Excuses are Self-Abuses

Entering a new path that will lead you to your Best Future Self requires determination and commitment. Self-growth does not just happen - it is a result of persistent effort to follow one's vision. The first step is to create a vision if it is lacking. Who can you become? Feel it, see it, hear it - create a little video in your head of who you are and what you are doing as your Best Future Self, and play it numerous times a day. Often the gap between who we are and who we can become is filled with unconscious beliefs and outdated habits. Our modern lives are busy and full, and the adage “old habits die hard", rings true for many of us. Through the Beyond Addiction program, I've …

Give Yourself Space to Feel

Sadness will not determine your life. What will determine your life are your attempts not to feel the sadness. What will determine your life are your attempts to compensate for the sadness by not feeling it, by developing coping mechanisms that keep you from allowing you to experience yourself the way you really are. That’s what will determine your life. If you don’t want your life to be determined by what happened, allow yourself to feel exactly what’s there. Developmental trauma happens when there isn’t space for us to feel what we feel. The fact is, there was never space in your life for you to feel what you felt. There was nobody there to hold you; your mother wasn’t there to hold you. She was too busy trying to soothe her …

On Gratitude and Forgiveness

“May you be here now in gratitude. As you walk and eat and travel, be where you are. Otherwise you will miss most of your life.” -  Siddhartha Gautama Last night, en route to teach a Beyond Addiction workshop in New Mexico, summer storms made flying unsafe and I had to sleep in the Dallas Airport. In the face of this “first world problem” I was grateful for the teachings of Kundalini Yoga and the principles of the Beyond Addiction program. When my flight was cancelled, I observed my own drive to have things go “my” way and my desire to impose my will on others to have them behave as I wish. I then softened into acceptance. As Gabor Maté says, “I am here now in this.” There’s nothing any of us …

Yogi Bhajan on Forgiveness

Forgiveness is one of the keys to healing and recovery. Yogi Bhajan writes: All healing is based on a relationship. The fundamental relationship is to your Self and Soul. You are missing nothing. You are complete within yourself. Whatever you have asked for is given. But we learn fear (or to fear ourself). We learn that we are incomplete. We learn that we are flawed, bad, wrong, or ineffective. The fastest route to healing and to the experience of happiness is to forgive completely and limitlessly. Forgive, release, learn, love, and excel! What is there to forgive and release? The hundreds of inner tapes, patterns, and feelings that had you live as if you are limited and inadequate. Regardless of the source of those patterns, they must be forgiven and released from the very …

Dr. Gabor Maté on Attachment and Addiction

When it comes to addiction, I’m going to introduce the word ‘attachment’ to you. Attachment is an interesting word, because it has two meanings. If you want to talk in terms of negatives and positives, it has the negative meaning of clinging, or craving, or grasping onto ideas, behaviours, substances, relationships, or situations that are negative for us. In fact, that’s the definition of addiction; any behaviour that gives you temporary pleasure, relief, that you crave, that you cling to despite negative consequences, is an addiction. In other words, addictions are a form of what the Buddhists call attachment. We’re just too attached, or we’re attached period. Whenever it talks about clinging or attachment, it’s to everything; our form, our bodies, our flesh, our ideas, our perceptions, and our relationships. It’s …

Dr. Gabor Maté on “Life is a Conversation”

Life is a conversation. Life is a conversation that begins the moment you’re conceived, and as soon as you’re conceived the world sends information your way. The nature of that information, how it’s delivered, how you receive it, how you interpret it, and how you respond - that’s your life. So life is a conversation. We tend not to perceive that; we tend to think that life just happens to us, when really it’s a responsive, interactive process which we create. But we don’t realize that we create it; we don’t realize that we’re the source. There’s a good reason that we don’t realize it. We don’t realize it because how we create it, what we create it from, is determined by so many influences that predate our conception, so it’s much …

Dr. Gabor Maté Speaks About Trauma

  The essence of trauma is that, as a result of the overt abuse or neglect, or because of the relational trauma, we lose the connection to our essence. That’s what the trauma is. The trauma is not what happened; the trauma is not that I was raped, the trauma is not that I was abandoned, the trauma is not that I was hit, the trauma is not that my parents didn’t know how to listen to me. That’s not the trauma; the trauma is that, as a result of that, I lost the connection to myself. Hence, I lost the connection to my essential qualities: my joy, my vitality, my clarity, my wisdom, my power, my strength, my courage. That’s the trauma! The good news is, THAT can be healed, because if …