At such moments, presence happens. This presence might include a wide palette of emotional tones and flashes of memory. Sometimes I was simply blessed with an appreciation of how connected we are, my daughter and I. This connection may be rooted in biology but at the deepest level, it is independent of this interactive dance of her habits and mine.
I used to justify my obsessing as normal maternal worry, assuaged by giving good advice. There is nothing wrong with giving advice, especially when asked. But I started to notice when my daughter (or spouse or friend or acquaintance) was engaged in any kind of struggle, the pressure building inside me and the pleasurable change in my own chemistry when my mouth opened and suggestions tumbled out. I had little choice over this response. This showed me not only the intensity of my own inner conditioning, but my arrogance in thinking "I know what is right for other people and how things are supposed to be." I realized: “If it is so difficult for me to keep my mouth shut, how can I judge anyone else for picking up a drink or drug when there is the additional brain chemistry system of reward and release from pain involved?”
Silence and simple listening on the other hand, challenge a lifetime of habits cultivated in response to fear and uncertainty. The process of recovery has meant many such moments of waking up out of an unconscious or automatic behavior, a release from the small me or ego into an expanding and aware spaciousness. Paradoxically then, working with addictive habits can be a powerful method of growing our capacity for presence, in which the compulsion or discomfort itself becomes the dharma bell ringing us back from our mind’s habitual dwelling in fantasy and memory into the present.
http://www.onbeing.org/blog/presence-and-recovery/7429#comment-1633006
Presence and Recovery
BY , GUEST CONTRIBUTOR
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