healing addiction through unconditional love

I have been reading the book Handbook to Higher Consciousness: The Science of Happiness by Ken Keyes. It is a seemingly simple yet profound book. It mainly speaks of the addicted state of the lower human consciousness – how we are addicted to the results of our actions and to the behaviors of others in order to retain an illusory sense of security, sensation and control. Addiction is not merely about drugs and other external stimuli to which we form dependencies. Addiction is a deep emotional programming rampant in the current society, based on our belief that we are incomplete and that life is not good just the way it is. This mentality blocks us from true love, serenity and self-knowledge. Keyes writes: “As conscious beings the only thing we need to find happiness in life is to perceive clearly who we are (we are pure consciousness and not the social roles we are acting out), and exactly what are the real conditions, here and now, of our lives…And this means developing the habit of emotionally accepting whatever is here and now in our lives.”

We need this clear perception, free of lower emotional imprinting, to really understand ourselves and others, and thus to be able to love. Without this clarity, we live a nihilistic existence, walking through life blind to its sacred purpose. It is why so many religions advocate faith; to put our full belief in God and the divinity of everything. But we need to take it a step further; it is more than just blindly believing things will be okay through a mental mantra of hope—as that still leaves a separation between self and world. Real trust comes through the innate heart knowing that we are always connected to and supported by the power of life, which is absolutely good. This is the significance of yoga—the union with God, and the unity of all beings. When we recognize this interconnectedness, no longer do we have to put enormous effort into trying to control our surroundings so that we can maintain our addiction to false safety. Knowledge of safety comes from unconditional love, which is unmoved by external circumstance.

It sounds easy, yet most people are still living in deep addiction. As the book discusses, this is a key root of suffering in humanity: the idea that we need to manipulate the world around us to be happy rather than just living in and embracing the natural flow. In the flow is where life happens, the good and the ugly. To resist the relative bad things does not bring more peace and happiness—instead it brings more division and distortion of reality. It takes deep heart awakening in order to bring light to our trust issues, working through them and consequently coming into a permanent relationship with God and our own soul, which is where true healing begins.

Without unconditional love, we remain vampirically attached to external energy and only augment duality in the world. We can strive to improve the conditions of life, whether that be through the lens of self-improvement, community healing, political activism, or environmentalism, but if approached in the manner of wanting to fix a problem, then we are still operating under the delusion of control and a closed heart. When we are attached to people, events and outcomes for our own personal happiness, our love is still conditional. We cannot wait for a future time to love unconditionally, as it is always in the here and now, starting within as a free will choice we all have to make. There is no external revolution and change of society without each one of us working through our addictions and radically committing to the power of love to rule our lives.