Spiritual Stimulation

[GliderGuider]

Are you reading this with a cup of coffee or tea in your hand?

One thing we spiritual seekers are usually asked to forego during periods of intense inner work (and often to forego entirely) is the consumption of stimulants. For most this means giving up caffeine, although the stimulant category includes many other drugs including ma huang, ephedra, ephedrine, amphetamines, and cocaine. Stimulants that are prescribed for conditions like narcolepsy are completely a different story of course. Here I’m just talking about “lifestyle stimulants”.

For drugs at the more potent end of the spectrum the warning seems obvious – deep work is difficult or impossible if one is flying on coke or crystal meth. But for the more common or “organic” stimulants like caffeine or ma huang the reasons for abstinence may seem less clear. It’s even tempting to think of such drugs positively, as an aid to alertness and concentration during long sessions of inner inquiry or to keep from falling asleep during deep meditation.

I’ve recently been thinking about the benefits of a stimulant-free inner journey. My interest was prompted by my work on eliminating a long-standing habit of using a mix of caffeine and ephedrine to reduce my appetite (I’m a bit “round”), as a bronchodilator to help with my asthma and as a “keep going” fuel to stay productive in life. I’ve found three ways that getting rid of such stimulants helps with my journey.

Meditation and Deeksha

My first glimpse of why they might not be a good idea came from receiving Deeksha (also known as the “Oneness Blessing”). The Deeksha experience was so profound, and the benefits so great, that I was moved to give it every chance to do its work. The ability of Deeksha to open and calm the mind shows up in fMRI brain scans, and appears to come from a quieting of the electrical activity in the parietal lobes of the brain. This quieting seems to reduce our sense of boundaries and separation, thereby opening the door to a variety of spiritual and psychological opportunities. Deep meditation does much the same thing, though with less lasting effects.

Now, stimulants do more than simply rev up our bodies. They also increase electrical activity in the brain, which is why we feel more alert when we use them. Not surprisingly, one of the brain areas that caffeine stimulates is the parietal area – precisely the area we need to calm down for effective inner work. The coffee and tea we consume because we are habituated or addicted stand squarely in the way of the Work, slowing it down, blocking it and even working actively against it.

The Illusion of the Self

The next way that cutting out stimulants helps in our spiritual journey is a little more abstract. Much spiritual work is devoted to achieving the realization that the sense of self we take for granted is an illusion. The feeling that “I” am a constant, enduring Self is created by a mental phenomenon similar to the “persistence of vision” responsible for us seeing the illusion of continuous motion as we watch a movie, even though the movie itself is only a rapid succession of still frames.

In much the same way, our illusion of a continuous Self is created out of a host of discrete inner events including thoughts, feelings, beliefs and memories. The understanding that each of these inner events is discrete becomes clear when you realize that the thoughts you had last week, yesterday or even a moment ago are now gone, replaced by new ones. Feelings likewise arise, linger for a while and subside, only to be replaced by new feelings. Beliefs can change over time, memories are notoriously fickle. In fact there is very little of our inner experience that is constant – certainly not constant enough to create the sense of a solid enduring “me” that most of us identify ourselves as.

The sense of self seems to arise from a trick of the mind, in which the edges of each successive inner event are blurred into the next as part of the operation of our mental machine. As the boundaries between successive events are masked our inner landscape appears to be continuous, just like a movie.

In order to get beneath this appearance and realize the self for the illusion that it is, we need to develop the ability to see the edges of those thoughts and feelings. We need to become aware of them as the discrete events they are, rather than as part of a seamless flow. We also need to be able to access those tiny spaces between them, to “slip between” them in a sense, so we can contact the ground of being that lies beneath.

Anything that blurs those boundaries even further prevents us from doing any of this. Stimulants do exactly that. The extra rapidity and chaos that stimulants induce in our mental machine (think of the “coffee jitters”) make it much more difficult to see those spaces. They vanish from view in a welter of thoughts and feelings that pile on top of each other under the influence of the chemical fuel. As in the case of Deeksha, the effect of stimulants impedes and blocks an important avenue for spiritual growth.

Reactivity

The third way that stimulants make the job of spiritual growth harder is related to their tendency to make us more reactive. If you watch someone (especially yourself) who has just consumed too much coffee, it’s easy to see that they are more reactive than normal. Small irritations bother them more. They are quicker to argue a point with which they disagree, and more prone to feel slighted by relatively benign verbal exchanges.

Reactivity is the hallmark of our ego in action. Calming our reactivity allows our inner observer or witness to appear, that helps lead us out of our egoistic attachments and concerns. On the other hand, anything that amplifies our reactivity throws us to the wolves, as we relinquish the operation of our mental machine to the less-than-tender mercies of our unconscious filters, programs, fixations and projections.

If we want to grow either psychologically or spiritually, we need to be watching the bus rather than driving it. The Witness watches the bus. Our ego drives it. And with a good jolt of stimulants the ego just drives it faster and becomes less willing to give up the wheel.

Making it Easy

So, there are some thoughts on the ways in which stimulants like coffee can interfere with your spiritual growth. Knowing a bit about how it happens may change your approach toward cutting your consumption of coffee and caffeinated tea, just as it did mine.

When we are faced with an addiction, most of us try to break it by reminding ourselves of “shoulds and shouldn’ts”. We try to lecture, cajole, bully or shame ourselves out of the habit. This is very hard work, because it brings up a lot of inner resistance that the habit itself gleefully reinforces.

When you view the addiction as an obstacle to something you deeply desire, such as spiritual development, the picture changes. Instead of thinking, “I should give this up,” we will think, “I want to give this up!” Instead of thinking, “I shouldn’t be doing this to myself,” we may think “I want to stop this so I can have a better chance at the growth I deserve. I work hard on following my Path, I want to give myself all the help I can.” “Should” transmutes to “want” and suddenly the way is opened and the effort needed to accomplish this goal falls away.

Best wishes for an easy journey.
Bodhisantra

[Fire Walk With Me]

1. Thank you for the post!

I'm in a group living arrangement, and cannot select which foods I eat (merely those I will not), and I must relate that from having eliminated pork, most red meat, and caffeine from my diet, I've taken my blood pressure from 165 to 134, in just one month. If I can do it, so can anyone.

I especially relate to the above section regarding the illusion of self. When I settle to pray or meditate (or enter hypnogogic mentation prior to sleep), my brain goes wild, and I have to stop and say to myself "Addiction to thinking" as often as is possible. There are indeed gaps, and an effort of the senses to maintain a continuous self-stimulation. This has been noted in the Buddhist practice of The Dark Retreat, 40 days in true darkness with no outside input. It is said that the senses begin to put on a show for themselves, and I can at least confirm that they are endlessly addicted to self-stimulation. (Being on medication has removed my ability to do my traditional, concentration-based practices, and I'm adapting to a new state and its variables.) For instance, I'd believed that taking L-Glutamic Acid would help, as my mystery school teacher called it a brain booster. Unfortunately, in this state, it merely accentuates the problem! Oh well, such is the need for surrender!!!

:hi: