If we really dropped illusions for what they can give us or deprive us of, we would be alert. The consequences of not doing this is terrifying and inescapable. We lose our capacity to love. If you wish to love, you must learn to see again. And if you wish to see, you must learn to give up your drug.

It’s as simple as that. Give up your dependency. Tear away the tentacles of society that have enveloped and suffocated your being. You must drop them. Externally, everything will go on as before, but though you will continue to be in the world, you will no longer be of it. In your heart, you will be free at last, if utterly alone. Your dependence on your drug will die. You don’t have to go to the desert; you’re right in the middle of people; you’re enjoying them immensely. But they no longer have the power to make you happy or miserable.

That’s what aloneness means. In this solitude, your dependence dies; the capacity to love is born. How would you ever get there? By a ceaseless awareness, by the infinite patience and compassion you would have for a drug addict.

Tags: