watts
von Zain Razzaq
You know, it's a strange thing how a man
can spend his whole life chasing
something he cannot name. It could be a
bottle, a lover, a tune he plays again
and again, or even the restless urge to
wander. But behind every chase, behind
every compulsion, there's a whisper,
something calling from deep within the
bones. And I suspect that whisper might
very well be God. Not the God of thunder
and commandments, but the one who hides
in the quiet ache of your longing. The
one who does not shout from the heavens,
but murmurss through your emptiness. You
see, most people think of addiction as a
weakness. But I say it is a form of
prayer that has forgotten its direction.
You do not look out there for God.
Something in the sky you look within.
Now before you take me too literally, I
don't mean that every craving is holy in
itself. Oh no. But every craving, every
restless itch of the soul is a distorted
echo of something sacred. Because the
truth is every human being is haunted by
a deep sense of incompleteness. We're
born into this world as fragments. And
we spend our lives trying to remember
what it is we once were. Whole,
complete, one with everything. And so we
search. We search in books, in temples,
in pleasures in people. We grasp. We
cling. We repeat the same old patterns
again and again. Like waves beating
against the shore. Why? Because
somewhere within, we remember. We
remember that once, perhaps before birth
or beyond time, there was a great
stillness, a unity, and now the soul
aches to return to it. But we've
forgotten the road home. So we build
substitutes. We drink the wine, not for
its taste, but for the warmth it gives
to a cold heart. We chase sensations,
not for the joy itself, but for the
fleeting moment when we forget
ourselves. And for a moment, just a
moment, the walls crumble. And in that
instant of oblivion, we touch something
that feels divine. But the tragedy, my
dear friend, is that we try to repeat
it. We think the doorway lies in the
substance, the ritual, the experience
itself, not realizing it was always
within us. Like a man who mistakes the
moon for the reflection in the water, we
dive after the shimmer and drown in
illusion. You see, every form of
addiction is an attempt to escape the
unbearable feeling of being separate.
Separate from life, from love, from the
divine. But separation itself is an
illusion. We were never apart from the
whole. We merely believed we were. We
suffer only because we take seriously
what the gods made for fun. And isn't
that what happens? We take the play of
desire and make it into a tragedy. We
cling to the fleeting moment and call it
salvation. But the divine, you see,
cannot be contained in a bottle or a
moment or a person. It is far too vast,
far too wild for that. Imagine for a
moment a drop of water longing to be
part of the sea.
It forgets that it is the sea and so it
tries to merge with it through storms
and rivers and rains not realizing that
it was never separate to begin with.
That is the plight of the soul and
addiction in all its forms is the storm
we create in our longing to return. Yet
I don't say this to condemn the addict.
Oh no, in fact I believe such souls are
often the most sensitive, the most awake
to the ache of existence. They are the
ones who have felt the divine absence so
profoundly that they will do anything
anything to feel whole again. In their
desperation lies a strange kind of
grace. Because you see, God often speaks
to us not in words but in wounds. Not
through sermons but through the places
where we break. And perhaps, just
perhaps, addiction is not a curse, but a
misunderstood calling, a cry from the
soul that says, "There is more to you
than this small, frightened self you
cling to." When you get the message, you
hang up the phone. The problem is we
never hang up. We keep dialing the same
number, chasing the same fleeting
ecstasy, hoping the next time it will
last. But the message was never in the
substance. It was in the silence that
followed. The silence that says this
isn't it, but you are close. So as we
begin this exploration together, I want
you to see addiction not as a failure
but as a clue, a divine breadcrumb
leading you back to the source. Because
what you truly seek is not pleasure or
escape or control. What you seek is
union, wholeness, God. And the miracle
is you've never been apart from it. You
know, I once said trying to define
yourself is like trying to bite your own
teeth. And in a way addiction is just
that, the soul trying to taste itself.
We live in a world where everyone is
hungry, though few can name what for. A
hunger not of the stomach but of the
spirit. The kind that keeps a man
restless even when he has everything he
thought he wanted. It is that peculiar
ache you feel in quiet moments when the
laughter fades, when the wine runs dry,
when even success tastes like dust.
That's not failure, my dear. That's the
soul remembering something it once knew.
