God refuses to be a co-dependent in our addiction
Transcript
Disclaimer: This transcript was generated using AI and may contain occasional errors or inaccuracies.
Dependency and co-dependency, when we are trying to move ahead in our life, especially from situations where we have been overcome by negativity, where we are in the clutches of negative habits, where we have been made dependent on certain things, certain materials, certain behaviours, then how people around us, especially how the closest to us interacts with us is vital in determining whether we are able to get the motivation to fight or get the motivation to perpetuate what we are doing. All of us are relational creatures. Sometimes we may develop a relationship with a thing and that relationship becomes the most important relationship in our life.
Say, for example, when a person becomes an alcoholic, that person develops a relationship with alcohol and their relationship with alcohol ends up becoming more important than their relationship with their spouse, their child, their parents, their friends, their colleagues, their boss. And when one relationship and that too with an object becomes the most important, it becomes everything, then that becomes destructive. In communist Russia, people were so addicted to vodka and not everyone, but this is a anecdote which is told to indicate the level of people's compulsion that although vodka was very expensive and vodka price would increase periodically, still people would somehow or the other get the money to spend on it.
And when there was a cartoon which showed when the vodka price increased, a child is asking his father, Papa, will you drink less now that the vodka price has increased? And the father replies, no, you will eat less. So now for a father, the relationship with the child, especially in terms of providing food for the child is such an important relationship and duty within that relationship. But unfortunately here, the relationship with that substance, alcohol has become far more important than the relationship with the child.
Say for example, in a marriage, a husband gets addicted to porn, then although the wife feels belittled, even betrayed by this, still the husband may value that relationship with the porn more than the relationship with his wife. In general, desires distort our perception and the stronger the desire, the greater is the distortion of perception. This distortion of perception is embodied in the common saying, love is blind.
Love is blind means that when a person is in love, at that time, they become blinded to everything other than the object of love. And also they become blinded to everything other than the lovability of that object of love. If someone tells them, this person is not so emotionally stable, for they were seeing a psychologist, that was six months ago, now they are perfectly stable.
So this distortion of perception leads to distortion in evaluation. That which is important, we treat as unimportant and that which is unimportant, we treat as important. So for example, when a person is an addict, normally an addict would never want their child to eat less, normally what parent would want to starve their child.
But once the addict is under the control of the addiction, then the distortion of perception that happens is ghastly, is grotesque. You see the actions that the person does thereafter. How can this distortion be countered? Through intelligence and through consequence.
Somebody has to reach to that person's intelligence. What are you doing? Have you gone crazy? By intelligence, generally refer here to the higher side, it can include the conscience also. Why are you letting a little visual titillation ruin your marriage? How are you letting a drink ruin your relationship with your child? What has happened to your parental instinct? Sometimes the intelligence may be triggered by giving shock treatment.
Sometimes it may be triggered by an emotional call which appeals to the conscience. Would your father have done this to you? What would have happened to you if your father had been drinking instead of taking care of you? Of course, in some cases, there is a say, drinking may run in the family and the father may have done such a thing and that's how the child is doing this. So, our desires can compel us to act in horrendously wrong ways.
The Bhagavad Gita talks about how we can become blinded by desire. Indriyanam hi charatam yenmano anuvidhyate tadasyarati prajnyam vayurnavam ivambhase vayurnavam. Just as the wind sweeps away a boat like that, the desire that is triggered by dwelling on the sense objects sweeps away our consciousness, it sweeps aside our intelligence and sweeps away our consciousness.
Our intelligence is meant to be a guard, but when say, a child has a guard, say the child is a wealthy or a big influential person's child and has a guard, but instead a kidnapper comes and they brush aside the guard, the bodyguard and just abduct the child. Like that, our intelligence is brushed aside and our consciousness is carried away. After intelligence is swept aside, then our consciousness is swept away.
So, if the intelligence can somehow be restored, the intelligence is the guard and then when the guard who has been swept away, immediately gets up, the guard is knocked off as for unconscious sake, but somebody sprinkles some water or gets the guard awake, then the guard springs into action and protects the child from being abducted. Like that, before a person does an activity, although their perception is skewed, it is like when some kidnappers come and they knock aside the guard, but then they allure the child and the child sees some lollipop, some marshmallow and the child gets allured. Here also, the child is not seeing which is distorted.
Who are these strangers? What may they do to me? My parents have warned me to be cautious about talking with strangers, what to speak of going with strangers and yet I am doing that. So, the child is childish. So, like that, once our intelligence has been swept aside, then we become naive.
The lure of the pleasure distorts our perception. We trust the untrustworthy and thus we end up bound. If we want to avoid such getting carried away, then we need someone who will jolt our intelligence, who will arouse our intelligence.
So, the first protector from the distortion of perception by addiction is intelligence. It is not necessarily the first protection, one protection we could say. Another protection is consequence.
