Transcending Addiction and Other Afflictions

Book excerpt: This volume sheds new light on addiction and other ailments, detailing a recipe for transcendence. The author describes pattern addiction as the root of a variety of psychologicl and physical afflictions including what is traditionally called addiction. Drug addiction offers one of the most tangible examples of patterning and some of the most tangible evidence that addiction to a pattern can be transcended. Pattern addiction is part of the human condition. It frequently manifests itself in explicit symptoms such as drug addiction, physical pain, chronic ailments including ulcers, and even cancer. Implicit pattern addictions are built over a long period of time because most neurological programming takes place over time. This patterning becomes detrimental when the pattern is harmful to the emotional, physical, and/or spiritual well-being of the individual (or his family or community). All too often, medicine treats the explicit symptoms of an affliction without correcting the underlying and more implicit pattern addictions. This is due, in part, to the inability of current medical theory to do more.