Freedom From Illusions

To be successful and beautiful quitters, we must gain some freedom from illusions. For

 instance, we look down and see our stomach, and one more time notice that we are a

 body, have a body, and then remember that we are supposedly separate from things in

 general…and finally that we are just another person in a world of others and we had

 better go on and do that separate-person stuff, like making a living and hustling our

 thing whatever that is. It’s despairing.

And then we decide it’s also OK to not notice certain others because of the same

 “separate body/separate life” thing. The next thing is we see that everything else is

 also broken in every way,  and yet we act so innocent when we encounter the madness

 that follows in our objective world.

It’s almost too much to bear. And it is all based on false illusions. The reality of our

 basic situation and the responsibility required of us…all depend upon breaking

 through those false illusions and realizing that we are all really one Spirit, and that

 our general plight in the world is pretty much the same and our fate really is the same.

We are also creatures who  want happiness, creatures who have certain life needs that

 are  remarkably similar from one person to another. There is no illusion about that.

 We want security and freedom from violence, we need self respect and achievement

 and the respect bestowed on us from the outside which comes from genuine

 accomplishment.We want to think there’s some kind of meaning to our lives. We

 cherish opportunities to get that.And so I at Beautiful Quitters am here to say there

 still is a way, while we are busy grappling with all the madnesses in the world,  to get

 free and that’s by not allowing any artificial habit, contrived notion,  or “thing” to

 own us. 

We are allowing ourselves to be used the same way victims of madness are

 likewise tools in an insane grand social design. My purpose in building this website is

 to help people get free. My purpose is to help by reminding ourselves what to hang on

 to while we gradually drop our chains and our illusions of divisiveness.If you read my

 other articles you will see what I mean. 

We are also creatures who  want happiness, creatures who have certain life needs that are

 remarkably similar from one person to another. There is no illusion about that. We want

 security and freedom from violence, we need self respect and achievement and the

 respect bestowed on us from the outside which comes from genuine accomplishment. 

We want to think there’s some kind of meaning to our lives. We cherish opportunities to get

 that.

 

And so I at Beautiful Quitters am here to say there still is a way, while we are busy

 grappling with all the madnesses in the world,  to get free and that’s by not allowing any

 artificial habit, contrived notion,  or “thing” to own us. We are allowing ourselves to be

 used the same way victims of madness are likewise tools in an insane grand social design.

 

My purpose in building this website is to help people get free. My purpose is to help by

 reminding ourselves what to hang on to while we gradually drop our chains and our

 illusions of divisiveness.

 

Averayugen@mail.com

Addicts Are Escaping

 Addicts are escaping the violence of isolation.

Addicts are escaping a lot of things and one of them is the essential pointlessness of our own lives…if we have no meaningful contact with others.

 

A recent Guardian article focused on a victim, Steven Czifra, in solitary confinement in a prison,and described how he was forced to resort to violence and suicide attempts just to feel alive. How terrible!

 

The prison biz in America doesn’t understand what causes people to act badly in the first place because the administration and personnel there (and in other American institutions) are too busy suffering the effects of violence themselves, enabling themselves to then blindly abuse their charges…

http://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2016/apr/27/6×9-a-virtual-experience-of-solitary-confinement 

 

Addictions can help us forget our own special imprisonment which might feel worse than the imprisonment of addiction. American violence is legion. The lies are always building up and breaking down and engendering more lies. No wonder there is so much denial. This violence the ARCH example of American addiction. We are seemingly nobody  if we are not wailing out on someone else on some level. Nobody seems to escape this.

 

Pretty much nobody is un-addicted in America and the root of all addiction is the violence of being treated either as somebody’s enemy or the violence of being invalidated or ignored altogether. This essential in-authentication of all of us, is really maddening, so we seem to be doing society a favor by merely becoming addicted to some pointless object, obsessed with the material stuff-and-nothingness of life ostensibly to make us feel more inviolate.

 

Because if we are nothing to worry about to society,  then there’s nothing of us for anyone to fear. But we’re still hurting and feeling empty of our true needs. So the next cigarette, or fix or obsessed dysfunctional attitude…

 

And it’s not about just boredom  although boredom always aggravates this.  I am referring to the terrible panic of  ever-encompassing NON EXISTENCE itself, like a slow-motion murder, but a murder of the person from the soul outward. Nothing is close to the pain of that. All truly lonely people know how that feels.

 

This is no soap opera, this is the central crisis of American life.   Underneath all the mad diversion and objectification and whatever passes for “self” preservation ritual and mad self-justification for our collective bad conscience, the great fear seems to be that there is ultimately nothing besides this eternal search for evidence that there is some ultimate meaning we just haven’t found yet.

