although a spiritual longing exists at its foundation, this longing is often not even dimly recognized by the conscious, experiencing self which only seeks an end to its pain – the pain of emptiness and the pain of loss.
When it is discovered through use of addictive substances, relationships, or habits of any kind that a kind of numbing of pain and of distress takes place through the ability of addiction to grant a temporary feeling of satisfaction, then the original impetus to find a spiritual solution to a basically spiritual dilemma is lessened. In such instances the soul must often wander far down the pathways of illusion before it discovers that the promise of peace and of satisfaction that an addictive substance or process seems to give is an illusion. It discovers that there is often more pain involved than satisfaction, and that the emptiness, in any case, never really goes away.
Some who choose this alternate route for easing a hunger of the soul continue a very long time in a state of illusion, until broken, desperate, and despairing, they return with empty hands and an empty heart to face the source of the problem. Others, who see more clearly or who are able to bear pain with greater courage, find that the path of addiction is a path of illusion and seek a change of direction and movement shortly after having embarked upon it.
The problem for many who embark on this road out of spiritual longing and out of a nameless pain that seems impossible to ease by any other route, is that there is no easing of the underlying cause of the pain except by continuing to incorporate more and more of the addictive substance, relationship, or process. This is true not only because the physiology of