Archangel Raphael Channeled through Diana Henderson August 6, 2001

It is Archangel Raphael who speaks to you tonight, and I come because the question is one involving healing. You ask about addictions, their cause, and express a need for understanding and healing them. First and foremost, addiction—no matter the form—is always an escape from life. It is not an embracing of life, and those who are addicted cannot always see this. Some feel or say that when they are in the midst of their addiction they feel most alive. Yet, the feeling they are actually having is not one of being truly alive; it is not embracing life; it is embracing fear; it is embracing escape, and that escape stems from fear.

It is a malady of the heart and the soul. When we say of the heart, we mean it is associated with some deep-seated grief, sadness or wounding within the individual. And when we say it is associated with the soul, it is also often not only a relation to this life—although its roots certainly can be traced in most cases to events or circumstances within this life—but it is also in most cases connected to another lifetime, to another incarnation, and to a karmic situation that is being played out or avoided. For some, it will involve a different lifetime in which a great deal of karmic debt was accrued, and therefore in this life a large task was laid before the soul, before the individual. Part of the task generally—not always but in most cases—involved the link between another person in the former life who carries over into this life, usually as a family member, who challenges the karmic debt to be paid by manifesting their own negative or addictive behavior, and evokes the same behavior or another negative or addictive behavior on the part of the individual in question.

In such a case, the person who has been drawn into the addiction can choose to avoid the addiction, forgive himself or herself and therefore release the karmic debt. Forgiveness is the key to this; love is the key. That is the only way to end the cycle and the addiction.

But if one's soul is unwilling for whatever reason, usually the soul does not realize its unwillingness. This person would say it is incapability rather than unwillingness; however, it is in fact unwillingness on the part of this individual. Therefore, the individual chooses to exhibit the addictive behavior. Some addictions are small, but most are not, and all are escapes—escapes from finding the truth, facing oneself, learning and growing and releasing oneself as well as the other from the karmic debt.

It is a difficult path to choose, but even this path may have its end. There is always the choice and always the ability to break the cycle and break the addiction. Even when one has already become addicted, one can learn to love and by so doing defeat the addiction. If one truly loves oneself, one embraces life, and if one embraces life, one defeats addiction, for it is the opposite of life. Always there is a choice. A great healing can be done if you open to it in the form of forgiving and loving yourself and the other involved in this karma. This is the only true healing. It is the way to heal an addiction; it is the way to heal anything. Love.

I surround you with the Light. To all who have felt the call of addiction, all who have felt the need for escape, all who have sought to feel something other than the joy of life, I send you Love; I surround you with Light, and I offer you the power, the Love, the healing that you need to step off the path of addiction and onto the path of Love for self and for life. You are invited into joy, and once you truly begin to live, you will understand that addiction is not life; it is the opposite of life. And once you Live, it will become easier not to go back to the place where you need to escape life. It will become easier. You think it will be harder each day; it will be easier each day once you learn to Love. But unless you learn to love, truly love yourself and embrace life, there is no way to completely end addiction.

I offer you the power now, and it is simple: Accept Love into you heart, feel it, be it, live it; know it; honor it. Once you do this, you are free—free from the chains of addiction. You may take as many steps as you want on whatever path, but only love of self, of life—only Love—will make that final step possible and complete and allow the addiction to leave you forever.

Feel the energies of Love; feel the energies of Light, of the Creator; feel the Light and the Love and the Oneness of God. We understand that in the height of your addiction you cannot feel. You are closed to feeling as you are closed to living. But even in that place you can make a choice to open. You can take a leap of faith and change your life and open to love. And when it happens, there is no turning back; the addict fears this, but the soul yearns for it. Let the soul guide you. Let the body and the mind give up the control to the soul; the spirit will guide you into Light and into Love. We send you love—all in this predicament, all who are in this state and all who are past it and all who have not experienced it in this incarnation. No matter what state you are in, we love you. We send you Love and Light. The Divine in all forms is with you. And so it is. And I am Raphael.

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