Religions > Atheism > Our recovery program always has the final say when it comes to our peace. We can always have hope for the future, but for success, we must accept how things are in the here and now. As the famous late Buddhist lecturer Alan Watts said, "It is not wha
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Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"V" |
| Date: |
01 Oct 2007 10:48:59 PM |
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Our recovery program always has the final say when it comes to our peace. We can always have hope for the future, but for success, we must accept how things are in the here and now. As the famous late Buddhist lecturer Alan Watts said, "It is not wha |
Read about someone that has been going though tough times with
relocating some horses she owns and can't look after them properly.
She has posted about it a few times and I can see how these horses are
robbing her of any hopes of peace in her life. Sometimes we get
involved in something and it becomes apparent that we have gotten in
over our heads. Some of these things cannot be undone easily or
quickly. In such cases all we can do is to do our footwork within our
personal and program limits to repair the damage and learn from our
mistakes to avoid them in the future. This experiential education is
the best way to learn that all our actions have consequences and that
many of these actions are producing consequences that rob us of inner
peace.
Once we get on track with this type of peace awareness we can ask the
question of what we can comfortably have in our lives and what we
cannot comfortably have. When I mentioned this "comfort" factor one
time, a fellow on a Debtors Anonymous list piped up to argue, "Hell,
it is comfortable for me to not pay the bills and lounge around all
day." Another fellow on an AA list laughed at me and said, "If I want
to make myself comfortable I'll just pick up a bottle." This is not
what I mean. To perpetuate more sickness by making yourself
"artificially" comfortable through drugs, alcohol, debt or fat will
ultimately make you more uncomfortable down the road. To define this
comfort quotient in clearer terms, define it as what you can
abstinently, soberly, solvently and peacefully have in your life on a
sustainable basis. The concept of "comfortable sustainability" is very
important for the addict to realize.
This is how we build real self worth by making amends, repairing the
damage and continuing to live our new life "right size" as the 12 and
12 mentions on pages 122-125 . Once we do this, we will have the
possibility to find inner peace in our lives. For me it took more than
a decade to change my life so peace could be found again. From the
position of an impartial observer I can see many peace busters in the
lives in the various stories I read online. Being mindful of who and
what destroys our peace can be a very good practice for the addict to
develop. Finding peace is very important if we ever want to let go of
our addictions. Without coming to a place of peace with addictions, we
are always in the white knuckle category and hanging on by a thread.
Once we have this clarity of thinking we can start to evaluate
circumstances the best we can as to their peace destroying qualities
and we can then start to choose how we "spend" our peace.
The biggest effect on my addictive impulses throughout the day, as to
whether they take shape or not, is the condition of my internal peace.
If my peace and serenity becomes lost, then these impulses start to
take on more important forms. This is how I balance working 8 - 12
step programs - I put peace first. Now, only a blissninny would claim
to being peaceful 100% of the time, although who knows, maybe there is
such a creature in the world? Personally, I am at peace about 80% to
90% of the time in my life *if* I work a good program and when I do
not work a good program then my peace declines to almost nil. The
following quote is a good reminder that as human beings we all come
under natural law and we all have limits that are personal and fit
each of us uniquely. (Quote used with permission)
"I have a brother who: is married, has 4 children, has a full-time
medical practice, and has been going half-time to law school, all at
the SAME TIME. Now, there is a guy who is high cap. I am not he, I
never will be, I may as well get used to it right now. What he can
do, has nothing to do with what I can do.
I'm a sensitive person, an artist, introverted. I cannot go from one
activity or noisy session with people, to the next, and the next,
with no downtime. I become frazzled, unhappy, and fragmented. This
is a fact.
It is at those times when, frazzled, worn down from trying to be
high cap, I spend $ or eat in order to give myself more energy to
carry
on, or to try to keep up with the high cap people, or to just soothe
my pain."
Contemplative time or meditation time or down time or relaxation time
is very important to fostering peace in our lives as this person is
starting to realize. A lot of the addicts I read about live lives of
constant doing and running with no time for such useless things as
sitting around to relax or meditate. Workaholics usually put little
time in self actualization. They may think that workaholism provides
all the financial benefits they need to live a happy and fulfilled
life, but while putting all effort in this one area they are bankrupt
with the area of their inner peace and contemplative needs. When we
are not self aware of our real needs it is the same as not having
controls in our car that tell us the internal condition of what is
going on. Without writing a book on the benefits of relaxation or
meditation let me tell you of two immediate positive effects such a
practice will have for you when you invest some time in yourself.
