Re: Does anyone here SMOKE??

Karen,

What emerges for me as the most important factor in my life at the end of the day is not whether I am healthy or not healthy, fat or thin, dirty or detoxed -- it is whether I am bringing something to the stream of life or whether I am trying to see if I can wrest all I can from it. Am I being helpful? Kind? Considerate? Thoughtful in word and action? Or am I being self-seeking, selfish, inconsiderate, and in relentless pursuit of what I want to be/do/look like? Am I being of maximum service to those around me? Or am I constantly trying to make everyone around me look at me and treat me in the way I need to be regarded and treated? Those are the real questions that life brings to me.

I have said this before and I'll say it again -- treat the spiritual, and the mental and physical will follow. It sounds like you are in great shape physically and feeling good mentally (except about your decision to smoke), but what's the use if you are an %¤#&!§-(the spiritual problem...)?

Because that's your real issue -- a lack of connection to others because of your own relentless drive to look good from the outside. So you've shifted your addiction to one that's preferable for you -- big deal. It hasn't helped the inside, has it? That's the part you need to be worried about -- the part of you that thinks that something (health obsession, thinness, oil pulling, smoking, etc.) will make you "OK." Nothing can do that for us -- there is no colon cleanse, crack cocaine, person, job, hairstyle, car, supplement, or tooth whitening alternative therapy that can give a spiritually sick person to you what they crave, which is a sense that they are OK -- on the inside.

One good place for you to begin a spiritual practice of sorts would be to read back through this thread and think about whom you might have hurt with your thoughtless and unkind words and offer them an apology. You might keep in mind that this is a small community and when you cause harm in such a place it has a ripple effect, and apologize to this forum.

You might also think about the fact that this *is* a health-related site and you arrived here at OP wanting to employ our practice for cosmetic reasons to avoid the consequences of a habit often considered to be one of the worst things one can do for their health. So, your behaviour was self-seeking and the way you went about it was completely self-centered -- demanding our attention and information but issuing proclamations about how you would and would not receive that attention and information....sheesh! Is this how you conduct yourself in the real world? If so, the pain of being in your mid-30s and acting like that will ruin your life far more quickly than chain-smoking 2 packs of Dorals a day.

Your ego is your problem, not your potential tooth staining. That's my diagnosis.

Laura

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