Liberation from All Addictions – The Case of Smoking

Hello friends,

In this article, I will tell you how we can be free from our addictions in general and how we can quit smoking in particular. I felt the need to add this sentence when I was in the middle of writing the article: Since this is an article that touches on deep issues and can affect your whole outlook on life, I recommend it to friends who are brave and understand that they are responsible for their lives.

There is a truth I want to express at the very beginning of the article. Please read to the end, because sometimes life makes you realize new things when you least expect it and this is what I am going to share with you:

I have smoked a total of 2 cigarettes in my life. One of them was given to me by my grandfather when I was a child, I didn’t even inhale it, I played with it, pretending to smoke but not inhaling it. Another one I smoked in front of my mother to prove to her that cigarettes are not addictive. Now, if you don’t hang up after this paragraph, I will open all of these.

How can someone who is not addicted to smoking explain how to quit smoking? He can’t. But I draw your attention, the title of the article is not about how to quit smoking, but about liberation from all addictions and giving an example of this with cigarettes. It is your decision to quit smoking, this article is for you to understand that you are free to make that decision and how to really realize that freedom.

So why do I start with cigarettes? There are several reasons. I discovered something special about cigarettes, the connection between cigarettes and breath and how it relates to meditation. Another reason is that I know that a lot of people’s health can be positively affected after benefiting from this article, so I want to be of some use to people. Another reason is to become free from a few more thought patterns… to help people become aware of them in this article.

For example… do you have to be someone who has killed people regularly in the past to show how you can live without killing people? (I sent this article to my mother and she was offended by this example and suggested that I change it, I didn’t want to change it but I thought about it and clarified it and put it as a footnote at the bottom of the article). Just like this, you don’t have to be a smoker to explain how to live without smoking. So you don’t necessarily need to learn how to quit smoking from someone who has been a smoker and then quit. Someone who understands the common mechanisms of addictions can also explain how to live without smoking. I give the example of freedom from smoking because I have studied the subject of cigarettes a lot and discovered an important detail about cigarettes that is almost unknown.

I’ll repeat, I’m not going to tell you how to quit smoking, I’m going to tell you how to become free from it. How you quit after that is up to you. You can quit in a handstand if you like. Or you can jump up and down on the road and shout “I quit smoking, heyo” everywhere… Or you can shout at the water in the bathroom while taking a hot shower… Or you can shoot a shot at the package towards a random target. Or you can read the article, smoke for 5 more years, go through the process of comprehending the information in the article and then come to the moment of quitting. All of these are possible and none of them is right or superior to the other. After reading this article, there will be a process of quitting or not quitting depending on the stage of life of the person reading this article and depending on the choices of that person.

Good… how should we explain it now…

As far as I can see, smoking or any addiction is basically a result of the mind going into a seeking mode. And what is the mind searching for? It’s not really aware of it while it’s searching… it jumps from place to place… it can’t find what it’s looking for.. What the fuck is it searching for?

I’ve been looking at people for a long time. I’ve been following the media a lot in recent years. Addictive, even. I’ve followed the English and Turkish press, and surfed the Internet in general. I see a general state of hypnosis in people… but this is the human condition in our age. People are living a story, hypnotized, living their own story. Is that abnormal or wrong? No, I’m just making an observation. I have detected this state of hypnosis in myself and I have been working for a long time to liberate myself. This article is a product of my experiences gained in that process.

Now to better understand the human condition… Imagine you are watching a movie. You know you are a viewer, but you can still get caught up in the emotions of the movie. What if you forgot you were a viewer and thought you were one of the characters in the movie? If you identified with that character’s story so much that you experienced everything that happened to him/her, everything he/she went through, as if it were real.

This is the human condition. Or rather, souls having a human experience.

What is a soul… let me put it this way 🙂 I have never seen a soul. I have only observed myself. As a result of my observations, I have realized two different situations. One is to identify with the story you are living and get lost in it. Another one is to be aware of it and experience life in a state of awareness where you are free from it.

In this world, humanity in general is not very aware of this state of awareness at the moment. There are people at different stages, but the vast majority of people are identified with their stories and are not aware that they are actually this awareness. Why am I telling you all this?

To explain that the main reason for smoking is that when people are in this state of identification, in this hypnotized state, they need to find an exit from the stress and distress they are experiencing, again in that state of hypnosis. People who have learned to create this outlet through the experience of smoking may feel the urge to light a cigarette every time they get stuck. Or they may use a combination of smoking and other methods. The first one is the quintessential smoker.

Friends who smoke cigarettes. When you read the previous paragraph, did you feel like lighting a cigarette? I think some of you may have felt the urge. Because I reminded you of the experience of being stuck and you learned to light a cigarette and relax when you experienced it habitually and it will be natural for you to remember that…

So why do people choose cigarettes… what is so special about cigarettes that when you are in this state of hypnosis, you identify with this story and you experience stuckness and you discover it as an option for relaxation?

There are three things here: Breath, Distraction from the stuckness, Nicotine and the taste of cigarettes.

Now let’s unpack these elements of the smoking experience, which are actually a whole, but which I have divided into 3 to understand:

You are living a terrible story… you are bored and you want to distract yourself… maybe not even terrible… just banal and devoid of happiness. It lacks fulfillment. You’re looking for an outlet.

So you use the act of smoking to distract yourself. The nicotine and the taste of the cigarette is in a way a distraction for you. But why the taste of cigarettes and not, say, lemon? I’ll be honest here, I haven’t experienced the full effect of nicotine because I’ve hardly ever smoked, but I did a quit smoking program in 2010-11 and I did a lot of research at the time. I read in the Allen Carr method that the effect of nicotine is negligible. But I’m sure it’s very similar to nicotine in the way that, for example, sugar, or various foods have the effect of distracting you and making you forget the distress. Therefore, we have explained the elements of nicotine and cigarette taste and distraction from being stuck. (A friend of mine quit smoking for 2 years with a program I prepared around 2011, which was a combination of the Allen Carr method and the Lefkoe method… now I am writing this article in which I explain the essence of the subject)

There is another very important element in smoking, and that is breath. Breath is a part of us that has been with us since the beginning of our lives. It has been taught in ancient teachings and proven through countless experiences that focusing on the breath, keeping our attention on our breath, calms the movement in our mind, which leads to a state of peace in our mind, and with this state of peace we begin to realize that we are actually awareness. To understand this in detail, I suggest you read this linked article now, which I translated from a highly excellent source.

Have you read it? Now you know what meditation is, you know its relationship with the breath. You know what mindfulness is. Let’s continue.

When we start to catch inner peace, when we start to discover the state of awareness, when we start to be able to do this with the breath, when we start to realize the energy of love in our heart and learn to focus on it… we also understand how to be free from the state of hypnosis in which humanity is in, that is, identified with the story, forgetting its true being and therefore being stuck. Now it remains for us to focus, to maintain this focus and to go through a process of purification of the self.

We were on the breath part of the cigarette, I diverted you into meditation, and you came back. The friends who stayed with me… here… the importance of breathing in cigarettes, the importance of inhalation, is that smokers are unconsciously doing the same effect of focusing on the breath in meditation in cigarettes. So they are partially meditating every time they inhale without realizing it. But it’s not a conscious meditation, so they don’t realize it. But it still has an effect, because even momentarily the attention is directed to the inhalation, and even that has a relaxing effect.

So how can you become free from smoking? I’ll be honest. (Read to the end) I’ll say meditate and spread it in your life. And every time you take a puff, if you can realize that what you really want is to relax from the hypnosis and the stuckness that you’re living in, and that it’s the focus on the breath that relaxes you, not the cigarette, and that the nicotine and the taste of the cigarette is not so different and unimportant than, say, a chocolate bar… you’ll find that gradually you become free from cigarettes. It may take time to quit, it depends on how much you realize this freedom and how fast you want to quit.

So what do I mean, does the breath beat the cigarette? No. In the process of meditation we begin to observe all the addictions and patterns in our minds and realize that they are actually temporary energies that we identify with and that we can let them go. We learn to live life with mindfulness, we live with mindfulness. And this leads us to understand life better and better as long as we do this. Because in order to understand something, we need to stay in a state of awareness with it. As we understand, we mature… and our character becomes more and more knowledgeable. But more important than all knowledge is the choice we make to stay in the state of awareness beyond our character.

So how can we become free from all other attachments? In the same way… again, spread meditation in your life. And go through the purification process that I have mentioned. Discover that you are awareness. In this process you will also discover the energy of love in your heart. Because that’s where the breath takes you. The source of everything starts from the deepest place where this love energy enters the human body. And living in the awareness of love energy leads to the development of peace and serenity.

