First Lecture: How To Conquer Addiction With The Eightfold Path/Four Noble Truths/Right View

Video

The Four Noble Truths

1. Life has inevitable suffering: existences comes with many experiences. Some of what we experience during our life pertains to suffering and there are many levels of suffering. Everything in existence experiences some form of suffering. When we fully understand this truth, we comprehend that existence has pain and bitterness, but it also has joy and happiness.

2. There is a cause for our suffering: there are many causes for our suffering and we need to become aware of them, we need to understand why and how we suffer. Most of us do not comprehend the how’s and why’s. We do not understand the law of cause and effect and if we did we could change our lives. Every action produces effects; consequences. If you throw a stone into a pool of water, ripples emerge from where it descends. The same happens with our mind, heart and body. What we take in through our senses causes rippling effects. If we take in negative impressions (filth) through our senses we will disturb our minds and hearts. If you eat food that is unhealthy for your body, the affects can lead to sickness, disease, and lower energy levels. The food we eat can also affect our emotional and mental state. If you eat food that is unhealthy for you, you may feel ill and not feeling good affects your mental and emotional state. If we take in impressions from tv that are negative, violent and perverse, the affects cause ripples, disturbances in our minds and hearts. If we get angry, if we lie, cheat, steal, or use intoxicants, we harm ourselves and we harm others. Our egos of pride, anger, greed and lust cause mass suffering; suffering that we see all over the world. The world is in the state we currently find it in because we ignore the causes of our suffering and not only do we ignore them, we exploit them, and also hide from them and make up excuses for our unethical behaviors. We point our fingers at everything else not realizing that we are the main cause of our pain and bitterness.

3. There is an end to suffering: if we are sick (physically or psychologically), we first need to understand how we became sick so that we can find an antidote. We need to know the root cause.

Hippocrates, an ancient Greek physician said:

“Before you heal someone, ask him if he’s willing to give up the things that make him sick.”

In our own case, we are the cause of our ailments, but we are also the physician, and first we need to become aware of what we are doing to ourselves; the causes of our psychological illnesses. Our ego is the prime suspect in question. Our pride, anger, greed, envy, sloth, gluttony, and lust, are the seven vices that make up most our ego; they are our psychological aggregates. All of them cause mass suffering for us and others. These psychological aggregates are what we need to become aware of and what we need to work on so that we can lessen our suffering. If we had none of them we would be much happier. Instead of vices we would have virtues that help us live better lives, that help prevent mass suffering. Living a healthier lifestyle inwardly and outwardly causes ripples and each ripple has a positive effect. The effects are helpful, not only for ourselves, but for others as well. Energy is contagious, we infect each other with our energy. For example: If you’re sitting down at home relaxing and someone walks through the door irritated and angry, and they begin to yell at you, instantly their angry energy will infect you, and in most cases your ego of pride will be triggered and you may impulsively react with the same type of energy. But, if you’ve been working to be more humble, and loving and less prideful and angry, you have a better opportunity to not make the situation worse, thereby, causing less suffering and making the situation better. Instead, you take in the impression of the angry person, consciously, remaining vigilant and aware of yourself, you feel the frustrated energy and intuitively understand, that “this person is in a state of suffering,” you remain mindful and consciously choose to humble yourself and seek to help them instead of harm them.

The third noble truth is teaching us that there is an end to every situation that involves some type of suffering. Pain comes and goes, thoughts come and go, emotions come and go, this is the law of impermanence. When we experience suffering we may think that it will never subside, but it will. During meditation we learn to consciously observe ourselves and really we should be doing this all day; self-observing, mindfulness, having awareness of ourselves. During meditation we observe our thoughts and if we do not become fascinated with them, we see that they eventually vanish like mist; it’s the same with emotions and physical disturbances. If we have an itch and we do not move or become identified with what we feel, we will experience that the itch only lasts for so long. It is the same with everything that we perceive. Seasons come and go, the phases of the moon come and go, the stars, the planets, night, day, the tides of the ocean; everything comes and goes. So remember, however you feel, whatever’s ailing you, it will not last forever.

