What is substitution? It is a word pointing to something that appears to happen again and again in an addict’s life and in the so-called spiritual journey during recovery.
While using, the addict often goes from one drug to the other, believing that one is better than the other, that “pot” is not as bad as “heroin.” This of course is self-deception. Only total abstinence from all drugs works when the point has come where the physical body is deteriorated from addiction.
When addicts get clean, they often enter into recovery programs. They are seeking freedom from the pain of addiction. A recovery program can provide real freedom for the addicted person. But if the program becomes the new dependency or new spiritual ideas become the new dependency, then all that has happened is a substitution. The drug has been replaced with a spiritual idea, program, belief, religion, search, or some other form.
The possibility of true liberation arises only when this dependency on form is seen in all of its manifestations. The self is trying desperately to avoid the total liberation that is possible when all identification and attachment to form dies. In that liberation, there is no more dependency. There is no more substituting a drug, for a program, for a method, for a spiritual idea or any other form.
Even if the recovering addict begins a search for liberation, it must be realized that spiritual ideas are like drugs. When you get hooked on any spiritual idea (including oneness, enlightenment, meditation, presence, no self, awareness, consciousness, beingness or any other idea) remember that there will be a weening off of that idea at some point.
Liberation is out beyond form, beyond ideas. It cannot be found in the future because future is just a thought form arising now. So seeking liberation in the future is simply another addiction to another form. True liberation is about the possibility of waking up now to that which is looking at all form. It is freedom not only from drugs, but from all dependency, all ideas, all methods, all searching and seeking (i.e, freedom from attachment to form). Only this timeless, formless essence that you are (that which is beyond form and time) is liberation. All else is suffering.
Substitution