 

This is national mass psychosis and will become planetary psychosis if it hasn’t yet. That is, unless we can recognize the central madness of our lives. We are nuts for escapism, divisiveness unto death and chasing emptiness covered by junk.

 

No wonder we are all addicted. The cry of pain is obliterated. Empathy becomes obliterated. The idea of a collective life, along with our embedded ecosystems, is murdered. Addiction and madness and personal and cultural suicide…are all that remain.

 

But we at Beautiful Quitters say there really is another way. I hope you can come to agree now or one day.

 

Averayugen@mail.com

Quitters Must Gain Some Skills Too

The skill of building empathy for self and others is a

 good way to widen the circle of truth.   I am beginning to realize that there are mainly two

 kinds of truth, the one with the lower case “T” and the one with the upper case. Some

 people can see why immediately. Others probably will be thinking about it, and the rest

 won’t ever care. So you know to whom I’m addressing these thoughts.

So here’s the main idea:. Addicts are lacking something and it is NOT the cigarettes, or

 whatnot.

As you now probably know, nobody would poison themselves with a toxic substance

 unless there is a deep lack inside. Some of our basic needs have not been met. As a

 global culture we are beginning to understand that.  And of course some will never get

 it. The point is, we can work on those kinds of skills to better meet our needs, and the

 needs of those around us.

We can actively relate to the kinds of people who will care for us most. And we can

 teach ourselves empathy skills in order to bring around better people into our circle,

 the ones who are themselves empathetic and will care for us because they see a rare

 quality in us , the striving for a better world and a better life.  They will want to be

 part of what we are because they are like that too.

Quitters can be wise people to the extent they know what to gain as well as what to quit.   

Empathy is a prime skill because of the reasons I just mentioned.  

 ALL of us could use a master class in how to be more empathetic people.

There seems to be a grand movement among the “one percent” of this world…to

 eliminate empathy wherever it can…in public life and within ourselves. Many  of us

 who moonlight as activists in the “making a better world” sense… grasp that and are

 fighting valiantly to stem the tide.

And I at Beautiful Quitters am declaring myself as one of those people. I want a better

 world. I want to raise consciousness around what we need to eliminate in our lives and

 what we need to replace that with, or just “get” if not replacing anything. “Anyway we

 can make it baby, keep on moving it on!” sang Odetta, the great 60’s American folkie.

The more the worldwide “Divisive” party shatters our hopes and dreams, the less

 empathy may have in the end.

 We can see that in all realms of life, our work lives and public service lives and in our

 most personal private lives. This leaves us vulnerable to being exploited and used

against ourselves, because it robs us of our very integrity and

 with it, the ability to simply be part of the souls around us, the people who breathe life

 into everything and make life itself very meaningful.

We end up thinking that the concept of power is really about our ability and our right

 to beat up on another person if we think we have to.

I won’t go too deeply into it but I think most people get what I’m talking about.

But at Beautiful Quitters, there is another concept of power and that is the power to

 make transformations that will unify us as souls and nice people who have much

 important work to do in this life….

So now I want to talk about empathy and how we  become more skilled at it.

Whenever we encounter someone who has been impacted upon in a certain way that

 we just can’t relate to, the first job is to see them as another person who looks much

 like you in many ways and therefore must go through many of the same obstacles in

 life. With that in mind the idea is to see him as yourself and imagine YOU as that

 other… and then the beginning of insight is in process.

With practice we will begin to understand why they behave as they do. Of course the

 understanding is never perfect, because the ways we really are different from one

 another are always pumped up by others who behave as if they are better than us, 

 and then splayed onto our consciousness like ketchup from a shattered glass bottle!

Many of us understand what I mean by the term “one percent”. The wealthiest of the

 world are calling the shots in illegitimate and brutal and divisive ways. 

Mostly the brutality is never felt by the one percent, but if they are also lacking

 in empathy, they have been brutalized too. So we are all affected by their policies,

 political, sociological and cultural.

But my job at Beautiful Quitters is to point out that for the most part, we are strongest

 in the realm of inner freedom,  realizing the power we have over ourselves to gather

 authentic tools to transform ourselves and by extension, our greater world.

So when it comes to overcoming addictions, I say we must gain more than what we will

 lose. And I think that’s great news!

Please contact me at Averayugen@mail.com

China's Smoking Crisis Reflects Growth Model Flows

CHINA’S SMOKING CRISIS BRINGS TOO MANY UNNECESSARY DEATHS 

China is the greatest host of one of the world’s most critical pollution problems: tobacco, tobacco production and consumption.

