Question: I have been working with the non-resistant approach to a troubling habit. As I work, it seems that every time temptation attacks, it lasts for shorter durations of time and doesn’t attack as often. Will the temptation eventually cease attacking altogether?

Answer: All things move through life, and through us, in a kind of special bell curve with predictable durations. Temptations will have times of being easy to disavow, and then turn around and be, seemingly surprisingly, almost impossible to handle. All this is to say that yes, the “attacking” forces will diminish if not fed, but stay awake and don’t fall prey to the idea that you are now “stronger” than the habit. The only real way to be free of any problem is to outgrow the self that finds some value in it. While the following ideas aren’t the whole answer, within them is some higher help you may use to win this inner war: Bad habits have the hold they do, in part, because when we challenge their right to wreck our lives, their “response” is suddenly to seem more powerful. The key here is that this habit has not grown stronger in these moments, only that we have become more conscious of its dictatorship. This new awareness is the seed of our gaining the strength we need to overthrow this tyrant. For when we are tired enough of living beneath its dark domination, we will drop both this habit and the defeat it engenders.