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We never know when and where an "aha" moment or glimpse of enlightenment
will come for us if we are open to it. I learned about accepting the inevitable
losses from living an unbalanced life in 1996 while watching the TV show
COPS. I saw a man living in a ghetto area that bought a a newish Cadillac and
had
called the police because neighborhood kids had been cracking old LP records
off of his new car. He didn't have a garage and had to park it on the street.
Living in a bad area ... no garage...new Cadillac? What else could he expect
other than trouble? I thought to myself that this guy needs to learn to accept
what he can comfortably have and what he can't and stop "forcing" things if he
ever wants any peace. He could probably have owned a nondescript, average,
plain car with little problems, but in his current state of affairs, he could
not comfortably own a new Cadillac without problems.

From much personal experience in this forcing area, I've learned we can all
force owning or doing things in life, but the key for sane living, for me, is
to learn what I can comfortably own, comfortably maintain and have in my life
and not force the issue. I experienced the effects from forcing things in my
life many times, but could not see it clearly and would just develop more
resentments from the problems that came my way, even though the problems would
be an
almost guaranteed outcome from my actions. For instance, with my own car I
lived in a welfare area for many years and wanted a better car stereo. Within 2
weeks of installing a $125 stereo in my older car it got stolen and my car was
vandalized. When the car had a basic factory radio it was no problem, even
after parking it on the same street for years, but my neighborhood could not
successfully allow me to have the more expensive car stereo. When I moved, then
I
was able to get something better. If I never moved and nothing changed, then
I had to accept the facts for what they were if I wanted any peace.

It doesn't matter whether it is my time schedule, a job, a thing, a
relationship or a vacation, it all has to fit into what I can comfortably (or
more
importantly) abstinently handle. In other words, I am shooting for balanced
living
through accepting my abilities and not looking to add more problems to my
life and destroy my serenity. Every decision I now make is weighed by such
terms.
I see many people getting into addictive trouble when they confuse THEIR
comfort levels with the comfort levels of OTHERS and refuse to accept that they
are forcing an unhealthy, unsustainable lifestyle. Now, for those that want to
achieve something along higher lines in life they will generally not get far
without forcing things some. We have to be careful to balance whatever force we
do use so our life is not lived artificially and we are exchanging our peace
and serenity for something we want, but cannot have unless we trade our soul
for it. Of course, this tradeoff is totally up to the individual. Many of us
decide in favor of selling our soul to extend ourselves to the breaking point
and have to resort to our addictions for support. Myself? If possible, I try to
put peace and my recovery program first in all decisions. I am not perfect in
these efforts, but am very aware of when I start to force things and
hopefully start pulling back to more comfortable territory in short order unless
I
want to start damaging my recovery efforts. On the flip side, you could never
climb Mt Everest without forcing things and making yourself uncomfortable. But
we
must balance such efforts with the idea that all our actions have
consequences and these consequences might result in our death or our destruction
through
addictions. So asking oneself the "affordability" question is very important
when you are an addict and want to stay clean of your addiction.

High capacity persons can work day and night, thrive on stress and problems,
juggling numerous projects all at once, but the major deciding point is they sh
ow little or no ill effects from their lifestyle. Whereas, lower capacity
persons that strive to live the life of a high cap person have to compensate
themselves with various drugs and crutches for living on a higher output level
that is not naturally comfortable for them to live - they are refusing to live
right size. What happens if the novice skier goes down the steepest and most
treacherous slope? He is not comfortable to say the least. It is no different in
life, and we all have our comfort zones and to go beyond them is forcing
things unnaturally for us. So, we use compulsive overeating, using drugs and
alcohol, gambling, sex addiction, compulsive spending, clutter, rage or any
number
of other destructive addictions to help distract us from the mess our lives
have turned into from forcing things. Lots of times these addictions start out
as pleasure vehicles to compensate us for the pain we have feeling from life,
but like all addictions the pleasure component soon turns to pain and now we
have double the pain to deal with. Pain from our unbalanced life and pain from
our addictions we used to help us deal with our unbalanced life. It snowballs
from here - that is how I picked up 8 addictions to recover from. Once I
started to live within my comfortable means and accept life without forcing
things
my addictions started to lessen up their hold. I started to live "right size"
as the 12 and 12 of AA says on pages 122-125. There is no more important
reading to do. Read these pages and digest it. It is the foundation of all of my
recovery efforts.

Forcing things comes to play with all the addictions, so there is no way we
can condemn one addiction over any other at being worse at forcing things.
Clutterers make great use of "pressure packing" their hoard. If you have ever
seen
my website you can see how I forced my prior life through clutter. Debtors
force their finances and refuse to accept and live within their means. Now, the
debtors have no monopoly on robbing Peter to pay Paul. The overeaters do the
same when they run their lives ragged and leave no time for preparing healthy
foods, exercise and most important - time for contemplation and relaxation of
the mind. At a conference I attended, an overweight lady professor said "this
was going to be one of those semesters ... too busy to exercise until next
semester." I could see why she was 100 pounds overweight - as the program tell
us
"First Things First." A lot of us don't want to give up anything to get
recovery. We also see overeaters force things whether it be their caloric intake
making the low calorie food their god so they can consume more to feed their
sensation addiction. I have an OA acquaintance that gets terrible stomach
problems from sorbitol, yet she had seen nothing wrong with overindulging in it
cause
it is calorie and sugar free. Sorbitol may have legitimate purposes, but it
becomes just another one of our addictive drugs once it starts ruining our
life.

