Are you a seeker or a finder? Evolving from Spiritual Addiction to Spiritual Experience

A slippery slope, discussing spiritual addiction. The concept flies in the face of much that the multi-billion dollar self-help industry tries to sell to spiritual “seekers,” and what many religious orders proffer. The next book, the latest guru, the new technology, the “you can’t make it without x,y,z” message; there’s always a new spin on the best way to enlightenment. A world full of “finders” would render the market for our now-necessary services down to nothing, but if we’re sincere, everyone in the self-help industry should hope for being out of a job.

I like to imagine a world where everyone glows with inner contentment. Where God is worshipped joyfully, as an omnipotent benevolent force. Each person sings inside, thrilled to be embodying their truest soul gifts, actualizing their highest potential. The day-to-day is done with pleasure, and the bigger picture of a life’s mission is progressed in perfect alignment with Divine Will and Timing. Unconditional love abounds.

Sounds great, doesn’t it? If you’re already living the dream, right on! But if you find yourself doing “all the right stuff,” experiencing occasional rushes of happiness, yet you’re still grasping and often lose touch, perhaps it’s time to look within. There may be a simple adjustment needed with what can be called “spiritual addiction,” otherwise known as looking outside of yourself for the “high” of a spiritual experience.

Let me explain. Forgive me, but often there’s an underlying message to the spiritual transformation business that echoes the ethics of the pharmaceutical companies who invent diseases to sell drugs. The savvy marketers create a frenzy of fear around the “disease” (in this case, desire for spiritual bliss), then make people feel their pain, then present their solution as an answer to the problem. It’s a time-tested, proven marketing technique that has not escaped the realm of spiritual questing. In fact, in the spiritual realm, there’s a built-in endless marketing machine: because the nature of God is boundless, someone can always come along and say they know something that you don’t!

There’s nothing bad about this, but it is important to be aware. A sufferer of “restless leg syndrome” wants nothing more than a pill to quell his symptoms. A sufferer of the human experience wants nothing more than relief from his/her pain, or better yet, a glimpse of happiness. The fix is good; it allows the previously suffering person to focus on other things, perhaps on the root of what’s bothering them.

The hunger for spiritual experience is universal. It is a natural human tendency to seek an experience that is greater than ourselves, and to seek understanding of who we are and why we are here. The experience of being beyond the body, immersed in “oneness,” connected with all beings, and a partner in our own destiny, is something that we all deeply desire.

All addictions are a method of pacifying this desire. Depending on what your favorite pacifier is (drugs, sex, shopping, food, alcohol, etc.), it’s a temporary high. Indulging the addiction gives us a temporary feeling of fulfillment, which delays the inevitable need to deal head-on with the deeper issues of the spiritual quest. That’s why it’s common for sober, apparently addiction-free spiritual seekers to have a background in a more traditionally labeled addiction.

In my years as a seeker myself and as a metaphysical teacher, I’ve experienced and witnessed a correlation in the addiction to getting the next “bigger” spiritual experience.

However, there’s really only one spiritual experience, and there is only one “place” to find it- inside you. Oneness is the natural state. We can read about it all day long, wear this pendant or that, or have someone else show us what it looks like to experience it, but only a direct, personal experience is relevant. And the only way to a direct experience is within.

It is at once the scariest and most liberating thing to admit to yourself that you are God. You not only must relinquish your smallness, you must accept responsibility for everything that you have ever experienced. No longer are you a victim of karma, you are a creator. You don’t need anyone or anything to show you the way; you exist in the certainty that everything is inside of you. It’s a shift in polarity of consciousness from me over God to God over me. Meditation time shifts from “please help me find peace,” a struggle, to simply a time to sit and rest in the radiance of your own Godself, and radiate it in all directions outward to the world. Relationship to spiritual events, kirtans, healers, the latest book, DVD, etc., becomes a beautiful reminder, rather than a desperate clamor for the perfect tool that will fix you.

This grand cycle of evolution takes years, if not lifetimes to “complete” and fine tune. I’d venture to guess that there is no completion in soul evolution until the soul ceases to exist as a distinct identity. It returns to the entirety of its experience as an apparent separate identity back to the One…its assignment complete through the illusion of form and separate being…every last experience, every flicker of energy spent in separation enfolded back into the heart of Truth.

Perhaps this shift from spiritual addiction to radiant being I speak of is the halfway mark to the great absolution just described. Perhaps from here, everything is downhill, and we can cruise through the myriad illusions that come up for absolution in relative ease. We’ll still go through our share of human drama, but the basis we return to never falters. We do not doubt the Self or question our Godliness. There is no lack or confusion about the oneness of things, and no urge to look outward for gratification. We can easily gather each day’s futile efforts of looking outward for peace, within, during our meditations. The essence of God at the core of our beings is a constant source of renewal, peace, and remembering.

Happy journeying! May the light of truth within you dawn anew with each breath.