Ambient Addictions--an Inventory

I’ve been intrigued by what Mark Muldoon calls ambient addictions, the background activities or thoughts that preoccupy us and keep us sleepwalking through life. No one is exempt from an ambient addiction; we all do something to distract ourselves from moments of uncertainty, discomfort or emptiness.

 Muldoon observes that “we learn to do [ambient addictions] automatically when anxieties begin to flare and we need to manage them without acknowledging them. . . .The actual substance or activity that our bodies have learned to employ are only a means to an end to manage our un-owned anxieties by altering the mood of fear and threat that accompany them” (“The Addicted Pilgrim” 24).   Facing our “un-owned anxieties” is the work of a spiritual path.

Many ambient addictions are rewarded and made to seem the norm in our society--shopping, exercising, workaholism-- when they are actually “substitutes for the Holy,” in Muldoon's words. Spiritual growth occurs when we knock on the door of our ambient addictions and enter.

 

I've created this inventory to discover what my ambient addictions might be.  I hope you find it useful.

Ambient Addiction Inventory

1.      Who is the least addicted person you know? How do you feel around them?

2.      What do you tend to do with unscheduled time (10 minutes, an hour or two, a day)?

3.      On what do you spend discretionary money?

4.      List the traits and habits in your partner or someone close to you that most bother you.

5.      If you had a six month sabbatical in life, how would you spend it? 

6.      Why aren’t you doing that?

7.      During a typical day, what brings you contentment, ease or joy?

8.      What do you do that you know you shouldn’t do or should do less of?

9.      What do you not do that you think you should do or do more often?

10.  What gets in the way?

Big Thanks for Big Magic

When I finished reading Elizabeth Gilbert’s book Big Magic I burst into tears.  It's  an extended note of permission to be creative and was just what my soul needed to hear. Gilbert demonstrates that ideas are alive, looking for a human to manifest them.  When we get one, she says, we have to do something with it or it moves on to another person who will do the work.  Keep working, she argues, because inspiration looks for motion rather than inertia.

I’ve been struggling to not eat sugar on and off for several decades now, and the only times it seems to be effortless is when I’m creating something.  When I'm engrossed in a project I eat to survive rather than to distract or entertain  myself. It's not enough to know what I don’t want (i.e. to be fat and cranky); I have to know what I do want (to be kind and happy, creative and alive) and lean into that. If I really am leaning into the light everyday, I’m creating the life I want.

So I’m going to get a writing coach to keep my own work moving along. I’ve got a couple projects in progress, and have been writing pieces on spirituality, recovery, relationships and growing for years. It’s time to gather them, see what still resonates, ask more questions and follow the answers wherever they lead.

There’s a direct connection between creating and becoming lighter, literally and metaphorically, because creation comes from our light.  Gilbert puts it this way:  “What you produce is not necessarily always sacred just because you think it’s sacred. What is sacred is the time you spend working on the project, and what that times does to expand your imagination and what that expanded imagination does to transform your life. The more lightly you can pass that time, the brighter your existence becomes.”

So I will publish my thoughts and observations, questions and curiosities more regularly and keep the momentum moving.