How Can One Overcome A Long History Of Drug Addiction And Depression With Sadhana?

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While you must continue with the medical treatment that may be ongoing for your drug addiction as well as depression, here are the two ways to overcome any barrier on the path of spirituality:

1. The Scientific way, and

2. The Technical way.

Both these ways, when adopted together, give the best and most speedy result. However, everyone has to adopt and practice this personally; other person cannot do it for us. So, let’s understand the two ways in some more depth. Since you’ve mentioned about putting it into a daily sadhna practice, it should seem easy for you to grasp what’s said here.

Suppose we want to reach a destination. What do we do? First we understand that ‘this’ is the destination I want to reach to. Then, we start our journey. Thereafter, within some time, we reach the destination. Now, same thing applies here.

The scientific Method is to keep separation from the worldly self.

At present, we believe that, ‘I am John (you may insert your own name here)’, isn’t it? But really speaking, John, and everything that belongs to John, is all relative. So, John is our worldly or the relative self; it is not our real Self. Hence drug addiction, depression all are with the worldly self. And our real Self is the Pure Soul, which by nature, is an abode of eternal bliss.

Step 1: Clear our Understanding. First we understand that “John is separate. I am a Pure Soul.” – this is the destination we want to reach to. Our belief has to change. Gnani, the Enlightened One, has the spiritual powers to make us experientially realize, ‘I am Pure Soul, I am real, I am eternal, I am immortal; and everything else is relative and temporary.’ After this Self-Realization, our understanding becomes clear that, “John is indeed separate. I am certainly a Pure Soul.”

Step 2: Constant Awareness Then, we keep awareness of the Self (the Pure Soul) and separation with the worldly self (John) by practicing the principles given by Gnani. ‘Whatever thoughts, speech, actions, intellect, ego, anger, hatred, wish, jealousy, depression, addiction emerge in this being, everything is in John. And I am totally separate from John. I am a Pure Soul and my function is only to see and know whatever arises within John. I am knower of what John is experiencing, I am knower of the drugs John is taking.’ – You repeatedly use this knowledge for keeping separation. That is called awareness. With this awareness, every fault begins to melt. This is the most scientific fact!

Step 3: Experience of the Self. Then comes experience! And that experience will continue; it won’t go away. Those that don’t let us work for our Soul (the Self) are our opponents eg. anger, pride, deceit, greed, depression, drug-addiction, etc. As these faults begin to dissolve through the above two steps, we slowly, slowly get the experience of the Self in the form of eternal bliss. This bliss is no match to the biggest of the biggest worldly happiness.

We don’t want to be emotional to have this experience immediately, but instead we shall slowly and steadily move ahead through right understanding and proper awareness, so that we reach our destination certainly.

By wrong belief, we feel oneness with ‘John’ (you may insert your own name here), his mind, thoughts, intellect, speech, behaviour. Whenever John experiences depression, we feel ‘I am in depression.’ Somebody insults John, we feel, ‘I had to suffer due to this insult.’ This belief is wrong. And due to wrong belief, we get involved and absorbed in John. Now, after Self-Realization (attained through a 2 hours Gnanvidhi ceremony which is completely free of cost), Gnani changes our wrong belief to the right belief of ‘who am I’.

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Thereafter, owing to this right belief, we are able to keep separation with John. And this is the beginning of the experience of the Soul. Slowly, we have to reach to having a total experience. As we practice the principles given by Gnani, it will help increase our awareness and thereby enhance the experience of Pure Soul. This indeed is the scientific, and hence the surest way to overcome any kind of worldly problem in our life.

After Self-Realization, when John is depressed and he takes drugs, you see and know, “Oh, it is with John. It is wrong.” When you see mistakes of John, you are in the state of Soul.

To overcome any kind of mistake, the Enlightened One, has suggested a technical way too.

Any mistake manifests in our life because earlier, we have opined in favour of that mistake. When we favour anything, it multiplies. So now, if we want to overcome that mistake, we ought to make a division. How? by sitting in opposition of that mistake. Here’s a 4-step method to do so.

Eg. if you have drug addiction:

1. Have a firm conviction that this addiction is not right. Drug Addiction is a weakness. So, we make a firm resolve within, that drug-addiction or a state of depression is wrong to have.

2. Make a list of the advantages of not having the addiction, and also a corresponding list of the disadvantages of getting addicted to drugs. This helps us realize how harmful it is to get addicted and will provide us the required impetus to get over our addiction at the earliest.

3. Practice repentance. Inspite of the above exercise, it may happen that you continue with the addiction. This is because earlier, you have strongly opined in favour of addiction. For this, what you can do now is pratikraman, which means confession before God, repentance, and a vow to not do it again. Pray to God with all your heart, “Oh God, I have taken to drug-addiction. Please forgive me, and grant me the strength so that I never take drugs again and come out of its addiction.” That’s it, pray sincerely with all earnestness.

4. Never protect your addiction. This is a very important step to come out of any mistake or condition, forever. Many a times, while we are striving hard to overcome our weakness, someone comes and says, “You should not take drugs!” or “Oh! he is a case of depression.” This makes us sensitive and we immediately begin to justify ourselves or indirectly beg sympathy for ourselves. No! we don’t want to do that now. We rather want to be strong and persevere to get out of the problem now. Hence, we shall always beware of this vital point.

The above four steps are given by the Enlightened One. Hence, they prove very helpful to get over any kind of vice or weakness that we may see in ourselves. Also, if possible, every morning, heartily pray to God, “May no living being be caused any hurt by my thoughts, words or actions.” This one golden habit, in course of time, will take away all kinds of sufferings from your life.