Third, we try to live the spiritual reality as best we can. This means taking risks of faith, trying to trust the incomprehensibly loving presence of God whether we feel it or not, and being as loving of ourselves and others as we possibly can.

the threefold nature of the human spiritual condition: God creates us for love and freedom, attachment hinders us, and grace is necessary for salvation.

addiction is a state of compulsion, obsession, or preoccupation that enslaves a person’s will and desire.

For example, I am seduced and enticed by a certain image of myself as a whole, holy, loving man who is well on his way to becoming free from attachments. When this image comes up in my prayer, it causes me to pose and posture; I find myself trying to make my prayer fit my image of how a holy man would pray.

Second, insofar as we can, we attend to the heart sense within us;

The core tenets of Buddhism are the Four Noble Truths: (1) suffering is a fact of life; (2) suffering is caused by attachment; (3) liberation from suffering and the reinstitution of human freedom can happen only through detachment; and (4) human effort toward detachment must involve all aspects of one’s life in a deeply spiritual way.

Attachment, then, is the process that enslaves desire and creates the state of addiction.

Spiritually, addiction is a deep-seated form of idolatry. The objects of our addictions become our false gods. These are what we worship, what we attend to, where we give our time and energy, instead of love.

For a moment, we are relieved of bondage to who we think we are, and we can simply be.