Addiction sidetracks and eclipses the energy of our deepest, truest desire for love and goodness. We succumb because the energy of our desire becomes attached, nailed, to specific behaviors, objects, or people.

Addiction, then, displaces and supplants God’s love as the source and object of our deepest true desire. It is, as one modern spiritual writer has called it, a “counterfeit of religious presence.”

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

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

all major religions deal centrally with the basic themes I have set forth here: we are created for love and freedom, addiction hinders us, and grace is necessary for salvation.

Grace is the invincible advocate of freedom and the absolute expression of perfect love.

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

God will not be a puppet master over humanity.

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.