Now to understand addiction, we must
first understand desire. Desire in
itself is not wrong. It is life's very
motion. The flower desires to bloom. The
bird desires to fly. The tide desires to
return. Everything that exists is an
expression of desire. Even the stars are
born out of longing. The great yearning
of the universe to see itself in
countless forms. But when desire forgets
its source, it becomes hunger without
nourishment. It becomes addiction. You
see, we confuse the object of desire
with its essence. We think the cup will
satisfy the thirst, not realizing the
thirst was never for the liquid, but for
the experience of being alive. We think
love is found in another person. When in
truth, it is the recognition of the
divine in ourselves, mirrored through
them. And so, addiction is not a love
for the wrong thing. It is love
misdirected, a sacred yearning pointed
at the wrong star. The meaning of life
is just to be alive. It is so plain and
so simple. And yet everybody rushes
around in a great panic as if it were
necessary to achieve something beyond
themselves. This panic, this grasping is
the seed of addiction. It's as if we've
been hypnotized to believe that
fulfillment lies just over the next
hill. One more drink, one more thrill,
one more achievement, one more prayer,
and then we'll be whole. But each time
we arrive, we find ourselves still
hollow, still searching. And so the
pattern repeats. We keep circling the
same tree, mistaking the shadow for the
fruit. We call it failure, we call it
sin. But what it truly is is
forgetfulness. We have forgotten that
what we seek is not in the thing itself,
but in the state of unity it once gave
us a glimpse of. Think of a man who
stands by the sea at sunset, feeling
that strange peace that comes when all
thinking stops. In that moment, he and
the world are not two. There is no
watcher, only watching. That right there
is what the addict chases. Not the
substance, not the sensation, but that
brief disappearance of self, that return
to the eternal now. But alas, the addict
doesn't know that what he seeks is
already here. He believes it must be
caused by something, a drink, a ritual,
a prayer, a person. He does not realize
the cause and the effect are both
illusions. For the joy he felt was never
in the drink, it was in the dissolving
of boundaries that the drink allowed for
a moment. When the mind stops grasping
even for a second, you feel what sages
call bliss. But because we think bliss
is something to be earned or consumed,
we keep trying to reproduce it through
external means. That's why I say the
tragedy of addiction is not in the
craving but in the misunderstanding of
what it craves. Addiction, you see, is
the longing of the divine to return to
itself. Misra as the longing of the
human for satisfaction. It's God
searching for God wearing a disguise.
The infinite pretending to be finite
trying to remember what it already
knows. You are something the whole
universe is doing in the same way that a
wave is something the whole ocean is
doing. And so when you feel that burning
need, that restless hunger, do not
despise it. It is not your enemy. It is
the oldest prayer in the world. The
prayer of the cosmos to remember itself
through you, to become conscious of its
own dance. But if you chase the wave
instead of the ocean, you will always be
thirsty. The answer, you see, is not to
destroy desire, but to understand it, to
follow it to its source, to realize that
beneath every craving is the call to
come home, to return to the stillness
that was never lost. When you understand
this, addiction becomes not a curse, but
a compass, a reminder of where you've
forgotten to look. Because the divine is
not absent, it's just hiding behind the
masks of your desires, waiting for you
to recognize its face. And perhaps then
when the hunger arises again, you'll
smile, for you'll know it's not a demand
to be filled, but an invitation to
awaken. You know, there's a curious
irony in the way we live. We spend half
our lives trying to control everything.
Our minds, our bodies, our image, our
future, and the other half surrendering
to things that control us. A bottle, a
habit, a thought that won't let go. And
we call that freedom. But have you
noticed the harder you try to hold on to
life, the faster it slips through your
fingers like sand, the tighter the grip,
the less remains. And perhaps this is
where addiction becomes such a
fascinating teacher because in it you
can see the whole tragedy of the human
condition. We want to surrender, but on
our terms. We want to let go, but only
when it's safe. We want to dissolve, but
without disappearing. And so we find
substitutes. A glass of wine, a lover's
arms, an endless rhythm of repetition,
all the little rituals by which the self
tries to forget itself. For a moment
they work, for a fleeting moment the
walls melt, and in that melting we taste
God, or at least something like him. The
addict and the monk are not so
different. Both are searching for the
disappearance of self. The monk goes to
the mountain to lose himself in
meditation. The addict goes to the
bottle to lose himself in intoxication.
The direction is different, but the
impulse is the same. To escape the
narrowness of eye, to dissolve into
something vast and boundless. The
problem is not the desire, it's the
direction. Because the monk learns that
you cannot reach infinity by grasping.
