Addiction as an Ersatz Religion

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“Break on through to the other side. Break on through, break on through, break on through to the other side.” These lyrics from a Jim Morrison (and The Doors) song are so compelling to me in part because I always hear the intense musical rhythm that accompanied the words. And I think these lyrics express a deep hunger of the human heart, a hunger to “break on through to the other side” and experience another dimension of life that that often teases us. Unfortunately, I think Jim succeeded in this quest literally as he died of a drug overdose in the prime of a brilliant career. The metaphorical, or verbal, or spiritual “breaking on through” is the route to take.

I do think this hunger can be fatal if not approached in a spiritual framework. From my clinical work and from my personal life I feel that addiction, for example, can be seen as an ersatz religion, a contrivance that has been fashioned to cope with the abyss of this primal hunger. Kierkegaard noted that in the abyss one is apt to glom onto any “flotsam and jetsam” that happens to be nearby and once one has “glommed onto” something, it is let go of at great peril—the very abyss it was chosen to replace in the first place.

The Bible has lots of verses which reference this hunger and I think they are relevant to this urge to “break on through to the other side.” For example, “Blessed are those that hunger and thirst after righteousness.” Or, “My soul followeth hard after Thee, O Lord.” Or, “As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so my soul panteth after thee O Lord.”

These writers were feeling the anguish of addiction, that deeply spiritual urge, and for some reason or other they used words to cope with those emotions, sublimating their hunger with articulation. (And I don’t think it is happenstance that in the Judeo-Christian tradition God is presented as “The Word.”) There is an incredible difference between the unmitigated, non-verbal (and therefore behavioral) experience of being an addict and the humble statement, “I am an addict.” This is the kernel of the success of the 12-step movement.

Now I’ve always had this hunger. And in my youth I cloaked it in traditional religious garb and sought to make myself “special” as…more or less, for lack of a better term…a “holy man.” But religious clothing or personae is deadly as it appears to assuage the ravaging hunger but is often merely the above referenced “flotsam and jetsam”. I now see that hunger of mine as merely a simple refusal of the “fig leaf” that culture offers each of us. And, yes, it is tempting to let that itself cater to my need for being “special” but I just can’t take that bait any longer. I don’t accept artifice as readily as I used to. Yes, I am “special” but in the very same way that you are, and that my beloved dachshunds are, and those who I don’t like are, and even those who don’t like “literarylew” are! All of us, and the whole world, is an expression of the Divine and that Divine is always seeking recognition and finds it when we merely, humbly accept our human-ness. When we do this, and to the degree we do this, the Word has been made flesh. But all we get out of this is the simplicity of day to day life, of “chopping word and carrying water.” Beware of that tempting “specialness” as it springs from the pits of hell. Remember the Christian doctrine of kenosis, that God “humbled himself” and took on flesh.

And here is an afterthought, relevant to addiction, from the always astute Marianne Williamson:

If there is something you want really badly, and you think obsessively about getting it, then know that on an energetic level your attachment is actually sending it away. The answer? Prayer. ‘Dear God, take away my idolatrous thinking, luring me into thinking that something or someone other than You is the source of my salvation.’

 

Living in the Past must be Past

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It is so easy to live in the past, our life story being a litany of the various misfortunes that have fallen our way. And no doubt there are misfortunes and worse, the Shakespearean “thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to.” But at some point we have to make an effort to let it all go and accept responsibility for our life, to live in the moment and recognize that we can make choices in the present that can mitigate if not eliminate the impact of past experiences. And I admit that I feel it is mostly going to be “mitigation” rather than elimination. Read what Marianne Williamson said last week on a Facebook post re this subject:

There is nothing about your past that determines who you are in the present, unless you yourself choose to drag the past with you. That is why the Light — our connection to God, Christ, Buddha, by whatever name we call it — is our salvation: it’s the eternal remembrance of who we really are, unencumbered by any false beliefs within ourselves or others. Now, in this moment, you are who you have always been and will always be. All spiritual practice — forgiveness, meditation and prayer — is for the purpose of training the mind to see through the illusions of a world that would convince you otherwise.

