Beyond the Contradiction

I have been asked to write about addictions. I, myself, am hesitant to approach this matter because so many programs, rather than identifying the addictive behavior, want to define you by it. My experience is different. I cannot say, "I am an addict" because I don't experience myself as a unified whole. My experience of myself is more akin to a bunch of fragments floating in space. Sometimes a particular fragment is present, and sometimes another is present. There really is no continuity. There is no continuity in what is ordinarily called myself.

In my case, addictive thoughts, or addictive chemistry or the addictive process, can vanish without a trace and weeks even months later, return in spades, complete with an entire repertoire of attitudes, perspectives and desires that simply were not there. They were absent, then they returned. They depart again, and I am left feeling not even like the same person. It is literally hard to convince myself that I'm an addict. I don't, then, feel like an addict. I feel as unencumbered as the sky once the clouds have gone. It's as if the addict has left the building. Who knows if it will return? But it always does. The clouds always return. The replacement consciousness can't believe this. Even the believer and beliefs are not consistent with the previous one.

If memory serves, I could come to some assessment as to what percentage of the time the addictive process is present. But it is difficult to identify myself in any way. Truthfully, I have no consistent identity. My name is consistent. People call me and I respond, but so much about what is called the personality abruptly changes. I'm not talking about growth or development. I'm talking about major shifts. It's like waking up with a different quality of consciousness. Sometimes the consciousness has a playful quality, sometimes an ugly quality, and sometimes a sage quality. Sometimes craving is present, sometimes distortion is present. Sometimes perception has shifted in such a way that it's as if I crawled into a different skin, and sometimes there are many at once.

I don't know if that matches any one else's experience, but it is my experience. It is complex, and surreal, and perhaps I should be the subject of a scientific study. All of it can be doubted completely, but this doubt doesn't deny the occurrence. It denies association of the remaining identity with the departed consciousness. The felt sense is that the addict came and went. The distortion came and went, the confusion came and went. The perspective is totally new and isn't experienced to be the same person.

Unless, there is guilt, remorse or some emotion that creates some sense of continuity, I am convinced that whoever remains, once the addict had gone, has no association with it whatsoever. Perhaps this is why denial is so hard to break through. And why psychopathic behavior is possible. Unless there is some emotional tie that creates an association, some identity as a sinner or as an addict, or a psychopath, the remaining identity is discontinuous with the past.

Most people, I assume, don't experience it in this way. For most people there is a continuity in personality. For me personality is not unified enough to be on one side or the other. It is not unified enough to say it is for this and against that. It is not unified enough to say it is a sinner. It needs memory for this. It is not unified enough to say it is a saint, history proves otherwise. It is not unified enough to say it is an addict. It is not unified enough to say I believe X.

Honestly, there is very little agreement or unity in this personality. Maybe, there is a dominant trait, but different traits dominate at different times that are completely contradictory. One dominant trait is the willingness to help wherever possible, and many have said this, but there are other traits that show up that are malicious.

Most don't experience Kevin or Prakash as malicious, but I and others have experienced myself in this way. Would it then be accurate to say that I am a selfless openhearted sadist. This makes no sense. Would I say that I am a sadistic kind-hearted man. This also makes no sense. Here, we can speak about what is authentic and inauthentic, what are the core values? But the core values for which? The fact remains. I experience both, sometimes equally and sometimes simultaneously. Faced with this perplexing scenario, I throw my hands up and say, beyond the conflicts, beyond the opposition, beyond the contradiction or addiction who am I?

There is no denying what happens. History keeps a record of events, but my experience is that there is no identity unified enough to say I did that, or I am that. There is no denying of events, but there is not always this association with a "me" who has lived the events. They happened to a me, but which one? Who am I? There is no unified sense of a personality. For me it is like fragments floating in space.

What is consistent is space, so the attention more often goes to that. The fragments play a part, but they are not cohesive. They exist together but don't work together. I mostly experience them as a collection of contradictions. Am I all of them or none of them? Perhaps, we can discuss it.

In the interest of clarity, I have added the following: Please don't misunderstand me. I am only speaking of my experience. My experience of the personality is that it has no unified direction. It wants opposite and conflicting things. My experience is that only space, silence presence, what have you, is continuous. For me, no other identity is continuous. Everything else changes. The addict comes. The addict leaves. The sadist comes. The sadist leaves. Only the sense of space is there all the time. For this reason, this spaciousness, the only reality that is not discontinuous, is called the self.

Because this is so, the former consciousness, or set of beliefs, is not continuous or consistent with the present consciousness, or set of beliefs, and there is nothing that links them. The only similarity is that they arise in the same space. What is ordinarily referred to as the personality or personal identity has disintegrated. There is no harmony or agreement within the personality. What is wanted at any given moment depends on which is present. All of this happens within a field. That field is the only thing that's continuous. This is my experience. It has not happened that the same consciousness is present always, so I have gone beyond to this uncontaminated field. If you ask, who am I? It is That, the only consistent reality.

Perhaps, as this space, I can harmonize these personalities, these energies. I cannot do it as one or the other, because my experience is that I am no more one than the other. One may be more frequent at times, but the other is sure to make its presence felt. Who am I? I am the only thing that I could be, the reality continuous enough to deserve the title "I", the vast field in which everything comes and goes. Only as That, is it even conceivable that I could harmonize all other energies and contradictions, only as That could I bring the lion to lie down with the lamb, or welcome the unwelcome.