But the addict believes you can drink
it, smoke it, or repeat it into
existence. He's looking for eternity in
what's temporary. He's reaching for the
ocean through a drop. And yet, can we
blame him? After all, haven't we all
done the same? We chase experiences,
identities, beliefs, and call them
meaning. We chase order and control and
call it peace. But peace isn't found in
control. It's found in the surrender
that requires no control. You see, when
you take a drug or when you bury
yourself in a habit, what you are really
saying is, "I want to escape the prison
of myself." But instead of breaking the
bars, you build another cage. Prettier,
softer, more intoxicating, but still a
cage. And what's more tragic is that you
call it freedom. To be free from the
desire for an answer is to be free from
the problem. Because it's not the
substance nor the act that binds you.
It's the search for certainty. It's the
longing for something final, something
fixed, something that will stay. But
life, you see, is not meant to stay.
It's a dance, not a sculpture. And the
moment you try to preserve the dance, it
dies. Addiction is the attempt to bottle
the infinite. And that's why it always
leaks. You cannot imprison the divine
within a moment. Because the divine is
the movement itself. The ecstasy you
felt was never the wine. It was the
vanishing of boundaries. It was the
instant when you were gone and only
being remained. But of course, we
forget. And so we chase the echo instead
of the song. We chase the footprint
instead of the traveler. And every time
the same pattern repeats, the pleasure
peaks, fades, and leaves behind that
hollow ache in your chest. That silence,
my friend, that's where God speaks. He
doesn't shout through the pleasure. He
whispers through the absence of it. He
hides in the stillness after the music
stops. That emptiness you fear so much.
That's not punishment. It's the divine
saying, "This isn't it, my child, but
you are close." If only we had the
courage to sit in that silence, to not
rush to fill it again, we would find the
doorway we've been searching for all
along. That silence terrifies us,
doesn't it? It feels like death. And in
a sense, it is it's the death of
everything you've mistaken for yourself.
That's why the addict fears stillness.
Because stillness shows him what's real.
Yet, paradoxically, stillness is the
only place where the real can be found.
That's the divine joke. We spend our
lives running from the silence that
could save us. You see, true awakening
doesn't destroy desire. It transforms
it. The fire doesn't go out, it changes
color. It becomes a longing not for
escape, but for understanding, not for
numbness, but for awareness, not for
disappearance, but for union. The monk
and the addict both seek the same
disappearance. But one dissolves into
life, while the other dissolves away
from it. And the moment you realize this
difference, you begin to understand that
even your most misguided paths were
never wasted. They were just roads you
took while learning how to walk home.
The more you struggle to live, the less
you live. Give up the notion that you
must be sure of what you are doing. So
perhaps the next time the craving comes,
don't condemn it. Don't obey it. Just
listen. Because maybe, just maybe,
that's not temptation at all. That's God
clearing his throat, waiting for you to
hear him in the silence between your
thoughts. You know, there's a silence
that follows every storm, a kind of
still ache that lingers after all the
thunder is gone. It's in that silence, I
think, that God speaks most clearly. Not
in the words of prophets, nor in the
hymns of temples, but in the trembling
quiet after your own collapse. We don't
often recognize it because we expect
divinity to arrive with light and
angels, not with heartbreak and
withdrawal. But perhaps that's precisely
how the divine works. Not through
comfort, but through the breaking open
of what you thought you were. God
doesn't always speak in words. Sometimes
he speaks in withdrawals, in longing, in
tears. There comes a moment somewhere
after the pleasure fades when everything
goes still and suddenly the thing that
once promised escape becomes a mirror
reflecting your own face. The wine stops
working. The passion turns to ash and
you are left staring at the emptiness
that remains. Most call this despair,
but it is not despair. It is revelation.
The soul has brought you here to show
you something. It's saying, "Look, you
have chased the shadow long enough. Now
see what casts it and oh what a moment
that is terrifying. Yes, because it
strips you bare but sacred too because
beneath that beness lies truth. The
moment you realize I was never seeking
the substance I was seeking myself. You
see every descent carries within it an
initiation. Every collapse is a secret
doorway. You had to lose yourself not as
punishment but as proof that you can't
truly be lost. What you think you are,
your stories, your habits, your
cravings, those are only garments the
soul tries on for a while. When they
fall away, what remains is what you've
always been. You are an aperture through
which the universe is looking at and
exploring itself. Pain, loss, obsession,
these are not random cruelties. They are
the divine strange way of getting your
attention. When joy becomes too loud, we
forget to listen. When everything seems
certain, we forget to look inward. So
life in its infinite compassion shakes
us. It sends us storms not to destroy us
but to awaken us. That is why the old
mystics said suffering purifies the
false self. It cracks the shell of
illusion so that the light can enter
like a seed that must split before it
grows. The soul must be broken open
before it can bloom. If you never felt
the ache of longing, you would never
seek what's real. And so in those long
nights of withdrawal, whether from a
substance, a person, or a dream,
something holy is happening, something
vast and invisible is being born inside
you. It doesn't look like enlightenment.
