It's time to rip the cover off what really works to ditch addiction, depression, anger, anxiety, and all other kinds of human suffering. No, not sobriety. We're talking the F-word here: Freedom. We'll share, straight from the trenches, what we have learned from leaving our own addictions behind, and coaching hundreds of others to do the same—and since it's such a heavy topic, we might as well have a good time while we're at it. [00:27.6]
Bob: Welcome back to the Alive and Free Podcast. Today, Oh, we get to, we get to dive into something that I don't think is looked at very, very clearly and the topic is Lust, right. Back when I was looking at pornography and trying to figure out how to like eliminate that from my life in like 12 step programs and other types of things that I was going through at the time, and still trying to figure out the depression and the anxiety and the suicidal thoughts and whatnot. At a certain point, I remember a bunch of people that were, we were going to 12 step programs and they were like, ‘You know what? I decided to go to this Sexaholics anonymous meeting because they have a different book, their white book, and it's a really powerful book. And what they do is they really pinpoint the root cause of all of it. And the root of it is Lust. And it's this really beautiful thing and it's really I'm addicted to lust is what they say.’ [01:20.9]
And what I found so fascinating about that, especially in the, your senses is all you did was change the terminology for the thing that you're experienced, but it didn't really change much of what's going on. They still didn't end up going there for life. So those meetings tend to be a little bit more graphic than the ones that I went to and facilitated for a couple of years. And the overall look at it was that like, it's this clever sidestep that says, see the root of it is lust. And I remember way back in the beginning, someone was like, no, the root issue of all addiction is pride. And I was sitting there going like, how can you possibly say that every addict I've ever worked with is one of the humblest people I know. They know they have an issue. They recognize that they don't have the capacity to deal with it on their own. And even though they might be exhibiting a kind of arrogance in certain parts of their life, I have never seen one that I would call proud any more than I would call anybody else proud. And yet they go like, see, that's really the root cause of addiction and whatnot. And what I've found in all of these things is that like labeling it with an abstract, vague general term, like lust or like pride, all it does is give a person this feeling of, Oh no, I know the answer and it doesn't solve anything. [02:28.7]
And it's still for all the people that I saw, like shifting it from, I'm not addicted to porn to I'm addicted to lust is nice because it changes the focus a little bit. And I'm sure that there's some people that, that super effective for. So you know, if it is effective for you go for it. But I wanted to look at lust today a little bit differently because too many people are looking at this thing and they're like, Oh my gosh, what do I do? And some of the clients we work with who are, who are dealing with porn or sex addiction, they're like, what do I do if lust comes up? But I want you to note this last exists in more areas than just pornography and sex, right? You lust after anything money. You lust after food, when somebody has food and they're walking by and your mouth starts watering, Oh my gosh, what is that lust? You lost after relationships; you lust after achievements and positions. Jealousy is a form of lust in a way he turned into like anger; it's your way of doing something about it. [03:23.5]
Lust itself is shows up in everywhere in all these different areas of life. And it is this, here's the definition I want you to work with. Lust is the experience you have when your mind is playing out two stories at once. I want that, but I can't have it. Let me repeat that. Lust is the experience you have when your mind is playing out two stories at the same time. I want that, but I can't have it. Does that make sense? Think about it with food. I want that, but I can't have it. You're having this feeling of like, Oh my gosh, you can think about it with money. I want that, but I can't have it. For whatever reasons, maybe you believe you don't deserve it, that could be one reason why you don't have it. Or maybe someone's literally taking it from you, maybe that's why. If you're starving and someone has food that would happen. If, if you're married and you believe that looking at another beautiful woman or man is somehow cheating, then the, like, I want that and I can't have, it can show up as a lust thing. So it doesn't have to show up. You can, people lust after spiritual things. Literally I did it. [04:24.3]
I mean, I find these people, these leaders, these spiritual leaders that I would look at them with his level of reverence and awe and also like a self-defeating, kind of like, Oh man, they're so worthy and I'm not worthy. I'm not worthy in some ways is a form of lust. It says I want that, but I can't have it, right. So lust is the experience you have when your mind is playing out two stories simultaneously. I want that, but I can't have it. Okay. So cool. What I wanted to do today then is teach you how to leave Lust in the dust, okay. Or as best we can like help you really understand what's going on and give you a method and a tool for shifting that inside of your system. Okay? So let's look at what lust really is. [05:11.9]
If lust is an experience you're having, then it's just an experience you're having, right? And that experience is happening with all three brains, your thinker, your feeler and your sensor. Basically, it's a sensation happening in your body in real time. Now a lot of people translate and they look at lust and they go, man, I had a craving for this. I was really craving a certain kind of food, or I was really craving this. Or I had the urge or the temptation to go do this thing. And every single one of those words, lust, craving, urge, temptation, you're not those don't exist. There is no such thing as lust. That's a word that we have used to describe an experience. There is no such thing as craving. There is no such thing as an urge. There is no such thing as a temptation, in the sense of what you're talking about. Something floating around called temptation, that's like beating on you and making you think certain things and all that other stuff. [06:06.8]
