Introduction

This is a small book, less than 30 A4 pages, designed to help you escape the tyranny of the tobacco plant. It is designed to be read through in the order that the chapters are presented, but feel free to extemporize, you are unique after all, and I have no idea what you do, and do not, already know.

Because so many people are have been addicted to cigarettes there is a lot of published literature on the subject of giving up, and, because so many people still are addicted, the total will, in all likelyhood, continue to increase for some time yet. Most, if not all the people who have written these books and articles have been honestly seeking your welfare and most of this literature can be read in conjunction with this book. After all, if you were studying birds, insects, or any other science, you would expect to read many books about your chosen subject not just one, and to a certain extent the same applies to giving up smoking. Many people have positive useful insights to offer and you will learn different amounts from different books depending on who you are.

Unfortunately there are also a number of books and physical solutions being offered that probably will not work, instant 7 day cures, magic pills and subliminal tapes are all unlikely to work for most people, if they did there would be very few smokers left in the world by now. This book, as far as I know is different to many other books on this subject in that it deals entirely with mental aspects of addiction, and with those from a different perspective than most. This book is really an introduction to a new way of managing your mental life, a way that has links to many other self-help-type books, but which has a different basis in its fundamental understandings of what the mind is and how it works.

There are many recurring themes that run through this work and I will stress certain fundamental ideas a number of times.

This book is not really about ends, rather it is all about beginnings and means. Within a given human life the ends are only arbitrary points we chose to call ends, but they are not really ends, they are only points along a journey, whereas the means are continuous and far more important. It stems from some deep understandings that maintain that 'processes are more important than results', 'creation is better than possession' and that life is an ongoing journey, there is no end, no time to sit on our laurels and say, "That's it I've made it", each "I've made it" is only one more step on the way.