 

Dr. Zhengming Chen and colleagues report the disturbing results that unless there is concerted and far reaching cessation and prevention efforts, smoking will cause about 20% of all adult male deaths in China during the 2010s, and the yearly number of deaths in China caused by tobacco will rise from about one million in 2010 to two million in 2030 and three million in 2050.

 

Indeed, the control of the smoking and tobacco crisis is urgent not only for the current health crisis in China but also the future general health of China and neighboring countries.

http://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lancet/PIIS0140-6736(15)00452-3.pdf

       

   China’s Smoking Crisis

Mounting use of tobacco products in China reflects the steep rise in discretionary income and suggests a continuing increase in smoking-related deaths and health problems. Smoking began to rise sharply among men in the 1960’s and by 1998 at least 2/3 of adult men smoked cigarettes.

 

But because the sharpest increase in smoking is still nevertheless fairly recent, and because serious health effects from smoking often take decades to emerge, mortality linked to smoking has not yet begun to make a great statistical impact.

 

And wellness pundits correctly predicted that the mortality rate  from lung cancer, emphysema and other smoking related diseases would rise noticeably around 2010, and they were right.  In 1960, tobacco use was calculated to have caused 13 percent of all deaths in men and 3 percent of deaths in women.

http://www.bmj.com/content/317/7170/1411

http://www.prb.org/pdf04/59.2chinaspopnewtrends.pdf

 

And now there is something really new in Beijing…a smoking app and hotline. Yes there really is and you can be photographed on the sly and fined the equivalent of $32 per occasion if you are caught smoking. Yikes!

https://www.techinasia.com/beijing-china-ratting-out-smokers-wechat/

 

But don’t forget, whatever your country of residence, if you would like a compassionate, skilled, donations-only telephone coach, please contact me anytime at Averayugen@mail.com

 

Here's How the Coaching Works

If you are starting to believe that coaching works for struggling smokers, you can send me an email and tell me who you are and what you are planning to do regarding your smoking habit.

 

I can tell you that many assists are possible and that you are the ultimate manager of your own health, but that I am also available to listen to you and talk with you.

 

I can tell you that you would be free to call me at reasonable hours, including possible overnights, and that I would also be willing to call you at your request.

 

When we speak  I will do what I can to get you through your next phase. I will ask you what you are feeling and thinking, and how your nutrition is and your general mood.

            

Then based on what you say and what you feel your needs are I can talk to you about what I know about withstanding your discomfort. I will use my own experience and what I have heard about and read.

 

I will never try to replace your doctor’s advice. I am only interested in supporting your courageous efforts to abstain from smoking until you no longer crave it.

 

And when you are ready for some coaching that works, please contact me at

Averayugen@mail.com

 

1.      Bensays:

October 15, 2015 at 06:57

Hello Avera,

I love what you are doing with this site. Smoking is a terrible addiction and so difficult to quit.

It is commendable what you are doing to help people to stop smoking.

It is a very harmful habit and I think a lot of smokers are not even happy to keep on smoking – but the addiction is so strong, both psychologically and physically that it is extremely difficult to quit.

I hope you succeed with your wish to help anyone wanting to finally stop!

Best wishes,

Ben

REPLY

1.      Avera Yugensays:

October 15, 2015 at 07:02

Hi Ben,
Thank you so much for your kind words. I trust with enough time and work some people will find their way to becoming beautiful quitters through my coaching and encouragement. Then all my efforts will have been worthwhile. It is am amazing adventure working up to that point!
Again I appreciate your positive input, and I wish you well in all your endeavors…
Warmly,
Avera

REPLY

1.      Garysays:

September 12, 2015 at 04:13

Wow! I can see how your help can be a powerful boost for anyone trying to quit smoking.

It’s hard to know what will trigger the desire to smoke. You’re help could be just the thing to get through another smoke-free day.

I believe my brother uses smoking to deal with emotional issues and to regulate his moods. Just Having you to talk to could make all the difference for him. He smokes two packs a day and knows smoking is going to kill him if he doesn’t stop, but he just can’t seem to quit.

I’m emailing your info to him and hopefully he’ll be in touch.

Thanks so much for this priceless service.

REPLY

1.      Avera Yugensays:

September 12, 2015 at 04:14

You are more than welcome…both of you!

REPLY

1.      Tanyasays:

September 1, 2015 at 06:27

This is an excellent service you provide here. I am a smoker myself… I have talked and talked and talked about quitting but I know you have to really want to quit to do it. I will bookmark your site for when that time is right… just in case I need someone to talk me through it. Love it! I will be sharing this page as well.

REPLY

1.      Avera Yugensays:

September 1, 2015 at 20:15

Hi Tanya,
Thank you soooo much for that. Please keep me posted of your progress and I hope your travels will never be alone!
You are the BEST!!
Warmly,
Avera