Everybody is addicted to the self

So I think everybody is addicted to the self, or everyone that's not enlightened or in abiding awakening. And pretty much everybody's addicted to thinking. And pretty much everybody's addicted to a lot of things. You know, most people are addicted to their phones to some degree.

We're all kind of addicted to different things. I mean, right? So, with addiction, the typical process of addiction, right, is you have some sort of body sensation that you don't like, that you've labeled as bad. Often it's emptiness, or it could be some something emptiness is at the core, and then there's a couple on the outside that are hiding the emptiness, but regardless.

And then, what happens is your semi-conscious or conscious mind all of a sudden becomes aware of the emptiness, and you go, oh, I don't like that. And then you immediately, you're not aware of all this, but then you immediately switch your attention or your focus to your head, to your thoughts, or to whatever is the focus of your addiction. Right? So, if it was smoking a cigarette, you would switch your attention to, oh, have an urge, oh, I want to have a cigarette.

Oh, okay, and then you go and do that Or if it's watching TV, it's like, oh, I want to go watch TV, or, oh, I need to check social media, right? And so, what's happening is that urge is actually your mind's and the self's avoidance of the feeling of emptiness in the chest or the abdomen. And then it goes into the head, and then it maybe goes into a behavior. And so, what happens is every time our awareness gets becomes aware of that emptiness, we become we move our attention to our head or whatever we're focused on, and that's how addiction works.

So, to counter that process, there's multiple ways, but one way is to just keep your awareness in your body, or anytime you notice your awareness going from your head, your chest into your head, to then redirect it back into the body. So, if you're thinking about it, your awareness is starting here in the chest and then going up into the head, and then you notice it, and then you direct it back down. So, it's kind of like a circle. So,