Monday, January 1, 2018

Can't Solve The Problem With The Problem


       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

14 comments:

  1. On Desire and Delight (The Hidden Gospel Spiritual Message of Aramaic Jesus; Neil Douglas Klotz)
    As we proceed on paths of live, we also run into the energy of passionate desire.Aramaic has two words that give another view. (Jesus spoke Aramaic)
    We saw the first word for Desire in the fourth line of the Lord's Prayer "let Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." "Will" or "sebyana" can also mean Desire, delight or wish. It's roots point to something that swells and rises, follows a certain harmony, and moves in a large crowd or a host of stars. This force unites wave and particle realities. It exemplifies the harmony of the cosmic spheres, which move in their appointed course simply because it is their deepest purpose and delight to do so. We might not even call this a type of love, except it expresses the deepest calling of our being when we are in tune with the cosmos. When Jesus says "Thy will be done" in Gethsemane", he asks that this power of desire support him. Other ways to hear this phrase can be: "Let your delight be, Your desire be, Your whole unfolding harmony be and move through me, as individual as a moment of pleasure, as cosmic as my place in the stars."
    There maybe no more powerful prayer. With either of previous types of love, we may still maintain the illusion of control. Not so here. This desire-power fuels Yeshua"s (Jesus') healing work.... A man with a skin disease says to him "if you are willing, you can cleanse me." Jesus responds "Saba ana!" or I have the desire-power: it is in tune with heaven and earth." Conversely, in the Aramaic version, the guests who decline the wedding invitation to dinner with Yeshua's parable reportedly have no "sebyana."

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    1. ...The other word for Desire "eshkah", is imported from old Hebrew, and as a verb is usually translated "find." In the Song of Songs, the corresponding Hebrew word points to a force of passionate and erotic desire. ....Eshkah can also mean invert, discover and recover. The roots imply an embodied form of sacred heat or fire, a force that regenerates nature in each season. For instance when Jesus says he has not "found" greater faith than the centurion, this word reminds one that nothing can happen or be found without the universe's heat and fire behind it."...

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    2. ...continues KJV "I am the way, the truth and the life." This can mean a path or manner of living and is related by root to the type of light called "nur" ... with Aramaic ears we might hear (Yeshua's words) as:
      "Subtle and delicate is the door that lets us float between worlds, over our boundaries and beyond. Compelling and urgent is the way that shows the light connecting us with the energy of the cosmos. It is not a way for the faint-hearted, for those who do not use their full inner fire if passionate desire to find it."

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    3. Spiritual Being Thanks so much for your comments...Armand

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    4. Hallo an alle diesen Artikel lesen 1 nur wollen, Informationen an Sie weitergeben , dass dieser Artikel liest, wenn Sie Schwierigkeiten in Ihrer Beziehung konfrontiert sind, ist hier, was Sie tun wird Frieden zu Ihnen nach Hause wiederherstellen, da 1 es versucht und es für mich arbeiten? deshalb 1'm die Informationen falls jemand vorbei ähnliches Problem wie zu brechen, die Folgen mit ihrem Mann, was auch immer es kann nur Dr. Uduebho Tempel wenden und es wird das Problem beheben zu und Sie werden wieder in Ihrer Beziehung glücklich sein. Sie erreichen ihn jetzt über: (uduebhotemple@gmail.com).

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  2. What a great way to begin 2018 with a reminder of the problem, what does and doesn't work, and why it does or doesn't work. My body doesn't absorb alcohol like normal people. My mind will trick me into believing I can control my life on its own. But several decades of proof told me otherwise and I still didn't do anything about it. It was only when God opened my eyes when I was ready to see what I've become. That is Grace.

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    1. jim not only must our thought process be transformed but that which powers the thought process must change. The 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous brings us to the necessary reality for us. Going forward my thoughts will be propelled by the will of God...Thank you...Armand

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  3. Well said my brother, for no one is capable of willing away their own will and truth be told, we have no desire to do so. From the very beginning of our earthly journey we instinctively turn to full throttle fits of rage until our demands are met, our bellies are full and a freshly powered diaper is wrapped around our bottoms... Some of us have been fortunate in our upbringing and are lovingly given healthy boundaries. Some of us have been raised by wolves.... But with the help of God, all can recover if they have the capacity to be honest.

    But, I chose my own way, made my own plans and justified my excesses with nonsensical arguments that could only have been birthed in the dark dank cellar of a self-deluded mind. Life finally became a desperate race for any elixir to numb the pain of a journey with no meaning and a future destination too terrifying to contemplate. Alcohol became both vehicle and fuel for my afterburner fired journey through the gates of a living Hell... Yet, when all hope was lost, when death became the only frighteningly attractive option left, an Unseen Hand reached out from eternity and in the rarest moment of sanity, I cried out in desperation and remorse to that same God I had ignored and abandoned for most all of my life.

    And, In that very instant, in that very place, I discovered that like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz the "ruby slippers" had been available all along. I simply chose to ignore them. The 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous are in a very real sense the "ruby slippers" of a Loving God's personal invitation to that radical change that finally brings us home. Today, I have no need to fear the future nor regret the past for I am convinced that He is more than able and faithful to complete the good work He has begun in me and all who humbly seek His face just one day at a time, every day of our lives, until we meet Him face to face.

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    1. A Gratefully Recovering Alcoholic the surrender that must occur for each alcoholic if they are to be recovered is to subrogate our human will to the will of God...Thank you...Armand

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  4. When AA was completing its first decade, Army fielded one of the great football teams of that era. Two All-Americans ran the football. They were known as Mr. Inside and Mr. Outside. Together, they had it all covered. Many years later I realized that I lived my life as a Mr. Outside only. My outsides would run my life until my time ran out. I was thirty years old and that was my future. It never occurred to me that Mr. Inside was missing in action. It took the merciless misssministrations of alcohol to force me to concede to Mr.Inside that I needed a game plan by which to live. That concession was the first time I sensed that there was a way to me powered by a Greater Power Within me. A hard concept to understand until it is thoroughly explained as is done in this post. The solution is within me and only The Twelve Steps of Recovery can take me there. I can't ever fix the broken hammer with the hammer that's broken. Only Mr. Inside can find Mr. Inside.

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    1. michael great analogy...Thank you...Armand

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    2. The poetic, soulful Beingness of us is maybe the "Mr. inside." It's where we connect in the light of intelligence, forgiveness and love. It's compassion. AA and steps seem like a big composting process. My inner experience mined for the precious gems it contains.

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    3. Spiritual Being Thanks for the insight...Armand

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  5. Hallo an alle diesen Artikel lesen 1 nur wollen, Informationen an Sie weitergeben , dass dieser Artikel liest, wenn Sie Schwierigkeiten in Ihrer Beziehung konfrontiert sind, ist hier, was Sie tun wird Frieden zu Ihnen nach Hause wiederherstellen, da 1 es versucht und es für mich arbeiten? deshalb 1'm die Informationen falls jemand vorbei ähnliches Problem wie zu brechen, die Folgen mit ihrem Mann, was auch immer es kann nur Dr. Uduebho Tempel wenden und es wird das Problem beheben zu und Sie werden wieder in Ihrer Beziehung glücklich sein. Sie erreichen ihn jetzt über: (uduebhotemple@gmail.com).

    ReplyDelete