasting like this, I know that I do.

Our bodies don’t need food nearly as much as our minds do. Our bodies can stay healthy for months on a very monotonous diet of say potatoes and cabbage, but after just a day or two of a diet like this, most affluent Westerners would probably feel quite miserable, and desperate for a steak, a chunk of cheese or a piece of cake!

What is really going on when we become addicted to any sort of substance on the outside of us? The core issue is that we are all desperately looking for love in all the wrong places. We may well love chocolate cake, red wine, or salted peanuts, but please believe me when I tell you that these substances do not love you back. We are constantly looking for love and comfort in the external world without ever realising that true love and a lasting sense of ease can only come from within rather than without.

Fighting Our Addictions

Most people who realise that they have a life-destroying addiction of some kind or another do their absolute best to exert their will power over their addiction. They battle and battle their self-destructive addictive urges on a daily, if not hourly, basis. Very often an addict will win one battle with their addiction, but still lose the overall war. Many alcoholics, for example, manage to stay off the booze for many months before getting spectacularly drunk once again. Virtually all overweight women have managed to stay on some horribly restrictive diet for several weeks, if not months, before succumbing to binge eating and piling the weight back on again.

I have a dear friend who has spent all her life battling her weight. She is a very strong, powerful, together, beautiful, awake woman, but so far the weight is still basically winning. Despite the enormous amounts of energy that my friend has thrown at her ‘weight problem’ and despite losing many, many stones several times over at various times in her life, her ‘enemy’ still shows no real sign of putting up the white flag of total surrender any time soon.

What most people do not realise when they constantly fight against their addictive behaviour, is that what we fight against actually tends to get stronger, rather than weaker. We fight against our weight, or our urge to over eat, and that desire actually gets stronger, like a boxer having a good workout with a strong sparring partner in the ring. We fight against our drinking, or our compulsive shopping, and the part of us that loves to drink or shop until it drops says ‘Bring it on!’ ‘Catch me if you can!’ or ‘In your dreams, sunshine!’

If we cannot successfully fight and beat the part of ourselves that is so addicted to anaesthetising itself with harmful substances or activities, what can we do? First and foremost, we have to heal the wounded, addicted part of ourselves with unconditional love and light. This may sound rather cosy, but it actually takes an awful lot of spiritual awakening, healing courage and self-honesty to complete this radical process.

Deep within our own psyche is a part of our self that is seriously wounded and crying out in pain and even rage. We might like to think of this aspect of our personality as an unloved or abused teenager, child, toddler or baby. The age of this inner, wounded part of ourselves very much depends on our past experiences this lifetime- and maybe in other lifetimes too.

For example, some of us were rarely, or never, held lovingly when, as little babies, we cried out in pain or fear. This very early memory of being helpless, in pain and uncomforted or unloved is then stuffed down into the deep subconscious layers of our body and mind. But the lonely baby that felt so frightened and unloved never dies. It remains as a ‘pain body’ deep within our sub-consciousness, and then from time to time, this very needy, suppressed part of ourselves breaks loose and demands that we feed it lots of comforting baby food, such as ice cream, or hot chocolate with whipped cream on top ( no wonder Starbucks business is booming).

If we were older when the pain of being a human being really kicked in, we may find that we have a craving for foods that appeal to older children or young teenagers. For example, when I was about 9 or 10, I was a pretty miserable, lonely, anxious child. My parents would sometimes drive to a pub and leave me in the car for an hour or so with a book, a bottle of Coca-Cola and a packet of Smith’s Crisps. So now, when this lonely child part of my personality asserts herself, I find myself guzzling salty crisps as though my life depended on it, washed down by a delicious can of Diet Coke, and so I often joke to friends that I am a Coke addict.

Once we have identified the painful baby, child or young person within who keeps demanding to be fed his or her comforting substance of choice, we can begin the radical process of healing him or her. First, we have to allow this wounded part of ourselves to really express their pain. We sit quietly, connect to the light, and then allow this painful aspect of our being to let rip. We may find that this part of ourselves wants to cry its eyes out, or even to scream and scream until we are hoarse. The key is not to let ourselves drown in all this pain and drama. When we can connect to our still calm inner observer, we can sit and watch a part of ourselves expressing a lot of fear, anger, pain or hurt without drowning in that pain or those emotions.

Next, we have to release this painful part of ourselves to the light. We actually have to be ready to let that painful, trapped past-self go to the light. But as this process can be experienced as the death of a big part of ourselves, we may need to gather a lot of courage and help-both horizontal and vertical- before we can really allow our painful self to dissolve into the light.

If you are not yet ready to do this, it certainly does not mean that you are a bad person, or a weak-willed individual. But it does mean that you may have to go on coping with your addictive behaviour for a while longer, until you have cultivated enough inner light, strength and spiritual courage to really let go of a big part of who you think that you are.

One of the paradoxes of the awakening and healing journey is that we usually find that although we do not necessarily like certain aspects of our personality, we are rather attached to them, and thus find it extremely hard to let them go completely. Most of us would still rather be right than happy. If we have been a food addict virtually all of our lives, who will we be when we completely heal that addiction? If we have put incredibly amount of energy into battling an addiction to alcohol for say 20 years, what on earth are we going to do with ourselves if the war against ourselves ends? Ask those who have lived through a major conflict such as World War 2, and they will often tell you that peace was a real anti-climax.

Another challenging aspect of healing ourselves is that –like any recovering addict- we may have to give up old friends and loved-ones who shared our addictive world. If we no longer enjoy a bottle of wine every night, our partner may decide that it is time to leave us for someone who can share their love of drinking. Or, as we heal the wounded aspects of ourselves and no longer have a need to rant and rave about how terrible the world is, dear old friends may no longer enjoy our company.

As we awake and heal more and more, we will undoubtedly find ourselves on a road less travelled, and an empty road can seem rather lonely at times, until we get used to the peace and quiet surrounding us. Nevertheless, the rewards for healing all our inner pain and darkness are literally out of this world. Not only do we free up incredible amounts of energy that we used to spend fighting our addictions, but we also find a new, joyful creativity and inner sweetness that more than fills up the gaps left by our old addictive behaviours and substances.

Chocolate fudge cake may taste divine, but the spiritual light tastes even sweeter. A bottle of mulled red wine may warm our body, but unconditional love warms our heart and soul. When we are in physical pain, a handful of painkillers may give us some temporary relief, but ultimately we need to connect to a higher wisdom that will guide us to heal the deepest causes of our physical pain that always lie in our minds rather than our bodies.

Well meaning scientists and therapists may now talk about certain addictions being based on our genes, or being a type of disease, but mature spiritual practitioners know that none of these superficially attractive explanations for addictive behaviours goes deep enough. At their core, all addictive behaviours are simply showing us an unhealed part of our minds, and if we are brave enough to take full responsibility for healing these inner shadows, we will finally set ourselves free from all forms of enslavement to the external world, including our enslavement to ice-cream, red wine or salt and vinegar crisps.