Stop Smoking through Meditation

When I was in the monastery I wrote a course Stop Smoking through Meditation. It had worked on me. I was a heavy smoker of rollies for most of my life. When I began meditating with my smoking in mind I noticed that one cannot smoke AND be aware at the same time. One needs a certain level of being unconscious in order to roll the fag, light it, drag on it and extinguish it. Raising consciousness (simply by being aware of every second of the process) would immediately cause me to vomit as soon as I smoked a cigarette. I live in much greater constant awareness now and to my astonishment this is exactly what happens every time I test my theory and smoke a cigarette: I vomit.
This means that my body has made the very medication it needed. By awareness.

I began testing this theory in the monastery and saw definite signs of improvement in my students.
I was not able to continue the program long enough to get definite answers. But the conversations I had with students after the meditation about their addiction were hopeful.

I asked my students to bring their smokes to meditation and I let them smoke outside the monastery (to the horror of my teacher) while I talked to them. I did not allow them to get unconscious about what they were doing, I kept them aware by letting them describe what they were feeling/tasting/experiencing while smoking. They would all report that the cigarette did nothing for them and that the taste/feeling was in fact awful.
They also all fell for the same trap: they would stop their stream of awareness as soon as they had taken the last drag and would be unconscious of what they were doing while throwing the filter on the pavement and extinguishing it with their foot. I would bring them back to awareness by describing exactly what they were doing and they were horrified by their own behavior. They felt guilty and shame and immediately picked up the bud and apologized for their rudeness. They thought of the small animals that would get hurt by the toxins in the bud, etc. Yet, they had littered their environment in this way for many years.

Back in the meditation hall they felt ashamed of the smell of their breath. I then let them contemplate the package of their cigarettes, the feel of it, the look of it, and they would all say that the package was as addictive to them as the cigarette itself.

I then deemed them ready to start traditional meditation. I taught them the good old body sweep, loving-kindness contemplation, breath meditation, thought gap meditation, and insight meditation.

It was amazing how quickly they gained insight into their own addiction and how a higher level of awareness was reducing their intake. I now want to take this experiment a step further and start monitoring groups.
Please email me if you're interesting in stopping smoking. If you're in Alice Springs we can meet face to face, if you're elsewhere we can meet through Skype.

My email adress: foraclearmind@gmail.com