Now I get some of you have a theological view that says there are possibly evil spirits or something, that's making you think that, but I want you to just, you can pick that up, totally. That's totally your call to do that. But I just want you to look at it this way for a second. And then you can throw it out. If you don't, don't appreciate what I'm sharing. That's totally fine. Cause you get to you. Do you, this is your life, right? I am not an authority on anything, but what I have done. Okay? So here we are and these things don't exist. You cannot cut a body open and find lust. You can't find cravings. You can't find urges. You won't find temptations in the body. You won't, you will find chemicals and tension patterns and organs and movement and places that are stuck and not stuck and constrictions and things like that. You will find residue from past activities and behaviors, you'll find the results of that. So for instance, tennis elbow would be the result of overuse of the elbow playing tennis or arthritis might be something like that. You will find bacteria and viruses. [07:08.7]
So there are things you will find in a body if you cut it open, but you will never find the lust. You will never find cravings. You won't find urges. You won't find temptations inside of a body. They're not real things. They're concepts; they're ideas in your head that give you a certain kind of experience. So you are not experiencing lust. You're not experiencing cravings. You're not experiencing urges. You're not experiencing temptations. What you are experiencing is an experience. You're just having an experience. What's beautiful about this is now we can dial into what this experience is for a second. [07:39.4]
If you or someone you know is looking to drop the F-bomb of “Freedom” in their life, whether that's from past trauma, depression, anxiety, addiction, or any other host of emotional and personal struggles, but they just don't know how or wants some help doing it. Head on over to thefreedomspecialist.com/feelbetternow and check out some of the things we've got in store for you or book a call so we can look at your unique situation and get you the help that you're looking for. [08:07.0]
When you lust after something, whether it's food or whether it's money or whether it's a beautiful woman or man or whatever it is when you're lusting, what body position do you take? What's the posture of lust? You know. What happened with me, what would happen with me still whenever I catch myself in that experience, is eyes get super focused, right? Hyper-Focused and I get a little bit of tunnel vision. Like it starts to zoom out on other things. I'm still aware and alert, but I start to zoom out on other things, there's a tension in my eyes. My head tends to put forward a little bit, a little bit more tension in my neck and mouth. Like my mouth is closed. There's a certain sense of like tingling sensation of desire. And then there's like a hardness in the chest a little bit that starts to show up. And some of you may not be aware of all these pieces. So I'm just describing them in a, as a minute-a-way as I can right now. [08:59.5]
And so if I'm leaning forward and lusting after something, I really want it. There's that stirring in the gut, there’s that stirring of desire. And it doesn't matter what you're desiring, if you really are lusting after something that can be there that can be there, then there's the tension pattern. And then the, the pulling away the jutting of the head forward and all of that other stuff, the arms, my arms would get kind of tense. They get, well, basically the extremities are locked down a little bit. So that means when you're having the experience of lust, your body is going to assume a certain posture or one of several and a certain tension pattern, right? Some of them, might be subtle, especially if you're trying to hide it in front of others, people. But note that if you're having that posture and that is part of the experience, if you change the posture, you can no longer have exactly the same experience. Does that make sense? Let me say it again. If your posture is part of your experience of lust or craving or urge or whatever it is, and you change the posture, then you can no longer experience lust in the same way. [09:57.4]
You have changed your experience by changing your posture. This is something we teach in much more depth with emotional ninjitsu and some other things if you want to get a hold of some of the stuff that we're doing for this, Choose Your Own Emotion is a great online course. Go to thefreedomspecialist.com/feelbetternow jump on board there, it's 20 days, it's an incredible program, okay. So you've changed your posture a little bit. Guess what, what is your breathing like when you're lusting? Are you like deep, calm, smooth, big breaths? Are you holding your breath? If you're breathing as part of your experience, when you change your breathing, guess what you change the experience. What's your, the movement like? Are you stuck in one position, just gawking? Or are you in motion? Guess what, if your movement is a certain way in that experience, if you change your movement, guess what? You'll change your experience. So by changing how you breathe, how you you think, what you stand like and what, or sit like and what your posture is, you're changing the experience, which means you're transferring from lust to a different experience. [10:58.3]
So, and then of course, what are your thoughts like? And if you shift those. But the problem with thoughts is just because they're, they're easy to shift, but then they can come back really easily. Thoughts play out in your body. They play out in your physiology. They play out in how you breathe. They play out and how you move. Every thought you have. That's why people have facial expressions. They have a thought and the muscles fire and their face contorts. They have a different thought and their face contort someplace differently. They have another thought and they, they, you know, something's coming and their body, they duck because they think there's danger. They have a simple, a little thought of like, Oh, I'm tired and then their body feels, it was heavy. All of your thoughts are playing out on the book of life, called your body. Every thought written there for anyone who has eyes to see, to see, you can't really lie about what's happening with you. It's just that most people are so busy, caught up in their own thoughts that they're not paying attention. That's it. [11:48.2]