4. The end to suffering is contained in the eightfold path: the path to liberation taught by the Buddha Shakyamuni from vice, error, psychological pain and bitterness is within the eightfold path. All of us have the ability to expand our awareness, to perceive the causes and effects of our suffering; we have the ability to work on ourselves. When you face an ordeal, a difficult circumstance, learn to rejoice because you are about to learn something about yourself. For instance: when something is triggered within you that wants to react negatively, observe what’s happening and be joyful that you are now aware of something that you need to work on. Learn to look at everything as your teacher. Part of the reason we all suffer so much is because we ignore the causes, but we all have the capacity to stop ignoring and work to achieve psychological freedom. We begin by observing the causes and effects of our day to day lives. It’s important for us to have an open mind so that we can learn something new; a new way of being from moment to moment, alert and aware. As long as we tell ourselves that it’s not possible it will remain so. It’s imperative that we stop lying to ourselves. Our pride, anger, and envy tell us lies. When we are prideful, angry or envious we cannot perceive the truth, reality, instead we perceive through our psychological filters which are conditioning our consciousness, and thus limit our ability to understand and comprehend. The eightfold path is a way of living, a way of being, from moment to moment. The time has arrived to end our psychological slavery to all forms of addiction. We have enslaved ourselves to our egotistical tendencies: addictions and attachments. If we do the work we will discover that the slightest thing triggers us to think and act poorly, but we can end that, we can become something much more noble, but it takes effort, dedication and work.

The Eightfold Path – Path To Freedom From Suffering

1. Right View or Understanding

2. Right Intention or Motivation:

3. Right Speech or Communication

4. Right Action or Conduct

5. Right Vocation or Livelihood

6. Right Effort

7. Right Attention or Mindfulness

8. Right Concentration or Meditation

Practice:

Rune Thorn or Dorn (Thurisaz). Develop and Strengthen Willpower

“In the military position, on your feet, firm, and facing towards the east, place your right arm in such a way that your hand rests upon your waist or hip, thus performing the shape of this Rune. Now, you must sing the mantric syllables, TA, TE, TI, TO, TU, with the purpose of developing Christ Will (Willpower) in yourself. This exercise must be practiced every day at sunrise.” - Samael Aun Weor

Image from Glorian.org

The Eightfold Path – Path To Freedom From Suffering

Right View or Understanding

Right view is also known as right understanding, it is to see things as they really are. There is one way to look at things and this one way relates to how we perceive the objective truth. We gain objective truths through the process of meditation. When we deeply observe anything inwardly, we gain objective knowledge, which is intuitive and not subjective or intellectual. Subjective knowledge relates to our psychological conditionings. Objective truth is difficult to obtain; to see oneself as one truly is, is difficult. To see anything as it really is, is difficult, because we are trapped in vice, addiction, justification, pride, anger, etc. Right view is not intellectual and has nothing to do with opinions or beliefs, it has to do with reality.

For example: If you are addicted to any kind of intoxicant, there are specific reasons for why you are and your intellect cannot comprehend them. Meditation is needed in order to find the root causes. There are certain truths that relate to why you began using, and why you continue to use. These are objective truths, and only you can discover them; only you can discover the root causes and effects, the how’s and the why’s, the truth. But, what usually gets in way of viewing things in the right way are the excuses we make up in our minds, justifications, we blame others, and these subjective views keep us from taking responsibility for ourselves. We also call this subjective reasoning; opinions, beliefs and as good as we may think they are, they are not reality and they keep us from seeing ourselves clearly. This is wrong view which is also called subjective reasoning.

To view things in the right way is to perceive without filters (Ego), which is very difficult for all of us. Every person has psychological filters, and our filters are our desires, our anger, pride, selfishness, etc.

For example, when someone is angry all they can see is their anger. When your angry and you try to understand something, you are seeing things through the filter of your anger. Anger cannot understand peace, compassion, empathy, or anything else that relates to love or anything that is the truth. Anger seeks to hurt others because that is what someone who is angry feels, pain and suffering. When people suffer they want others to suffer and this is wrong view.

Have you ever been around someone who is stuck in a certain type of behavior and they try to influence others to think and behave as they do? Why do you think that is?

For instance, let’s say they are using drugs or addicted to pornography, when you are around them, do they offer you what their addicted to? Why do you think that is?

