As my book says, all humans are on the addiction spectrum (page 56). Our props vary. The prop of a crack addict is crack. The prop of a sex addict might be a sexy bartender they just met, or in a way the sex itself.
As my book says, "The props in our individual struggles and inner battles vary, but fundamentally we are all on the same side." (Page 137)
Regardless of what any one person's unique specific addictions and props happen to be in their unique version of the common human struggle uniting us all, it's the same general script.
We have our different props on our different stages, each the protagonist in our own version of the same play. You can see two different theaters perform the same play, and it can seem so different, and yet still be so fundamentally the same.
The most common addiction is comfort addiction, and in a way all human addictions are fundamentally just a form of comfort addiction. The alcoholic gets comfort from alcohol; the food addict from food; the sex addict from sex; the gambling addict from gambling; you from your props, whatever they are.
When you lack true happiness, you indulge your comfort addiction. But, unlike the true happiness of inner peace, indulging comfort addiction never truly satisfies. It only leaves you feeling even more empty. Of that, it's like the more you eat, the hungrier you get. The more you eat, the more you starve. As I write in the book, "the greedy always starve, damned to a living hell of their own insatiability." (Page 113) The more you chase happiness that way, the more enslaved and miserable you get, the more trapped into the hell of the comfort zone and cycle of addiction you become.
If you follow that path, you let yourself become a slave to temptation, a prisoner in your own body. That is what it means to lack spiritual freedom, and ironically it's always your choice and only your choice. The misery of that--the misery of the comfort zone and of addiction itself--is what it means to not have the true happiness of free-spirited inner peace.
Unlike the true happiness that is the deep invincible joy of honest self-accepting self-responsible self-loving free-spirited inner peace, comfort is fleeting. True happiness isn't fleeting, but the ups of comfort and indulging addiction are. To have the true happiness that is free-spirited inner peace is to be invincibly satiated day-in and day-out, in a deep invincible spiritual way that isn't subject to the ups and downs of daily life. Unlike comfort, true happiness isn't rendered to net zero by sensory adaptation.
In contrast, the irony of the comfort zone is that no matter how desperately the comfort addicts chase comfort and let temptation be their master, they aren't actually any more comfortable than those who embrace discomfort and refuse to be temptation's slave. To them the grass is always greener on the other side, and the more they get the more they want. Give an ungrateful person more and it just makes them more ungrateful (a.k.a. unhappy). Give an entitled brat more and they just get more entitled and bratty.
It's very similar to the way that no matter how possessively a possessive greedy materialist clings to their would-be material possessions, they lose those possessions anyway, and that no matter how much a safety addict clings to life, makes a false idol of safety and of death avoidance, and desperately fears death, they die anyway just the same.
When it comes to what you cannot do and cannot have, the only difference between the trier and the one who doesn't try is the exhausting dishonest misery that the trying itself entails.
In other words, the only difference between the disgraceful person and the graceful person is the dishonest exhausting misery that the disgrace (a.k.a. trying) entails.
Some say that what you own ends up owning you, but you never really owned those kind of things anyway; they only ever owned you. The possessive clinging hand is the handcuff. The only difference between the disgraceful clinging and the grace of letting go is the exhausting dishonest misery that the possessive clinging entails.
The eleven suggestions at the end of my book are basically just all various forms of letting go. It's just letting go of different props that might exist in your version of the play, the same play we're all playing.
For those who don't yet follow the teachings of my book, they generally lack the deep invincible joy of such liberation. So instead they futilely chase comfort and indulge their comfort addiction in a futile attempt to satiate themselves in a way that actually only makes them hungrier and more enslaved. And that's good. Let's not remember for those of us who have become spiritually liberated--or awakened or lucid as some would call it--we often only did so because the other way caused us so much suffering first. "When the ego weeps for what is has lost, the spirit rejoices for what has found." It's no coincidence that my book includes quotes from survivors of Nazi concentration camps and Soviet Gulags. If giving an ungrateful person more only makes them ungrateful (i.e. unhappy), we can see how easy seeming bad luck can end be the best thing to a person spiritually and the very thing that makes finally find true happiness after a lifetime of not having it. Many people would probably be better off if they lost everything that they think this is anything and got thrown into a cold barren gulag and thereby left with the only thing that is really worth anything, something they probably currently overlook or brush off as spiritual mumbo jumbo when others mention it.
When you get hit by a car in a dream, you tend to wake up.
Those who starve themselves spiritually by feeding their addiction, and falling deeper into the miserable hell of the comfort zone and spiritual slavery, thereby sow the seeds that may one day awaken them. In practical terms, you see a common example of it when one stops enabling an addict.
Their dream getting worse is precisely what might cause them to wake up to lucidity. I'm not saying make their dream worse on purpose, but rather to loving accept their choice to go deeper into their own created hell, if they so choose, and acknowledge that you cannot stop them. And that's fine. It's probably better if you don't, and so it's probably better if you can't, since you probably would if you could.
There's nothing wrong with it. They will wake up when they are ready. Just like you will or already did.
We are each 100% in control of our spiritual freedom, and the unwavering invincible free-spirited true happiness that it entails.
You don't need to and generally can't wake anyone else up. They will wake up when they are ready. They will wake up from their self-created nightmares to the invincible joy of lucidity when they are ready.
As Voltaire said, "Man is free at the moment he wishes to be."
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In addition to having authored his book, In It Together, Eckhart Aurelius Hughes (a.k.a. Scott) runs a mentoring program, with a free option, that guarantees success. Success is guaranteed for anyone who follows the program.
