Dr. Charley Cropley, ND
@CharleyCropley
Buddha taught,
“Your habits bring you lower than your worst enemy would want.”
Your bad habits rule you like a tyrant. They confound your reason and paralyze your will. Daily you trade them your beauty, youth, health, and relationships for short-term pleasure. Day after day inexorably and inescapably they cause you ever greater sorrow and regret. And you can’t stop.
Take the example of smoking cigarettes. The first hit off a cigarette is disgusting and your body revolts. But, perhaps to look cool, we persist until gradually we can smoke without becoming nauseous and dizzy. With dedicated practice we train ourselves to enjoy cigarettes and then arrive at the stage where we are compelled to smoke multiple times daily. We are forced, as Arjuna said in the Bhagavad-Gita, “even against our will, as if powerless” enslaved by the universal power of habit or karma.
Habit is being possessed by a demon, ruled by a tyrant, threatened by a bully, seduced by a whore, conned by a drug dealer.
A schoolyard bully says to you “Give me your lunch money kid, or I’ll beat you it out of you.” A coffee bully says, “Give me coffee or I’ll give you a headache and make you irritable and tired.” Conversely a hooker says to you, “Come to me, baby and I’ll give you the pleasure you desire.” However she does not love you., and in the long run your relationship with her destroys your marriage, in this case your marriage to your body. Your body is eternally wed to, hopelessly in love with nature’s foods, her pure water, air and sunlight. Her eternal family. Your infidelity is ruthlessly punished until eventually your suffering awakens you to discover the enormity of your loss. And you begin the path homeward, to She who truly loves you.
Demons lie… always. Like drug dealers, they offer short term pleasure and steal long term benefit. Bad habits, evils of all kind, thrive in darkness. The light of truth annihilates them. They assure you that “This one time won’t hurt anything. You can quit tomorrow. Besides, you deserve this. It’s a treat. You’ve been so good.” Or, “You’ve done so much bad stuff already, what difference is this going to make?”
Tyrants shun and repress honest inquiry. They abhor a free press. Your addicted mind becomes blind with desire; unable to reason clearly about the insanity of your plight. Your drug dealer rationalizes her actions with thoughts such as “Its not that big a deal.” “I know I could quit if I really wanted to.” “Lots of people do this, and they’re not sick.”
Your addicted self assures you that there is a “someday” as in “someday I’ll change.” But never, never today. “Now” is horror to your dark side. He shuns and suppresses information about the harmfulness of his ways or the benefits of behaving differently. Your drug dealer invests enormously to repress and censor the voice of your conscience. You are consoled and encouraged to acquiesce by your victim with an internal propaganda campaign of justifications, rationalizations and excuses, played like commercials on prime time.
All this is habit.
Habit is born of ignorance and uncaring, the root causes of disease. Habit is what happens when you fall asleep, when you stop caring, stop paying attention, stop thinking about what’s important to you. When you, the master, the living spirit of kindness and wisdom, abandon your beloved body.
Truth and kindness is the universal remedy for self-inflicted suffering. The voice of reason, based on a clear understanding of karma/habit sounds the clarion call; “You will never, not ever be free from your misery until you actually stand up to this bully or turn away from this whore.” Listen, please. Your misery, your disease will grow worse without end. You will slide endlessly deeper into a living hell. Every day your bully grows stronger and you grow weaker. He feeds on your power. Every day it becomes harder not easier to stand up to this injustice. This is reality. You can take the test now or you can take it later.
But you will take this test.
Dr. Charley Cropley has been a practicing Naturopathic Doctor, teacher and author in the Boulder/Denver since 1979. He has trained hundreds of doctors in his methods of nutrition and Self-Healing. He teaches a variety of courses and retreats. He is author of numerous articles, several books, a blog and an array of audio and videos. He is a frequent lecturer at the colleges of Naturopathic Medicine, and is regarded by his peers as one of today’s leading thinkers and teachers in the philosophy and practice of Naturopathic Medicine.
Charley works with all types of Health problems using no medicines or supplements. He teaches his patients to Heal themselves through wholesome nutrition, strengthening exercise, positive thinking and honest, caring relationships. He lives what he teaches.