““Being cut off from our own natural self-compassion is one of the greatest impairments we can suffer. Along with our ability to feel our own pain go our best hopes for healing, dignity and love. What seems nonadapative and self-harming in the present was, at some point in our lives, an adaptation to help us endure what we then had to go through. If people are addicted to self-soothing behaviours, it’s only because in their formative years they did not receive the soothing they needed. Such understanding helps delete toxic self-judgment on the past and supports responsibility for the now. Hence the need for compassionate self-inquiry.””
— Gabor Maté, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction
“The second great affirmation is of the universe itself—our connection with all that is. The assumption that we are cut off, alone and without contact is toxic, but—no matter how cruelly and how consistently life has shown us this dark shadow—it is no more than a bitter illusion. It forms part of the pathological biology of belief. Physically it is easy to see that our sense of separateness from the universe is false: we do not go “from dust to dust,” we are dust enlivened. We are a part of the universe with temporary consciousness, but never apart from it. Not by coincidence is the word seeking so frequently employed in relation to spiritual work”