In most cases it’s because they unconsciously want others to be at their level of being. “Misery loves company,” as the old saying goes.

In order to stop viewing things in the wrong way a psychological work on ourselves is needed. In order to have right view or right understanding we first need to understand why we view things in the wrong way, to become aware of why we lack understanding of the causes and effects. What will help is to not lie to ourselves or give ourselves excuses for mistaken behaviors.

Can you recall any lies you’ve told yourself today, any excuses for certain behaviors?

Many of us have been spending most of our lives trying to avoid things; whether through intoxicants or by some other means of escape. As soon as we feel pain we want to escape it, we want to blame somebody else, and we want somebody or something to fix it for us. What we need to understand is our lives can get much better if we begin working to change the way we view things. Our lives will begin to change if we learn how to stop viewing life and everything that comes with existence in the wrong way. Most of us are used to seeing ourselves as the victim. We have a victim of circumstance view of ourselves and seeing ourselves as the victim keeps us stuck in a state of suffering and keeps us from the truth.

“Every cause has its effect; every effect has its cause.” – The Sixth Hermetic Principle

“This principle emphasizes that everything in the universe operates according to natural law, and that every action has a reaction.” With knowing this noble teaching it becomes our responsibility to study our own causes and effects. Now it is time to take responsibility for ourselves and learn to see and face things without trying to avoid them. Like Samael said, “It’s time to grab the bull by the horns,” and study the causes of our suffering. Many people do not want to do this type of psychological work. Facing ourselves is difficult, but if we don’t apply ourselves our lives will not get any better. In most cases we fear change or we lack willpower or the know-how of doing so.

Ask yourself, ‘What Am I Afraid Of?’

There is no need to be afraid, but if we are afraid, in most instances we are simply frightened of ourselves. We are frightened of discovering the truth; we are frightened of facing the causes of our suffering. It’s very common for us to think it’s someone else’s fault, but we are all responsible for our own actions. Even if someone tries to force you to do something you still have the ability to not do it. It’s helpful to reflect on these factors when you have time!

The way we view things has lead us into many mistakes, but we can learn from all of them. The knowledge we gain becomes understanding, and when we deeply comprehend something it becomes wisdom. Our wisdom can be used to be helpful and useful to humanity. The knowledge, understanding and wisdom we gain from our experiences with addiction can be utilized to help others learn how to do the work.

Ask yourself, who would you rather have teach you about sobriety, someone who has experiential knowledge of addiction or someone without it? Who has the greater wisdom in order to teach, someone who has intellectual knowledge of addiction or someone who has experienced the darkness of addiction? Someone who has knowledge of the facts right?

In order to suffer less, we need to accept the suffering, and see it for what it is, and this requires great willpower, and it requires great sincerity. Here we are primarily referring to psychological suffering. In order to have right view, we need to study how our addictions to pride, anger, lust, greed, sloth, gluttony, and unethical conduct causes suffering.

What is one way that one of these has caused you suffering?

We must not justify our actions and learn to accept the truth of them. If we understand how we are causing suffering for ourselves, such as, why our lives are caught up in multiple types of addiction, and many forms of unethical conduct, then we begin to see things more clearly. We need to understand why things are the way they are without letting our filters get in the way. This is something we can begin now, not later, right now.

What is one thing that you’d like to understand about yourself?

It’s helpful for us to understand that this step in the beginning is difficult, but it is something we can begin now. Learning to observe yourself throughout the day will help with this step, and what exactly are we observing? The causes of our suffering right? We are seeking to be more aware of our thoughts, our emotions and our actions. Each of us will help ourselves by paying attention to our daily thoughts, and emotions.

Take note of the way you view things, take a mental note of your behavior patterns. Strive to have awareness of yourself, pay attention to your psychological processes and try to remain in the middle. The middle way of doing things is to be in between good and bad, pleasant and unpleasant, between extreme views of any kind. When we observe ourselves in the present moment and during meditation we want to remain in the middle.