Addicts force their comfortable abilities and then need to relax artificially
with their D.O.C. A famous movie on addiction with Sandra Bullock called 28
Days uses this example when she says she has to get drunk and use drugs...
"cause she is a writer." Many problems of forcing things come from having
blinders
on and we see only a small part of the picture and this gives us tunnel
vision with no hope for other choices or solutions. We have to start being open
to
other possibilities and direction instead of just the same old thing. Many of
us don't want to choose abstinence or solvency or sobriety in life...we may
want a new life but do not want to let go of the old one to get it. Going back
to the writer example. We have 2 choices without even giving it much thought.
We can learn to apply the 12 steps to our current life and find success or we
can abstain from the old sick life that has been tearing us down and still
apply the 12 steps to this new life.

Your program will be the final arbiter as to which choice is going to be the
right one. Either you will learn to use the new recovery tools to add to your
old life and these tools will be enough to work for you and give you a new
non-addicted life or you will have little success and have to let go of the old
sick life in various amounts to get where you want to go. Addicts have to
realize they probably will not get much success by keeping the old sick life and
just applying the 12 steps to this sick life without changing the underlying
life itself. But, success is there for the taking if they let go of the old sick
life and then apply the 12 steps to our new way of life. From my own
experience and from watching countless other addicts fail, I am not one to say
that
working the 12 step will make you impervious to anything in life and you can
live
your life with impunity. If this was the case, the 12 and 12 would not talk
about "staying right size" and "HALTS." It seems that many of us get stuck
with looking for hope of change someplace else other than within us. All change
is ultimately internal in nature, change must come from within us. We sometimes
get unrealistic hopes that someone else will do it for us, rather than we
doing it ourselves. Some use the 12 steps and others use religion. Many
religious
practitioners feel that any good change in their lives will come from the
outside -- as a gift from God / gods without much effort from ones own self to
change. These addicts think they just have to say a prayer enough times or say
some special incantation and that will be the magic bullet to success. It is
true that spiritual laws are very important in life, but as spiritual beings
with physical bodies we also have to balance the natural or physical laws of the
world as well as the spiritual.

This is where the totally religious addicts get unbalanced...they neglect the
natural laws and only apply spiritual work and the two are very different and
don't overlap. A good example would be an overeater praying to lose the fat,
but having no clarity that they are eating 5000 calories a day and no
willingness to change their life to fit their comfortable means, they think a
prayer
will override the natural laws of the world and magically make them thin
irrespective of their own efforts at staying fat. It gets even worse for this
person. If they are young, then as their metabolism slows down as they age and
they
will even get fatter, even though they continue to eat the same 5000 calorie
diet. Of course, they have no clue to all this since all their efforts are in
the spiritual realm with no efforts being taken in the physical areas of
living right. So, seek balance in all your recovery efforts whether physical or
spiritual work. (FYI: to all those that have no idea of what it takes to live
with a normal weight, at the time I wrote this, I am a 50 year old male,
relatively active and maintain my 155 pound weight by eating 1800 calories a day
with
2500 calories being allowed on Sundays. So, you can see success in this area
is not dependent on what is your religion.)

There are some spiritual extremists that tried to live on water and air alone
and even tried to filter the microbes out of the water to return them to
their source for fear of killing them by ingesting. But, this lifestyle again is
too concentrated in one area and not balanced with accepting the natural and
divine order of the universe. You also see this with some vegetarian extremists
that want to turn lions and tigers into vegans as well. They wish to impose
"their will" over natures and seem to forget that they do not rule nature -
nature rules them. Such people will never find peace as they do not understand
how
the universe works in the smallest degree. Without learning to accept life on
life's terms, enlightenment and peace will be as illusive as the wind for
them. Yes, we can always "force" things to fit our desires. But forcing is not
conducive to being at peace. Forcing by its very nature means we need to impose
"our will" over something else and requires expectations and the development
of more attachments, cravings and desires ... all peace destroying vehicles as
my Buddhist practice reminds me. Besides my many spiritual and religious
traditions that guide me to peace, I also follow "jus naturale" or natural law
and
Taoism and within jus naturale and the nature based Taoist path, life and
death is part of the natural flow.

One thing to be mindful of is that once we do change life it will still not
be perfect. As the old Buddhist saying goes: Before enlightenment you chop wood
and carry water ~ After enlightenment you chop wood and carry water. So,
develop all the positive changes you can in your life, but be sure to look at
such
changes in proportion and not as some magic bullet to nirvana. True happiness
and serenity is composed of many qualities and not just one. A favorite
saying I coined, "You are not recovering until your start refusing" is a daily
mantra I use to remind me to let go of the old ways and also to "put first
things
first" if I want to keep my new life. When we can see the whole picture and
develop acceptance for what we can comfortably have and not comfortably have and
stop forcing things, then reason starts to come back into our minds and our
lives are not run by passion where the only use for reason is to cleverly find
new and unhealthy ways to further feed our out of control passions.




V


For access to my earlier posts on voluntary simplicity, compulsive spending,
debting, compulsive overeating and clutter write: vfr44@.... 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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