Right now, I am procrastinating on something but writing in my journal. This isn’t what I really need to do, but it is what I want to do. What I need and what I want are different things, and often the difference between them is enjoyment, and when I’m procrastinating, I choose enjoyment over the needful things that are somewhat unpleasant.
My cat meows. I pay attention in the Now. I must wait to put him outside until I have finished journaling. This isn’t procrastination because it is a choice. The difference between doing something later and procrastinating is worth thinking about. Procrastination happens when I ignore my priority tasks in favor of something less important. This is also what happens when people with addiction issues favor their addiction over their families, work, health, and so on. They put off real self-care in favor of self-indulgence.
Now I’m many years into my lifelong recovery process and so I wonder what it means that I am disciplining myself to do the harder things. How did this come about? It seems to have come about effortlessly (but imperfectly). As I choose to be less selfish, I am more willing to sacrifice comfort and emotional safety to leave my comfort zone. This is what it means, I think, to get better. Except that I’m not aware of ever having consciously chosen to be less selfish. The whole process of recovery is somewhat mysterious.
Addiction appears in many forms of life. I now pay more attention to my spending habits because I must. But what I think I want is to escape my worries about money. I think that’s what I want because of the shadows darkening my soul. The truth is more complicated. Whether it’s overspending or using substances, or both simultaneously, I become aware of the terrain where my addictions are still active – and my avoidance (of frugality and sobriety) still hides out in my life, appearing still as occasional difficulties. Really, they are only difficulties when I allow myself to resist feeling their tension and releasing it. Really, they are only problems when I fail to accept them as a stepping stone to becoming more whole. I must probe the overspending and the substance use – when they arise — and discover what they are teaching me.
When I procrastinate or find myself tilting towards addictive behavior, I am spending my attention in the wrong places. My behaviors are impoverishing me and enriching me at the same time. They impoverish me when I fail to do the important things instead of the easy things. They enrich me when they teach me lessons about what my soul needs to be whole – if I learn from what they tell me and figure out how to transfigure my soul needs into coins of grace.
And grace is what I keep stumbling into, even here in the detour. Even here in the scattered Now. This very writing—this moment—is not escape, though it echoes the energy of escape. It is attention finding a crack to pour through. Sometimes the crack is just wide enough to let the light in and remind me: the pattern itself is not the enemy. My distractions, my cravings, my little rebellions—they’re all part of the tapestry. I am not trying to rip them out anymore. I am learning to listen.
What if avoidance is a form of longing in disguise? A longing to feel, to rest, to be at peace without pressure. What if addiction is the soul’s misfired attempt at remembering the bliss of wholeness? Then even this, even the resistance, becomes a teacher. And I sit with the teaching of Nondual Recovery—not trying to conquer the behavior and cravings, not trying to fix them, but trying to hear them. The lessons keeps whispering: You are already what you seek. Even in avoidance. Even in relapse. Even in forgetting. Wake up. Come back. Begin again, and again, and again.
This is what I am learning from addiction and avoidance: that they are not barriers to the path—they are the path, when I pay attention.