So every thought is playing out in your system and lust is an experience that you're currently having, not something that came up in caught you. You're not addicted to lust, you're experiencing it. If you like the experience, by all means, you'll continue doing it. If you're like, Oh my gosh, I don't really like this experience, it's really easy to change it by changing how the experience happens. You change how you breathe. You change how you move, you change how you stand, you change how you think, of course. And then all of this stuff starts to change your chemistry and it starts to change some other things. So when you want to leave lust in the dust, you have to remember that lust doesn't exist. You're not experiencing lust. You're not lusting after something. And I get it, they're going to be people in your life that are gonna be like, ‘Yeah, look at him, he was lusting after that. Or he was really good craving already had all these urges. And when I got the urge.’ But the problem with it is that you're creating a fantasy in your mind. So it's nice to talk about those things because well we wouldn't even be having this conversation, if the word lust didn't exist, right, so it wouldn't be hard to talk about. [12:49.7]
So the words give us a way to talk about certain things. But the problem is words start to feel like they're individual objects. Lust is a noun. What's a noun? A noun is a part of speech. It doesn't exist in the world. It's not a real thing. A lust is not a thing. It's not is a word we're using to describe a process that's going on. And if you want a different process, then you start to shift up the process. And the process is an unfolding of breath and movement and body position and tension and relaxation and thinking, and feeling and all kinds of other stuff. So when you want to leave it behind, stop worrying about what it is, pay attention to your body. Look to the body experience. Your body is the single greatest personal development tool you've ever been given on the planet. You were born, you came here. And the one thing that qualifies you to be here is a body. I don't know if minds exists outside of the planet, but for certain you learn, if you don't have a human body, you're not human and that's just the way it works. [13:52.3]
But so many of us have been trained and caught so much in our mind from the time we were little kids, education is all about the mind. And there's so little emphasis on training people to understand the body, not with theory and not with like talking about cells and stuff, but through personal practical experience of how to work the body in order to be able to be in control of your own emotional states, to be in control of your experience of life, right? Your body is your single greatest tool that you've ever been given. So with, when you are experiencing something like lust or fear or pain or depression or anything else recognize that in the end, all you are ever experiencing at any point in time in life is a sensation in the body. Every thought you have, a sensation in your body. Everything that's going on for you is playing out in your body. And what that means is you always have the tool right there in front of you to be able to make a difference in that. You don't need me, you don't know I, anyone else. I would love to help you or to train you and stuff, so you don't have to figure it out on your own, but you don't need me. You figure this out lust doesn't exist. It's just an experience you're having in your body. Same with craving, same with urges and even temptations. [15:00.1]
Cause if you think about it, when you're experiencing a temptation, how do you know you're experiencing a temptation? Something's going on in your body, maybe it's a tightening in the heart. Maybe it's a fear or something, some pressure in the head, or maybe it's a worry or a concern or something that shows up. It shows up inside of your body. So even if there does happen to be temptation around like some outside entity, that's invisible, that's pushing you around the only way you're going to know is through this mechanism, we call your body. And by that means like, how do you know you're having a thought it's happening in your body. You're experiencing even projections of light in your mind, same with revelation, from God and insights and all of this stuff. All of this is happening on the playground of your body. [15:42.1]
And what that means is you have 100% choice about how long that stays about how intense it gets and about what other kinds of experiences you can have as you go through life. And I would love to teach you how to do that. If you want to just go check out that course again, thefreedomspecialist.com/feelbetternow It's an incredible process that can teach you so much, but even if you don't go there, I would love, love, love for you to stop feeling like you're being bombarded by so many things. Stop feeling and claiming that you're addicted to all this stuff and pay attention to what's really happening. All that's happening is right now in this moment, you're having an experience, which means you don't have a big past you have to deal with, you just have this moment and that's it. And so then the question I would ask you is simple. Cool, you're having this experience, what do you want to do now? And empower yourself to make a different choice because you don't have to be controlled by your emotions. You really can choose them. [16:38.6]
And that's it for todays “Alive and Free Podcast.” If you enjoyed this show and want some more freedom bombs landing in your ear buds, subscribe right now at wherever you get your podcasts from. And, while you're at it, give us a rating and a review. It'll help us keep delivering great stuff to you. Plus, it's just nice to be nice. [16:56.7]
This is ThePodcastFactory.com