And then, of course, Shakespeare always has wisdom to offer on everything. Here Macbeth wonders why a physician cannot purge the mind of Lady Macbeth of the demons that haunt her, only to be informed that ultimately only the individual can do that:

Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased,
Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow,
Raze out the written troubles of the brain
And with some sweet oblivious antidote
Cleanse the stuff’d bosom of that perilous stuf
Which weighs upon the heart?

The Doctor responded, “Therein the patient must minister to herself.”

The “Shame-hole” of Self Awareness

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Last week Rachel Maddow used a line that grabbed me, referring to the “shame-hole of critical self assessment.” She was discoursing about the difficulty that people have in “self” assessing, in employing meta-cognition and becoming “self” aware. This ability to become self aware is the gift of our forebrain, a gift which we all have but one which is often not utilized. I have heard political commentators note in the recent election that most people do not use this forebrain and vote on the basis of reason but on the basis of emotion which means that astute politicians will always appeal first to emotion.

But I want to focus on that “shame-hole.” Wow! What a notion that is. And from my own personal experience it is so powerful to suddenly be made “self” aware, to be confronted with reality, and forced to realize that how one perceived the world was not how the world actually is. In other words, in involves accepting the notion, “I was wrong or in error. I screwed up.” This is the famous Rick Perry “Oops” moment. (And by the way, I admire him for having the temerity to offer that honest assessment, which will inevitably end up on his tombstone!)

Shame is such a powerful experience and our fear of it keeps us from dealing with reality. We prefer to keep our head buried in the sand, to remain in the comfort of those “well-worn words and ready phrases that build comfortable walls against the wilderness.” (Conrad Aiken). As T.S. Eliot noted, “Human kind cannot bear very much reality.”

One other thought, shame “hole” brings to my mind “black hole” and I think the two notions are related. The black hole evokes terror with all of us but no more that raw, unmitigated experience of shame. I think that is what Edvard Munch’s “The Scream” was about.

 

Things for which I am Grateful on this Thanksgiving Day

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Its Thanksgiving in my country, a holiday on which we historically give thanks for the bounty that we have been afforded. And in the past year I have learned the value of a daily “thanksgiving”, paying attention to the little things in my life which I have so often taken for granted—the very breath of life, my health, my education, my material comfort, my sweet wife, loving siblings and friends, two lovely puppies who daily teach me about  God’s love.

And I’m grateful for waking again this morning to a beautiful world, one which features “puppies and flowers all over the place” once again. I’m grateful for living in a country with a political process which, though ragged and rugged so often, appears to steadily make progress and even now is showing signs of being willing to work through the political gridlock. I’m grateful for people like Steven Spielberg and Tony Kushner who can produce marvelous movies like “LINCOLN” when movies featuring car chases, explosions, and gratuitous violence would more readily make money. I’m grateful for the wonderful technological advances my life has seen, now including the internet and its blog-o-sphere on which I have met many wonderful kindred spirits from all corners of the world, people to whom I have been able to say so often, “Winds of thought blow magniloquent meanings betwixt me and thee.”

And most of all I’m grateful for the gift of Faith. I used to think my faith was something that made me special, something that God had basically wielded upon me through the means of time and space, and something which I could wear like a suit of clothes of which I was very proud. I no longer see it that way at all. My Faith is a mystery and how and why I have this “gift” I can’t really explain and make no effort to. I’m just grateful for it. Meaningless, despair, even nihilism always beckons to a mind that works like mine but I’ve never succumbed to those siren calls. For some reason I have faith and I am so grateful.

Let me close with a simple observation from my beloved, dear friend and kindred spirit W. H. Auden:

In the desert of my heart,
Let the healing fountain start.
In this prison of my days,
Teach this free man how to praise.

Action vs Reaction?

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Here is a marvelous poem by a contemporary theologian who understands “working out your own salvation with fear and trembling,” describing it as creating “a clearing in the dense forest of our life…” This is such a powerful image as most of our lives are often such a “dense forest” and creating any space in that wilderness is challenging.

