Our lives were lived to constantly fuel and satisfy our desires. We protected our instincts that were warped by fear and self-absorption. We lived our lives in defiance wrapped around our own self-centeredness - with extreme sensitivity and grandiosity. Our nature could never initiate or sustain true, honest relations with other human beings. We were forever searching outside of ourselves, completely unaware that the solution to our problem lay within. These lives we lived, fueled by fear and insatiable desires to appease our human instincts, became so anxiety-filled that we increasingly sought escape as a way to experience ease and comfort within. We were a contradiction unto ourselves.
As for myself, the escape was the increasing use of alcohol that led to addiction. I sought control over my addiction yet to no avail. This inability to control created a series of very negative consequences in my life. I was driven by a self-will that knew no boundaries. I constantly attempted to fix the problem with my own internal drive. I was trying to solve my problem with my problem. We cannot ever solve the problem with the problem.
I was unaware of the uniqueness of the disease in that it is a two-fold one. We have a physical allergy, which ensures that each and every time we put the substance(s) into our system we will get sick, drunk/high, and into all kinds of trouble. But, more importantly, we have a mental obsession which ensures that even though we don't want to drink or use or behave in such a way our disease wants us to. Sooner or later our minds will tell us it's ok. We will satiate our desires, we will trigger the physical allergy and we will ultimately succumb to the hand of addiction. Time after time, using our minds to create a way to control our disease and always failing to do so is proof to us that we can't solve the problem with the problem.
The solution to our problem with alcohol, with drugs, and with every problem borne from our defective, ill nature is a relationship with God. Through a vital spiritual experience which we temper and enlighten with prayer and meditation we foster such a relationship. The experience occurs in our lives when the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous are integrated into it. We practice the steps in such a way that they become our lives so that the problem will be solved.
Written by Armand
Self-centeredness, the insatiable desire to do whatever my unwell mind demanded at every moment landed me in a mental penetentiary with me as the jailkeeper. I kept myself in solitary confinement and alcohol was the only visitor I wanted. My mind told me I was "free" to do whatever I chose, that defiance was my right. I was imprisoned without surrendering. The true problem was the problem-solver. AA gave me first hope that there was another way. The Steps took me to the solution you describe - The Power Within me required mindlessness and the trust to follow His Will for me and not mine. As a result, my life has changed beyond measure. My inner nature for which I had been yearning has been awakened by The Powet Within whom I located by incorporating The Twelve Steps into my daily living. For me, there was and is no other way. The problem can be solved only by The Solution - exactly as you described.
ReplyDeleteMichael love that "my true problem was the problem solver." Until our thought process is surrendered to the will of God, we are playing AA, not living AA...Thank you...Armand
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