For example: Throughout the day you are trying to pay attention to your impulses, your thoughts and the way you are viewing things. While doing so you notice that you’ve been triggered to use and now you find that your craving a sensation of  whatever it is that your addicted to. In that moment, if you choose to give into your addiction you obviously didn’t remain in the middle, you became lost in the extremes of your wrong views, you lost awareness of yourself because you became identified with the desire to use; giving into addictive behaviors. But let’s back up a bit, let’s remain in the middle. In the moment you thought about getting high, or partaking in some form of addiction, you remained aware of yourself, paying attention to what’s triggering you, you don’t fall into extremes, you don’t act on any of your thoughts or feelings, you just remain aware of what’s happening to you and continue to observe what’s triggering you. You observe the causes, what are they? What lead up to this moment? Why do I want to use? If I give into my addiction what will happen? And what will happen if I don’t give in? Imagine all of this, and observe yourself while remaining in the middle. Don’t become identified with extreme views, just observe what is happening to you indifferently. Sit down and pay attention to yourself, and observe your thoughts. To be indifferent is to remain neutral with yourself. The neutral path is the middle way, the path between extremes.

Krishna stated,

“And when we become indifferent to both pleasure and pain in the discharge of our duty, we will become truly free to act from our higher nature.” – Bhagavad Gita, 3.34

Meditate on this verse when you have time!

A simple example is when we are cold can we warm ourselves up, or when we are hot can we find a way to cool ourselves? Right now it’s summer and you hear many people complain about how hot it is, this is because we have fallen into an extreme view, if we contemplate the nature of our pain we will find a remedy and the remedy is in the middle. In the middle is the knowledge of both pleasure and pain. In the middle is acceptance and understanding.

When we fall into extremes we cut our perception in half. We end up only seeing one side of the coin and we want to understand both sides. There are two sides to everything and this is what we call dualism, but in the middle of a dualistic view are the facts; the middle is comprehension, in the middle is the truth. When we comprehend what is in the middle of our dualistic view, we see that both sides have their proper place but in essence both are one. Light (wisdom) emerges from darkness (comprehension of our ignorance).

Carl Jung stated,

“No tree, it is said, can grow to heaven unless its roots reach down to hell.”

Wisdom is born from comprehending our ignorance. Our hell is psychological and our light is trapped within it, which is understanding, wisdom, peace, joy, happiness and love. When we comprehend the things that keep us in ignorance, our light is liberated, which is joy, serenity, understanding, and happiness. In order for us to comprehend the light, we first must understand our own inner darkness and from comprehension grows a great tree with many virtuous branches. Hopefully we have experienced enough darkness and are now ready to turn back towards the light.

Learn to see the complete picture of anything that you are trying to understand through the process of meditation. When you sit to meditate and you close your eyes what do you see? Darkness right? But in the darkness of your mind there is also light.

So, don’t beat yourself up when you are viewing something in the wrong way. Just become aware of it. If you get angry or sad you may lose awareness of yourself. The best way to study the causes and effects is to remain vigilant and in the middle. For example, if we were to say, ‘I’m a bad person or I’m a good person,’ we would be lying to ourselves because we are not either one at all times. Good and bad are two sides of the same coin, but what is in the middle? The understanding and comprehension of both. In this way we will come to see the good in bad and the bad in good. Not everything that is good for us is good for someone else, and not everything that is bad for us is bad for someone else.

Our experiences of what we call bad can be transformed into what we call good and sometimes what we think is good can actually become something that is bad. Good and bad have their proper places but there is always a middle to them. The middle is the wisdom gained from our experiences of both. There are so many things that we think are good and that we think are bad. We think water is good when we drink it or swim in it and we think it is bad when it floods our home. Truly water is just water. We think fire is good in a controlled environment, but how do we feel about it when it burns down a town, or a forest full of animals and beautiful trees? Do we feel that fire is bad? Can we blame fire for being fire? Is it evil because it burns down homes? No right? So our perception, our way of viewing things is flawed when we fall into extremes. It’s important for us to find a way to view things in the right way. Ask yourself, is someone bad if they are addicted to narcotics, sex, gambling, pornography, video games, tv, or food? If no, then what’s the answer? The answers come to us naturally when we do not fall into extreme views.