It doesn't feel like grace, but it is
because grace is not always gentle.
Sometimes grace is the fire that burns
down everything false. Sometimes grace
is the emptiness that makes room for
what's true. You see, God is not up
there judging your sins. He's within you
crying through them. Every fall is his
invitation to rise higher. It's a
strange thing to say, but the divine
feels through you. When you weep, he
weeps. When you wander, he wanders. He
is not the spectator of your suffering.
He is the presence within it. He hides
himself inside your loneliness so that
you might finally notice the one thing
that never leaves. And when you stop
seeing your pain as shame, when you
begin to see it as guidance, the whole
world shifts. You realize that your
wounds were not scars of failure but
fingerprints of transformation. They
marked the places where the old self
dissolved and the new one began. So my
friend, if you are hurting, if you are
tired of falling, if you feel lost,
don't rush to escape it. Sit with it
just for a moment. Listen, there's a
whisper beneath the pain. It does not
condemn you. It does not demand
perfection. It simply says, "I am still
here." That whisper is the voice of your
own soul. And it is the same voice that
spoke the universe into being. So you
see, even in your darkest moments, you
have never been abandoned. You have been
spoken to. You have been called, not
punished. Called to remember what you
are. The more a thing tends to be
permanent, the more it tends to be
lifeless. To live fully is to be always
in danger. And so suffering is not the
enemy of life. It is its secret ally. It
keeps breaking us open until we are wide
enough for love to enter. Until the
divine no longer needs to whisper
because we've become quiet enough to
hear. You know, there comes a time in
every seeker's journey when the running
simply stops. Not because they've
reached the end of the road, but because
they've realized the road was always
circling back home. And when that moment
arrives, that quiet dawning, something
magnificent happens. You look at the
very thing that once destroyed you, and
you see it for what it truly was, your
greatest teacher. You don't heal by
fighting the darkness. You heal by
turning toward the light it was pointing
to. Once you begin to see the divine
message hidden in your craving, the
addiction loses its power. Because you
see, addiction feeds on
misunderstanding. It lives on the belief
that you are incomplete. But the moment
you see through the illusion that you
were never broken to begin with, the
whole machinery begins to crumble. It's
rather like waking from a long dream.
For years, you thought the monsters were
real. You fought them, feared them, even
worshiped them. But then suddenly the
dream lifts and you realize the monsters
were never outside you. They were
shadows cast by your own light. That is
awakening. When you discover that even
your darkness was holy, that your pain
was sacred, you stop struggling against
life, you begin to flow with it. And
that flow, my friend, is freedom. To
have faith is to trust yourself to the
water. When you swim, you don't grab
hold of the water because if you do,
you'll sink and drown. Instead you relax
and float. Freedom, you see, is not
abstaining from pleasure. It is
realizing that no pleasure can contain
the infinite. It is knowing that joy was
never in the wine, nor in the kiss, nor
in the fleeting triumphs of this world.
It was in being aware of them. It was in
the witnessing itself. The soul delights
not in possession, but in participation.
And so what once bound you now becomes
your invitation. The craving that once
dragged you into shadow now points
toward the light. Because all addiction
when understood transforms into
devotion. Devotion to truth, to
awareness, to the divine pulse of life
itself. This is what the mystics called
the sacred return. It is not about
becoming pure or perfect. It is about
remembering. Remembering that you were
never apart from what you sought. The
journey of the addict, if walked
consciously, becomes an initiation. the
death of the false self, the birth of
the real one. You see, every fall, every
failure, every desperate grasping was
chiseling away at what you are not, so
that what you truly are could finally
emerge. And so the very thing that once
destroyed you becomes your teacher, your
doorway back to God. Imagine, if you
will, a man emerging from a long night
of storm and rain. He steps out into the
dawn, and the first rays of light touch
his face. For the first time, he feels
warmth, not as comfort, but as truth. He
realizes the light was never gone. He
had merely closed his eyes. That is what
awakening feels like. It is not the
gaining of something new, but the gentle
removal of what was false. And when the
soul remembers its origin, the addiction
becomes unnecessary. Because how could
you crave what you already are? How
could you seek completion when you
realize you are the whole thing? The
dreamer and the dream, the seeker and
the sort, the ocean and the wave. In
that realization, a great laughter
arises. The cosmic laughter of release,
not mockery, not pride, but the laughter
of one who has finally understood the
game. You see, God hides himself in all
these disguises, pleasure, pain, hunger,
loss, just so that he can play the joy
of being found again. And when you
recognize him, he laughs through you.