Do not try to save
the whole world
or do anything grandiose.
Instead, create
a clearing
in the dense forest
of your life
and wait there
patiently,
until the song
that is yours alone to sing
falls into your open cupped hands
and you recognize and greet it.
Only then will you know
how to give yourself
to this world so worthy of rescue.
(Martha Postlethwaite)

And the notion of “waiting for our song” brought to mind the wisdom of William Butler Yeats:

O God, guard me from those thoughts
Men think in the mind alone.
He who sings a lasting song
Must think in the marrow bone.

(note:  Postlethwaite poem was cited by Blue Eyed Ennis blog recently.)

Embracing Internal Contradictions

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We are such complicated creatures, replete with hypocrisies, contradictions, dishonesties…and virtues! Add them all up and we are reduced to mere be-ing. We simply are. We have the gift of life and have that gift for just a brief moment. Yes, it often appears to be merely a “tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury signifying nothing” but even the author of that pithy observation (Shakespeare) reflects in the whole of his writing that our paltry efforts reflect value, quality.

The clinical term for this myriad of contradictions is “ambivalence.” Learning to acknowledge and even experience the torment of this ambivalence is one of the most critical lessons in life. It is always so tempting to not take this spiritual adventure and cling to the dogmas of our youth. But we yield to this temptation at the peril of our own soul.

Someone said…and it might have been Karl Jung…that one step toward maturity is when we can learn to tolerate in our heart these ambivalences, to embrace the presence of impulses and presences that are mutually exclusive. Read the following poem by May Sarton:

The Angels And The Furies

1
Have you not wounded yourself
And battered those you love
By sudden motions of evil
Black rage in the blood
When the soul premier danseur
Springs towards a murderous fall ?
The furies possess you.

2
Have you not surprised yourself
Sometimes by sudden motions
Or intimations of goodness
When the soul premier danseur
Perfectly poised
Could shower blessings
With a graceful turn of the head ?
The angels are there.

3
The angels, the furies
Are never far away
While we dance, we dance,
Trying to keep a balance,
To be perfectly human
(Not perfect, never perfect,
Never an end to growth and peril),
Able to bless and forgive
Ourselves.
This is what is asked of us.

4
It is the light that matters,
The light of understanding.
Who has ever reached it
Who has not met the furies again and again:
Who has reached it without
Those sudden acts of grace?

(This poem was shared weeks ago on the blog by Blue Eyed Ennis.)

Pupplies and Flowers all Over the Place

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It was decades ago when a young tyke’s mother shared these words that her son had just recently spun together. I was just stunned as the image was so compelling and this was made even more so by the fact that the lad was no more than three or four years old at most.

This child’s world was still pristine and on a particular morning he had awakened to an intense awareness of the world’s beauty, later describing it to his mother as “puppies and flowers all over the place.” Now when I heard these words, I had long-since been jaded into submission by my culture but these words were evocative, they were “words fitly spoken” and they reached into my heart. They still do today and I have a hunch they will do the same with some of my readers.

I can faintly recall some of that pristine beauty of the world but only faintly. Very faintly. I think that very early on I had that beauty taken from me; or, to be honest, I willingly abdicated and opted to imbibe of the “well-words and ready phrases that built comfortable walls against the wilderness” that my world offered. It is always easier to do that than to maintain one’s reality, stick to an inherent virtue, and be true to one ’s self.

And look what that kid was doing that morning. He was having an intense, subjective moment and he was able to capture it and put it into words. That was a poetic moment. And here I want to share Archibald MacLeish’s description of poetic moments like that:

WORDS IN TIME

Bewildered with the broken tongue
of wakened angels in our sleep
then lost the music that was sung
and lost the light time cannot keep!
There is a moment when we lie
Bewildered, wakened out of sleep,
when light and sound and all reply:
that moment time must tame and keep.
That moment like a flight of birds
flung from the branches where they sleep,
the poet with a beat of words
flings into time for time to keep.

 

Jeremiah 17:9 and Self-deception

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Jeremiah 17:9 tells us, “The heart is desperately wicked and deceitful above all things.” I used to read this verse and cringe…and often in my youth  preached “hell fire and damnation” from it…but now I have the temerity to interpret it myself. I no longer think it means that we are scum buckets but it does mean that the “heart” is problematic and the reason is that it believes, by nature, only what it wants to believe. This verse is telling us that our heart can lead us but we must remember that, without a discerning spirit about us, it will usually mislead us as we are intrinsically wont to interpret things in a self-serving manner. Therefore, we can go ahead and “interpret” and make other judgments, but we just can’t be too smug and even arrogant about wielding our “truth” like a hammer. There is always more to the picture. And that is why we need others, and a spiritual context, to give us feedback about our interpretations.