When striving to see things through the middle way, we are seeking to fully understand something objectively; without filters. We cannot understand or empathize with anyone if we’ve already judged them. What’s it called when we judge someone without having all the facts? Ignorance right? Many people view animals as being less than themselves, but does that make it true? Animals suffer just like us, they are trying to live and survive just like us. So are they less important? The way we see things depends on what we have within ourselves. Our pride, greed, selfishness, anger, lust, and laziness filter our view. Our psychological filters cloud our ability to view things in the right way.

For instance, how does addiction to pornography effect our view of the opposite sex? Do we view the opposite sex in the right way, or do we only see the object of our fanatical desire? Or what happens when a young teenager watches pornography; what are some of the effects?

While watching pornography many things can happen. We can build a lot of envy and lust. A person who watches pornography most likely spends a great deal of time fantasizing, and develops an addiction to masturbation. When entering into a relationship with someone the person seeks to act out what they have fantasized about, and what happens? The person they’re with gets mistreated and abused. What happens when one person in the relationship gets jealous because their partner looks at other naked people? What happens to their mind and heart? The relationship becomes chaotic and filled with resentment. Have you ever seen an elderly person who was addicted to lustful desire? Their minds are imbalanced, and perverse, or they have lost their minds, and what about their bodies? Most of them are impotent and drained of energy. Most of them are alone and without a partner because their partners grew tired of sexual misconduct. Watching pornography while in a relationship is considered cheating and leads to many forms of sexual misconduct. Many of us who are addicted to pornography when in a relationship sooner or later physically cheat on our spouses, because our lust is never satisfied.

Another example is, those of us who are addicted to gambling, we fantasize about winning the big one. To think that one will get rich while spending all their money at casino’s or on lottery tickets is fantasy, which is wrong view. Yes, every once in a while someone wins but how much money did they spend before they won, or how much suffering did they cause their families because they didn’t pay the bills or have money to buy food?

Another example we can discuss is when we’re in a relationship with someone based on addiction to intoxicants. Many of us have someone that we think we love and that we think loves us, that we get high with, but in reality, what they think is love is the attachment to getting high together or helping each other use. What happens when your friend or partner expects you to get them high but you’re not able to? Their addiction overrides any love that you thought they had for you right? In this way we can come to understand that our view of what we think friendship is or what we think love is lacks truth and most of the time we are mistaking love for attachment or some type of dependency.

So, what we need is a new way of viewing things and ethics will help us get there. Ethics will help us learn how to see things in a new way. We need ethical discipline. Living by an ethical code will help us learn to view things in the right way. We need to implement Yama and Niyama into our minds and with everything we do.

Yama is restraint and Niyama is observances or codes of conduct.

Codes of conduct include:

to abstain from killing; we observe how we kill, and seek to restrain that behavior. We kill in many ways. Most people only relate, “to not kill,” with physical murder, but we can kill with a look or word. When you look at your child with hatred or anger what happens? When you yell and scream at your child what happens? They begin to fear you and what does fear do to the mind, to the heart, and to the soul? It kills it, it destroys part of them. When your child fears you, he or she begins to lose part of themselves, their innocence, and the love that they once felt for you. Anger and hatred remove the love that your child had in their heart and is replaced with sadness and fear. This means we can kill not only physically but also mentally and emotionally.

Next we have, to abstain from stealing, now most of us think stealing only relates to taking physical things without permission, but we also steal many things such as time, energy, and attention.

Next is, to abstain from sexual misconduct, we already briefly went over this one, but truly sexual misconduct is very deep and broad. Fornication, adultery, rape, and the abuse of the creative force in any way is sexual misconduct.

Next we have, to abstain from false speech, such as, lying, gossip, sarcasm, and negative criticism. Pay attention to how you use your speech.

Next is, to abstain from intoxicants, such as alcohol and narcotics. Being sober helps us get our minds right, and getting our minds right helps with seeing things more clearly; a new way of viewing things through the eyes of sobriety.

With yama and niyama, we are learning to observe ourselves, to see ourselves, and restrain our unethical ways of being. We are applying conscious ethics. We are paying attention to our psychological tendencies. When we understand that the way we’ve been viewing things has or is causing suffering, we then can seek to learn a better way of being; an ethical way of living. When we live by an ethical code of conduct we are striving to see our imperfections and change them so that we can view things in a pure way. In this way we will learn to be more content and grateful, learning to face difficulties with acceptance, learning to remain in the middle so that we can understand ourselves better, learning to remain conscious and alert, and learning to remember our higher power so that we can get help from a power greater than ourselves.