This is the real secret of life. To be
completely engaged with what you are
doing in the here and now. And instead
of calling it work, realize it is play.
Life you realize was never a problem to
be solved. It was a song to be heard.
And even the dissonant notes were part
of its beauty. The soul emerging from
addiction is like dawn after the longest
night. There's no longer a battle
between dark and light, only
understanding that both were needed for
the sunrise to exist. You see, awakening
isn't about escaping the world. It's
about seeing through it. It's realizing
that even your struggles were movements
of the divine, shaping you, humbling
you, preparing you to remember what
you've always been. And when that
remembering happens, when the light
touches your face, the search ends. Not
because there's nothing left to find,
but because you realize at last you were
never searching at all. You know, after
all the storms, all the searching, all
the desperate reaching, there comes a
moment when everything grows very quiet.
The craving stops, the questions fade,
and in that stillness, something vast
begins to breathe through you. Perhaps
this this quiet unremarkable moment was
what you were looking for all along.
Perhaps God's voice isn't in the thunder
or the temple, but in the ache of your
own heart. In every desire, every
addiction, every mistake, something
sacred was trying to reach you. We spend
so much of our lives waiting for divine
revelation, a miracle, a vision, a light
tearing open the sky. When all along the
divine was whispering through our most
human moments, through the trembling
hand reaching for another drink, through
the lonely silence of regret, through
the sudden laughter that erupts from
nowhere, it was all him, always him. The
universe, you see, doesn't separate the
sacred from the profane. It only plays
both sides of the same song. Your falls,
your cravings, your heartbreaks, these
were not detours. They were the dance
itself. Because God, my dear friend, is
not interested in your perfection. He's
interested in your participation, in
your willingness to feel deeply, to
break, to return. You see, when the
divine wants your attention, he doesn't
always bless you with peace. Sometimes
he disturbs you. Yes, sometimes he takes
away your certainties, your comforts,
your illusions, not to punish you, but
to call you. He shakes the ground
beneath your feet so that you might
remember the sky above your head. He
turns your pleasures hollow so that you
might listen for what's eternal until
you finally stop running and listen. And
when you do, when you finally surrender
to that listening, something miraculous
happens. You realize he was never far
away, never lost, never hiding. The God
you sought through your addictions was
the silence watching them all along. He
was there when you first reached out for
escape. He was there when you thought
you'd fallen too far. He was there when
you wept and whispered, "I can't do this
anymore." And he's here now, breathing
through your very awareness, smiling
through your understanding. You are the
universe experiencing itself in the
infinite play of being and non-being.
You see, the game was never about
escaping your humanity. It was about
remembering that even in your most human
moments, you were divine. Every craving
was an echo of the original longing, the
longing of the infinite to know itself
through you. And so addiction, when seen
with awakened eyes, is not a fall from
grace. It's the long way home. It's the
divine choosing to walk through darkness
just to rediscover the light. It's God
wearing your face, asking through your
pain. Will you remember me now? And when
you do, when you finally remember, the
whole world seems to exhale. The war
within you dissolves. There is no
addict, no saint, no sinner, only the
dance of one consciousness, endlessly
exploring itself. What you thought was
broken was only opening. What you
thought was punishment was preparation.
And what you thought was God's absence
was his most intimate disguise. So now,
my friend, if you have heard something
tonight, not with your ears, but with
your being, then the purpose of your
pain has already been fulfilled. For the
truth was never in the lesson, but in
the seeing, and you have seen. The
meaning of life is just to be alive. It
is so plain and so simple. Yet everyone
rushes about in a great panic, as if it
were necessary to achieve something
beyond themselves.
So rest, not as one who has escaped, but
as one who has arrived. The divine has
been speaking to you all along through
your craving, your confusion, your
collapse, your awakening. And now in the
silence he smiles because at last you've
remembered you were never apart from
him. You were his voice calling yourself
home.