When we see for ourselves the consequence of our actions, we see how grievously our loved ones are hurt by us. We cognize the gravity of what we have done and we are jolted. Say a person who is hooked by the craving for alcohol or neglects a child who is sick and then that child, sick child passes away.
Then what is this? A person becomes horrified and that horror unseen the consequence may pull that person together. Gandhiji in his later years was known for his sexual abstinence. But in his youth, he reports with brutal frankness, brutal honesty in his autobiography that while his father was dying, he felt the urge to be with his wife and while his father was calling for him, he was with his wife and his father passed away.
He was aghast, devastated by the power of that desire and that gave him the determination to battle the desire. So, when we talk about consequence, we are essentially talking about learning in the school of hard knocks. We are talking about how our conditioning is something which can have devastating consequences for us if we are not careful.
And the more we realize this, the more we become ready to fight it no matter what happens. So, for us as individual souls, we need to be protected by intelligence or be jolted by the consequence. Of course, in both these cases, people around us matter a lot.
Addicts often have a partner, frequently a spouse, who is a codependent, who picks up the pieces after every incident of disruption and devastation that has been caused by their spouse. So, such a wife who unwittingly facilitates and furthers the addiction of her husband is called a codependent. So, she considers it her love.
Although my husband creates so much trouble, I love him so much that I take up all the trouble necessary to set things right after he has made them wrong. Now, of course, we all commit mistakes and we all need to be helped by others. At the same time, our help is meant to help others rectify their mistakes, not perpetuate their mistakes.
An addict creates trouble, a codependent by picking up the pieces often does not let the consequence register on the addict. So, an alcoholic may be spending a lot of money on the alcoholism and say the wife conceals the financial danger and does something to somehow manage things and create an appearance of normalcy. Then the consequence of the addiction is there but the consequence does not register.
And if the consequence does not register, then the addict gets no resistance to relapsing into indulgence again. That is why sometimes when addicts go for counseling for recovery, their spouses, if they are codependents, they also need some counseling. And sometimes addicts are taken out of their normal environment and placed in addiction recovery centers because that distance from their regular circumstances is what is necessary to prevent the codependent from unwittingly facilitating their addiction.
Sometimes we need to get the consequences of our actions in order to learn. And protecting ourselves from the consequences or when someone protects us from the consequences, actually they are not protecting us, they are actually removing the natural restraint, the natural stopper from repeated indulgence. So, as souls who are parts of God, God refuses to become our codependent when people ask, why doesn't God protect me? Sometimes we need to get the consequences of our actions so that we learn the hard way to make the right choices.
So, the law of karma does not reflect an unloving God. The law of karma reveals that God is not a codependent. Protection that leads to perpetuation of addiction is no protection.
It is actually a disservice. So, just as a spouse who loves her husband may let the husband go to a addiction treatment center. And there, there will be no one who will pick up the pieces after the spouse has, if the addict relapses somehow.
So, like that in this material world, you could say this is like an addiction recovery center. Of course, Krishna does not leave us entirely. He still lives inside us.
But he may sometimes not stop the consequences of our actions from coming upon us. Because such consequences are what we need to learn our lesson. So, of course, just as intelligence is a better safeguard than consequence.
Similarly, Krishna equips our intelligence by giving us scripture to the extent we internalize what scripture has taught us. To that extent, our intelligence becomes stronger. And then when desire tries to sweep us away by sweeping aside our intelligence, our intelligence refuses to be swept aside and protects us from being swept away.
If we hear scripture regularly, then we will be able to resist many of the consequences that come upon us. Because we will in time see how grey, how catastrophic the consequences of our actions can be. We will realize this is not worth it.
I am not this kind of person. Sometimes after getting the consequence, somebody says squanders away the money is meant to feed their child or provide medicine for their child on their addiction. And then they say, I am not this kind of person.
How could I do this? When that registers in them, then again, they get the impetus to prevent the distortion of perception. So, Krishna, he, through scripture gives us abandoned warning about how temptation distorts perception. To the extent we study scripture regularly, to that extent, when temptation starts alluring us, we get the will to say no.
We get the resourceful determination by which we can say, no, this is not what I am going to do. Thus, Krishna protects us through scripture, by equipping our intelligence, and he protects us through the law of karma, by giving us the consequence, by letting us suffer the consequence. Either way, it is he who is our greatest well-wisher, as the Bhagavad Gita 5.29 states.
So, rather than complaining that Krishna is not protecting us, despite our devotion, we can get the eyes to see how Krishna is protecting us, even when the consequence of our actions is bearing down upon us. Krishna does not abandon us. He stays with us within our hearts and enables us to reform, to learn, and to redirect our heart towards him, by which we can become gradually free from both the indulgence and the consequence.
Thank you.