Appendix A
Sometime around the turn of the millennium I became addicted to several games that were standard-issue on computers then: Minefield, solitaire, and hearts. I lost a lot of time to those games—how much, I’d prefer not even to think about—and developed classic characteristics of an addict, mainly secrecy and shame. Tapping, as mentioned in chapter 6, even when I was using a protocol that was said to be specifically designed to end addictions, only seemed to reduce my anxiety about playing computer games, and I played them more than ever.
I was also, at that time, reading through a pretty complete collection of the teachings of Hazrat Inayat Khan, and one day I came across a story that I’d already heard told by his son, Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan. It appears in The Sufi Message of Hazrat Inayat Khan Centennial Edition, Volume IV: Healing and the Mind World, as follows:
A man went to a teacher and said, “Will you take me as your disciple?” The teacher first looked at him and then said, “Yes, with great pleasure.” But the man said, “Think about it before you tell me yes. First thing, I am a difficult subject. There are many bad things in me.” The teacher said, “What are these bad things?” The man said, “I like to drink.” The teacher said, “That does not matter.” “But,” the man said, “I like to gamble.” The teacher said, “That does not matter.” “But,” he said, “there are many other things, there are numberless things.” The teacher said, “That does not matter.” The man was very glad. “But,” the teacher said, “now that I have agreed with all the bad things you have said about yourself, you must agree to one condition.” The disciple said, “Yes.” The teacher said, “Do not do any of these things which you consider wrong in my presence.” The pupil said, “That is easy,” and went away. And as the days passed and months passed, this pupil, who was very deep and developed and keen, came back beaming, his soul unfolding every moment of the day and happy to thank the teacher. The teacher said, “Well, how have you been?” “Very well, thank you,” he said. The teacher said, “Have you done your practices which I gave you?” “Yes,” he said, “very faithfully.” “But what about the habits you had of going to different places?” the teacher asked. “Well,” he said, “I very often tried to go to drink, gamble, but wherever I went I saw you; you did not leave me alone. Whenever I wanted to drink, I saw your face before me. I cannot do it.”
Well, I thought, that’s it. I’ll promise Hazrat Inayat Khan not to play computer games in his presence, and that is very easy—he went to a better world all the way back in 1927. And right there and then, I lost all desire to play computer games—that was the end of it. After the attacks of September 11, 2001, when many people fell back into addictions they had kicked, I wanted to start playing computer games again. But every time I thought about it, Hazrat Inayat Khan would appear in my mind’s eye and say, “You can’t.” “But I want to!” I’d say, in my mind’s voice. “You can’t,” he’d say, and that was the end of it.
Not long ago, someone told me that the teacher in that story was Hazrat Inayat Khan himself, modestly remaining anonymous. Okay. No wonder that addiction got up and left, and stayed gone.
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