If we learn to restrain our behaviors that lead toward suffering, we will begin to see things differently and transform our wrong view into right view. First we need to see the causes of our suffering. This means we observe what in ourselves leads us into wrong view. Our lust leads us toward sexual misconduct, our pride leads us to thinking we are better or worse than others, our greed leads to selfishness, our anger leads to violence, our envy leads towards the inability to be happy for others, and all of them cause immense amounts of suffering. The effects speak for themselves. One only needs to study oneself in order to comprehend the truth of this. Next time you feel angry, become aware of how you’re viewing things in that moment. The next time you feel jealous, pay attention to how you see things in that moment. The next time you feel the craving to use intoxicants of any kind, pay attention to how you view things in that moment.

It behooves us to understand that there are causes and conditions that affect our lives. If the causes and conditions are changed we can have a much better life, here and now and this is critical to understanding right view. Right View is the way that we perceive things and meditation is how we come to understand them. All of our actions are how we behave based upon our comprehension. If we do not comprehend our wrong views then we will not change our actions. We can change but we have to do the work.

What is one area of your life that you’d like to improve and why?

What is one thing that you’ve observed about yourself that leads you back into old habits?

The truth is, there may be many things, but we can’t tackle them all at once. Pick something that causes you a great deal of trouble and work on it.

We need a healthier way of looking at things. So, when you look for something that you would like to change or improve about yourself, be honest; honesty helps us view things in the right way. When we lie to ourselves our view becomes clouded. Pay attention to how you view your friends, your spouse, nature, humanity, and anything for that matter. If you have a spouse, learn to see her or him for who they are. If you only see them through the eyes of your desire you will not see them. Take a mental note of how you see things. Question the way you view things., if what you see falls into unethical conduct, such as, prejudices, racism, sexism, beliefs, theories, preconceived notions and concepts that are founded on selfishness, jealousy, pride, and all manner of ignorance, just observe it and try not to act on it. When you view things through the eyes of jealousy what do you see? Your envy right? Why not learn to be happy for others instead. Wouldn’t being happy for someone instead of being envious be healthier for your mind, heart, body, and consciousness? When faced with someone who’s angry learn to control your pride so that you can see the person through the eyes of humility. If we humble ourselves when faced with anger we will help the situation and not make it worse. We also in that moment can try to understand the person, we can see them through the eyes of empathy and compassion.

Another term that we can use for wrong view is criminal view. When we see things through criminal view, we may end up breaking the law. Criminal view is very deep and has many causes and effects. Everything we’ve discussed so far relates to criminal view. It is criminal to cause suffering, it is criminal to abuse ourselves and others, it is criminal to live unethically, and it is criminal to continue walking down a road of self-destruction. Why? Because it not only causes suffering for you but also for others. What we do affects not only us but also those around us. How many generations of a family have been abused because no one could break the cycle? From one family member to the next the suffering and wrong view was passed down.

It is also criminal because we not only rebel against the world but also our own Spirit. Our higher power that is guiding us needs us to turn back towards ethics, towards a better way of being, and to stop abusing our consciousness so that we can get our minds right and begin a path of purity. The eightfold path will help us with our sobriety, with our criminal view, with our addictions, with working to achieve a better way of life, and thus becoming a better person. Really there is no limit to what we can achieve psychologically as long as we do the work.

We will end this lecture with a beautiful teaching!

“The night has now passed and the day has arrived, therefore let us strip off the works of darkness from us, and let us put on the armor of light. And let us walk in a right manner (upright, ethical) as those in the daytime (awake and sober in the light of Divinity), not in partying, not in drunkenness, not in orgies, not in envy or in fighting (ego), But put on our Lord Yeshua (work with the intimate Christ) and do not be concerned for the desires of your flesh (comprehend your egos). – Romans 13

“May All Beings Be Happy!”

“May All Beings Be Joyful!”

“May All Beings Be At Peace!”