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 show 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 (Male)


For free access to my earlier posts on voluntary simplicity, compulsive
spending, debting, compulsive overeating and clutter write:
vfr44@aol.com. Any opinion expressed here is that of my own and is not
the opinion, recommendation or belief of any group or organization

Are you also a compulsive writer?

On Thu, 02 Mar 2006 04:04:18 -0800, Starvin'Marv wrote:

> Are you also a compulsive writer?

At least he has some good things to say don't you think?