In this process, what I should definitely mention is that you will go through a purification. You will see all kinds of energies that are hindering you, whatever you are stuck with, you will see them all. There will be times when you will experience very intense emotions. In other words, you will go through serious ‘tests’. But the design of life is that there is always a path that will carry you to your essence and life will never leave you. You are life, you are one with life, you are one with God, God is life itself, so whatever difficulties you are going through, there is always a wisdom and if you pay attention you will eventually discover it. Just keep focusing on the truth. The information in the meditation article is very important, you can go through it again and again. The reason I wrote this last paragraph is to warn you that there can be serious difficulties during awakening, but the solution to overcome those difficulties is to go back to meditation and breathing. There were very few sources in Turkish about the difficulties in this subject… I haven’t researched much lately, and if there are any, I haven’t studied them. But your main guide is your own nature, your essence. When you turn to it with a sincere intention. God, you’ll find your way somehow. In the end, no matter how much you read, you cannot be liberated without your own test… but there is still support from the readings, but they are not your savior…

I know I have shared very important information… they are not super organized but I am sure you can benefit if you have sincere intentions.

I am not free from all my addictions yet. My purification process continues. But I feel very clearly that I am liberated from them and I know how to get rid of them completely. The interesting thing is that when you are liberated, getting rid of them is not a problem anymore. You gradually make peace with the choices you have made. Let me give this information so that you can understand the difference.

The realization that you can stop smoking comes when you realize that your mind can be satisfied by focusing on the breath or on love. It’s not a false satisfaction… it’s a process of discovering within yourself the source of true happiness… when you become aware of this energy as you live life… the feeling of being stuck, which is the main reason why you want to smoke, will go away and there will be no reason to smoke anymore. I can’t go into all the details… because your life is unique to you, but I have explained the basic principle and its application and you can make your own path using this principle. By practicing meditation you will get rid of the identification with the story and you will get rid of the stuckness as you can feel love in a state of freedom… from now on it is about learning to live life in this awareness and practicing it, so the rest is details and may vary from person to person. The person who has understood how to overcome stuckness by focusing on their own inner energy can continue from this state of freedom and realize the changes they want in their life. If we start from the right foundation, we can achieve the results we want. When you realize how deeply asleep you are on this path, you may also find it difficult to accept it, but as I said, as you continue to meditate and focus on the truth, you will continue to gain insights, you will be able to overcome difficulties.

Love and Best Regards.

Footnote: Regarding the subject of manslaughter… although the mechanism is not exactly the same as smoking, it is similar… both are the ego’s attempt to preserve itself. in one the ego kills someone else to preserve itself, in the other you kill yourself. in smoking you do the act of smoking which slowly poisons yourself to relieve the inner distress you are suffering. When you kill a man, you do the act of killing that eliminates the other person in an instant to relieve your inner distress. in both, you distract yourself from the real problems, escape to a different area in the story you identify with and experience a momentary satisfaction, but then … of course you face different consequences… when you kill a man, you usually get your reward quickly. even if you don’t, imagine what life is like when you continue with that mood. There are stories of people who confess to murder after 20 years. when you smoke, you get your reward slowly… you know you are hurting yourself and you suffer the pain of conscience over time… in both cases you are actually killing yourself. because you are all life… and there is not much difference between killing one life and killing another. Now then, are you bad for smoking… no… just because you don’t fully understand the mechanism yet, you continue your life by accepting the consequences of your action… if you really knew what is explained in this article and how to quit, you would definitely do something about it… here is a dimension of the truth of the matter that is shown in the data below…

According to the data I got from Google, on an annual basis, deaths from smoking are about 10 times the number of homicides: (Cigarettes: 5 million. Homicides: 400,000-500,000)
“Health officials have known that more than 1 billion people around the world smoke and 5 million people die each year from tobacco-related illness, according to the World Health Organization.”
“https://www.quora.com/How-many-people-are-murdered-in-the-world-every-year”

Do you really value human life/ your own life? Do you want to? I know of course your heart wants it… you just haven’t discovered how to do it yet, you are searching… and the energy at your core can teach you how to do it… only if you take action to discover it… you always have this freedom… with the snap of a finger people can come out of hypnosis… so snap your finger…

Finally… this article may not be an influence for you not to die or to die later… it may be an opportunity to discover your existence that does not disappear even with death… to overcome even the fear of death… to understand that death is one of the steps in the transformation of forms into each other and to make peace with it… so you can also make peace with the fact that you have harmed your body until today… you have only transformed one form into another form… without fully mastering the process, without fully realizing how you did it. . now you know conceptually that you can become a little more aware and even realize that you are awareness itself and move towards a new understanding… what you do next… is your choice… some of you will not quit smoking… but it’s not about smoking, it’s not about quitting smoking, it’s not about quitting smoking, it’s not about quitting smoking… it’s about becoming free from all addictions… once you understand who you are… which form you have taken/are taking will no longer be of primary importance…