And we must try to make sure they are not just like ourselves as that is not really feedback. We must think, and live, outside the bubble! Yes, history confirms there have been “desperately wicked” people and suggests there will continue to be from time to time. I suggest they they are those who are most enclosed in some “comfy” bubble, those that W. H. Auden had in mind when he noted, “We have made for ourselves a life safer than we can bear.”

Case in point—the Taliban in Afghanistan. How isolated and insular can you be? But, are we not guilty of the same, to some degree? Is that not the predicament of our two political parties, each dug in at the heels and unwilling to compromise, irresolutely sure of themselves? How insular and self-serving can you be when you make political decisions based primarily, if not wholly, on “Will this help me get re-elected?” There is reality outside of re-electability. There are things more important, such as the welfare of this country. And, the core issue is, “Do I believe in a reality (Reality) outside of myself?” Our culture often does not appear to and our politicians reflect our values.
Excerpt

Richard Rohr on Intimacy

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Once again, I must note that I should merely post each day, in big print, “See Richard Rohr’s blog.” For, he says everything I could ever say and says it much better. Either he and I listen to the same Source or perhaps we read the same books! Actually, it is probably a combination of both. I share with you today the his post from yesterday’s blog on the subject of intimacy. This reflects his grasp of spirituality as a Divine revealing which is present in each of us. Yes, even in those that disagree with me and approach things differently. The key is to allow a “discerning spirit” to be present in our heart and allow it to expose those barriers that we have formulated, probably early in life, to protect us from “the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to.” (Hamlet)
So how do you communicate to others what is inherently a secret? Or can you? How can the secret become “unhidden”? It becomes unhidden when people stop hiding—from God, themselves, and at least one other person. The emergence of our True Self is actually the big disclosure of the secret. Such risky self-disclosure is what I mean by intimacy, and intimacy is the way that love is transmitted. Some say the word comes from the Latin intimus, referring to that which is interior or inside. Some say its older meaning is found by in timor, or “into fear.” In either case, the point is clear: intimacy happens when we reveal and expose our insides, and this is always scary. One never knows if the other can receive what is exposed, will respect it, or will run fast in the other direction. One must be prepared to be rejected. It is always a risk. The pain of rejection after self-disclosure is so great that it often takes a lifetime for people to risk it again.
Excerpted from Immortal Diamond: The Search for Our True Self, pp. 168-16

Father-son Rivalry & the Chas/Andy Stanley Conflict

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Cnn.com had a compelling story yesterday regarding televangelist Charles Stanley and his televangelist son Andy.

The story grabbed me first because it so vividly illustrates the complexity of family dynamics, even in an evangelical faith which has historically not addressed the issue. Andy clearly had…and has…father-son issues and needed to draw boundaries with his prominent and powerful father. He needed to “differentiate”, to use a clinical term. He had to “cut the cord” from his family of origin and as a reward appears that he is being blessed in a ministry that his now his own.

I was also impressed with the humility of both men and the respect that both men maintained for each other even in extremely painful times. Usually in these “father-son” conflicts, one or both parties will dig their hills in and not budge.

Finally, I admire the faith of both of these men. Charles has suffered greatly, not just with this conflict with Andy but in the break-up of his marriage. In evangelical culture, persons and families are supposed to be squeaky clean and the Stanleys were not and are not. That is because they are human.

And, as shared in the past, I am an “ex” evangelical. But I appreciate seeing how two men could suffer like they have and maintain their faith. Sure, their faith is defensive, compensatory, and ever has its “denial system” features. So what? So does mine. So does yours. We are human and we “hold this treasure in earthen vessels.”

I encourage you to “cut and paste” the following link into your address bar and read this very moving report of an eternally recurrent tale of “father-son” power struggles.

http://www.cnn.com/2012/11/17/us/andy-stanley/