First, relaxation or meditation will give your body some time to
dissipate all the stress chemicals you have been producing in over
abundance. Adrenal steroids (cortisol) secreted when a person is under
stress reach the brain and over time can affect the very structure of
the brain. We also produce cortisol from any other stressors the body
perceives, whether it is physical stress, such as a sickness, injury,
surgery, or temperature extremes as well as psychological stress that
we and the world put on us. Each of us has produces a different amount
of these chemicals and has a different sensitivity to them and this
might be the missing link as to a part of the question as to why some
of us are high capacity and other lower capacity with how we each
produce and react to these stress chemicals differently. Second, you
will have some quiet time to not only quiet your brain but to take a
personal accounting of the direction your are going in and what needs
to be changed in order for you to get a new life. You will finally be
getting some feedback from your internal instruments that have been
out of commission for so long do to your excessive busyness. You see,
12 steps or not, we all have to answer to natural law. Within the
boundaries of natural law is where stress chemicals come from within
us and as addicts I believe we are super sensitized to these chemicals
and we seek relief though our various addictions. If I ignore natural
law and force my will over my comfortable abilities, then I would not
have much success with my recovery efforts.
In my old life, peace used to be very elusive, really it was
nonexistent, but once I started changing the direction of my life I
could get a taste of how this restructuring was changing things when
it came to finding inner peace. It is a funny thing with most of us.
We find no peace or happiness and think our problem is not having
enough complexities and sickness so we lump on some more problems on
our backs and when that doesn't fix things we dig our hole even
deeper. It never occurs to us to change directions and start removing
complexities and headaches from our lives? But, once we get a taste
for something that really works we can have faith in our recovery
efforts and then we can work calmly with the thought that someday our
efforts will pay off as we will be enjoying a new life. It all starts
by taking one step in the other direction that we have been going all
our lives.
I don't know if the lady with the horses will find a new owner of not,
but hopefully she can let them go in peace if she has to and realize
that this desire to own them does not seem compatible with fostering
peace within her - at least for now. Ultimately, the person, place or
thing itself will always be the final judge as to what we can
comfortably have or not have in our life and our recovery program ...
as long as we are open to listening to the truth. Always remember,
what we think or anyone else thinks about an issue means very little -
but what our program thinks about it means everything to us. Our
recovery program always has the final say when it comes to our peace.
We can always have hope for the future, but for success, we must
accept how things are in the here and now. As the famous late Buddhist
lecturer Alan Watts said, "It is not what you think, it is not what
you hope ... but what IS."
(This is an abridged version of this post, the original is 6 pages
long and discusses attachment, finding peace with compulsive spending,
overeating and sex addiction. If you wish a copy of it write me
direct.)
Take Care,
V (Male)
Agnostic Freethinker
Practical Philosopher
For free access to my earlier posts on voluntary simplicity,
compulsive spending, debting, compulsive overeating and clutter write:
vfr44@aol.com. Any opinion expressed here is that of my own and is not
the opinion, recommendation or belief of any group or organization.
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| User: "The Rev Dr. Hugh Jarse NLAHN." |
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| Title: Re: Our recovery program always has the final say when it comes to our peace. We can always have hope for the future, but for success, we must accept how things are in the here and now. As the famous late Buddhist lecturer Alan Watts said, "It is not |
02 Oct 2007 03:31:50 AM |
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You are the one with the problem, V. Take it to somebody whose job it
is to deal with it.
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| User: "Olrik" |
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| Title: Re: Our recovery program always has the final say when it comes to our peace. We can always have hope for the future, but for success, we must accept how things are in the here and now. As the famous late Buddhist lecturer Alan Watts said, "It is not |
02 Oct 2007 10:56:28 PM |
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On Oct 2, 4:31 am, "The Rev Dr. Hugh Jarse NLAHN."
<hugh.ja...@heathens.org.uk> wrote:
You are the one with the problem, V. Take it to somebody whose job it
is to deal with it.
He does. His name is Jack Daniels.
Olrik
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