My 4 poisons of escape

In my Buddhist journey, I've done a good job with greed and anger. I'm not very materialistic. I don't get angry or offended easily.

But that doesn't mean I don't get caught. And my biggest way of getting caught is to look for escape.  These are my 4 poisons and the color coding I give to them.

Green poison; chess. Other mindless habits, like netflix?

Red poison; sexual and sensual desires, sometimes food

Blue poison; grandiosity

Black poison; escape

These aren't mutually exclusive. For example, I often have Green+Black together.

I'm pretty good at seeing the poisons. But that doesn't stop.me from taking them. It's like part of me is craving numbing out. And I get convinced to numb out.

I no longer trick myself into pretending these aren't poisons. I used to say that sex is natural. Yes, the urge is natural. But the indulgence in it needs to be skillful and careful. Not wishful thinking. Not heedless and making a mess. I used to say grandiosity was necessary, to dream big. Grandiosity can be helpful, sometimes. But the helpfulness is just a small part; the majority is "if only" thinking.

The antidotes to poison are where I should be focusing. Pleasures not of the flesh and skillful pleasures, like Jhana as tuaght by Ajahn Geoff. Or Metta meditation and practice. Or the looking at drawbacks.

The biggest impediment to abandoning the poisons is my impatience. It's like junk food. Yummy and filling in an immediate way. You pay for it later, or it's empty calories. And it crowds out other more skillful things, and habituated oneself to crave the unskillful things.

I've given up Junk Food sex. There, I had a long list of messes that sex created that I felt I needed to clean up. But I haven't given up Junk Food escape. Or junk food mindlessness. Those are solo affairs, so my desire to not get entangled with others (helpful in those cases) doesn't work with solo cases. Or, I should be more precise: it doesn't work reliably enough. It works sometimes. Like right now I had an urge to Netflix or watch porn, and instead I am recollecting Dhamma and writing this post.  But I am fairly certain I will succumb a few times this week. Escape, escape, escape... A dangerous friend. (Which is not actually your friend)