I have decided to stop smoking. I will not go into my history of smoking, my previous failed attempts at quitting, or any of the details that ultimately inspired my decision. That sort of thing tends to bore readers and outsiders. Instead, I would like to take a page from William Arkle and approach my decision to quit from the perspective of communication.
Whether we acknowledge it or not, the cosmos is constantly communicating information to us. By this I do not mean the obvious lines of communication such as the mass media, conversations with people, or personal sensations such as pleasure and pain. Everyone is more or less aware of these kinds of messages, though even these are often misinterpreted, misconstrued, or misunderstood. What I am referring to are far higher and more subtle lines of communication, ones that often go unnoticed or are disregarded.
Over the past month or so, I have experienced many of what I would term coincidences and synchronicities regarding my tobacco habit. To begin with, smoking has been at the forefront of my consciousness for the better part of four weeks. This itself is strange because I had rarely given smoking much thought at all over the past decade or two.
Yet, for reasons I cannot explain, I have been thinking about quitting smoking a great deal lately. The source of these thoughts are not external, as they often were in the past. In other words, anti-smoking television campaigns or the startling images plastered on cigarette packets have not been the source of my impulse to quit. The impulse originated from somewhere deep within my own thinking.
However, the moment I began thinking about smoking, I began picking up on strange signals in the external world - symbols and snippets of communication that mirrored exactly what I had been quietly thinking about. Once again, these were not obvious forms of communication like anti-smoking ads. They were far more nuanced in their symbolism.
I disregarded the first four or five of these as meaningless coincidences, but the signals kept coming. They grew stronger and harder to ignore as time went on, so much so that the past week has been akin to standing next to a wailing air raid siren.
In light of all of this, I have come to the following realization - if I ignore what I have experienced over the past month, it will be at my own peril. Not physical peril or psychological peril, but spiritual peril.
I am approaching the matter from an entirely different angle now. It is not about conquering a physical addiction or overcoming psychological dependence.
It is about communication and thinking, which means it is spiritual. Which means it simply must be done. And done it will be.
In all honesty, I feel very positive now that the smoke is clearing.
Whether we acknowledge it or not, the cosmos is constantly communicating information to us. By this I do not mean the obvious lines of communication such as the mass media, conversations with people, or personal sensations such as pleasure and pain. Everyone is more or less aware of these kinds of messages, though even these are often misinterpreted, misconstrued, or misunderstood. What I am referring to are far higher and more subtle lines of communication, ones that often go unnoticed or are disregarded.
Over the past month or so, I have experienced many of what I would term coincidences and synchronicities regarding my tobacco habit. To begin with, smoking has been at the forefront of my consciousness for the better part of four weeks. This itself is strange because I had rarely given smoking much thought at all over the past decade or two.
Yet, for reasons I cannot explain, I have been thinking about quitting smoking a great deal lately. The source of these thoughts are not external, as they often were in the past. In other words, anti-smoking television campaigns or the startling images plastered on cigarette packets have not been the source of my impulse to quit. The impulse originated from somewhere deep within my own thinking.
However, the moment I began thinking about smoking, I began picking up on strange signals in the external world - symbols and snippets of communication that mirrored exactly what I had been quietly thinking about. Once again, these were not obvious forms of communication like anti-smoking ads. They were far more nuanced in their symbolism.
I disregarded the first four or five of these as meaningless coincidences, but the signals kept coming. They grew stronger and harder to ignore as time went on, so much so that the past week has been akin to standing next to a wailing air raid siren.
In light of all of this, I have come to the following realization - if I ignore what I have experienced over the past month, it will be at my own peril. Not physical peril or psychological peril, but spiritual peril.
I am approaching the matter from an entirely different angle now. It is not about conquering a physical addiction or overcoming psychological dependence.
It is about communication and thinking, which means it is spiritual. Which means it simply must be done. And done it will be.
In all honesty, I feel very positive now that the smoke is clearing.
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