Addicted!!!

 

Addicted to Being Right

Addicted to Dogma

Addicted to Violence

I began questioning everything I was told to think about 20 years ago. It was part of a blogging process that was unsuspectedly transformational. Or maybe more accurately I should say blogging became part of my inner transformation process that had begun it's work several years prior, unbeknownst to me. My blog is named Living with Open Hands, as an expression of an open mind, an open  heart, and an open will. 

Actually I did not ask for this change (this transformational crap) but it came over me as a surprising mystery, as a thief in the night, in undeniable beauty, a clarity that I could not ignore. 

I realized this hurricane overturned everything within and without. I had nothing left that was not destroyed. I was left with this: I had to follow the truth wherever it led  me. I didn’t want to know anything beyond that which I already knew but then I was overcome with this mantra: 

If I already know, I can no longer learn.

This knowing is something that cannot be told to me.

This knowing was anchored in my bones. 

This knowing I had to remember because it is something I already knew

… but had forgotten.

As I’ve grown older, I realize that I know nothing. “He that speaks, doesn’t know. He that does not speak knows.” (Laotzu) Not only this but I began to see that the more I think I know, the more defendedness. The more I was trying to argue what I think I know, the more I can be confident that I have no clue.

This confidence that I know things, the more vehemently that I defended what I thought I knew, the more I could see that I did not know.

What I think I know is what I’ve been told to think.

By outside forces

By powers and principalities I could not see or hear. 

Conditioning had been drumming these ideas, these assumptions, into me, embedding them in my soul through cultural institutions, not inner knowing. External authority is nothing more than stories in our minds. Inner authority, inner knowing comes from deep within and is passed on through the generations. 

It is like intuition and instinct in animals. 

How do they know where to fly for winter? 

How do they know how to find food and feed their offspring?

And yet, even though we have an inner teacher, an inner light, a still small voice of truth; we sit and wait for someone out there to tell us who we are, what to do, and what to think. Someone to save us. We no longer bother to discern the truth from within.

It startled me as I realized that I was a second hand person. 

Please see post here: https://livingwithopenhands2.blogspot.com/2019/04/second-hand-person.html 

When Things Fall Apart

(Another way of seeing)

Bad or Evil or Wrong are labels for interpretations by self. So that in and of itself makes those interpretations suspect. Maybe the discomfort we feel are versions of our own constructs of control and certitude. Maybe they are simply part of the process of change.

"The word change normally refers to new beginnings. But transformation more often happens not when something new begins but when something old falls apart. The pain of something old falling apart—disruption and chaos—invites the soul to listen at a deeper level. It invites and sometimes forces the soul to go to a new place because the old place is not working anymore. The mystics use many words to describe this chaos: fire, darkness, death, emptiness, abandonment, trial, the Evil One, the dark night of the soul. Whatever it is, it does not feel good and it does not feel like God. We will do anything to keep the old thing from falling apart. This is when we need patience, guidance, and the freedom to let go instead of tightening our controls and certitudes."

~ Richard Rohr

For the past 10 years or so, I’ve been wondering what it is that drives the “true believers”. It no longer made sense to me, especially since I knew that I was for 40 years that “true believer”. 

What is this convincement that I sense in myself and others?

What is this defendedness and aggression that is displayed out of context?

Why do we need to know, need to be right, and hence make others wrong?

This was making sense less and less, especially when I’d look within and could see that same ugliness. None of us want to admit this ugliness within.

“The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either -- but right through every human heart -- and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained”

― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956

Recently it struck me that when I go deepest, to the rock bottom in my soul, the part that I could not decipher is the invisible (to me) core of addiction. 

This was so shocking I could not believe it or face that ugliness within. 

I’m not an addict… am I? 

And if so, what am I addicted to???

As a proud American, I was pierced through and through by this: America is addicted to violence: https://youtu.be/DoBMdTsula8 

“And like the addict, we don’t care that violence doesn’t work. Like the addict we need the fix.”

Addiction to violence. My addiction to being right and hence making others wrong, drove me blindly for so long. I can’t even contain the amount of hurt my fundamentalist thinking caused so many people I care about.

Addiction seemed to be eating at my heart and soul. Then realized it was an addiction to dogma. I couldn’t let go of that comfort, security, and certainty that it falsely provided.

I didn’t become spiritual through books or teachers, but my spirituality was born from chaos, mistakes, and breaking apart more times than I can count. Every time I broke apart I had to rebuild. Every time I put myself back together, I came back different. My darkest nights taught me more about spirituality than light ever could. My spirit wasn’t taught. It was shaped by fire.

Now that I’ve been living in this new paradigm, I keep wondering and asking myself, 

what is it that kept me stuck.

How is it that I could continue to argue in the same vein.

The last few weeks, I’ve been gradually realizing that my stuckness was due to an addiction so subtle, so familiar, and so embedded that I could not see it.

Like most addictions, they begin with those things that are most obvious and most familiar so that they can remain undetected and normal.

If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.”

Peace on earth, goodwill to all.

Peace is foundational to any goodwill.

Just as light obliterates all darkness, so peace precludes and suffocates the growth of seeds of violence, oppression, domination, being right, (hence making others wrong), or violating the identity, integrity, or humanity of others.

Often we miss the fact that our addiction to violence nurtures our addiction to fundamentalism, evangelicalism, nationalism, subjugation, and righteousness (lording it over) before others.

I am only beginning to break free of this addiction after a 20 year struggle.

What I couldn’t see for so many years is my addiction to dogma that didn't allow me to think for myself, that left me stuck as a second hand person, that didn't allow me to finally stop trying to be right and make others wrong. After all, we are all wrong. And this is a sort of domination that is a form of violence. I'm not sure how to forgive myself...

Did You Know? WE ARE ALL WRONG

Remember this.

We must first see

to break free...

Gone from mystery into mystery

Gone from daylight into night

Another step deeper into darkness

Closer to the light (Bruce Cockburn)