pleasure and pain is actually all that matters

(...) writes:

"Nevertheless pleasure and pain is actually all that matters in life."


V writes:

Thank you for the reply. Please forgive me if I do not comment on replies sometimes as my time is limited and I am on 40 to 60 lists and forums at any given time. In reality it is hard to get back to all the posts, so am glad I caught your response to "why greed is never satisfied by attainment."

Pain and pleasure, yes the 2 opposites of life. The practice of philosophy helps me with these areas by developing excellence of the soul. I am no blissninny, I make mistakes, but have also improved my life greatly since studying philosophy. The guidelines of pain and pleasure is not so cut and dried if we bring in the topic of virtue and excellence of the soul for instance. Also the question comes up of why we do something if it is known to cause us pain? Addictions excuse this madness seemingly, other times it might boil down to the 'out of control passions' that put reasoning on the back burner.

The phrase, "circumstances does not make the man - it reveals him to himself" was taken from James Allen little book entitled "As A Man Thinketh." (Now, all you women that dislike anything male, go buy a copy of As a Woman Thinketh, so you don't feel left out.) This important concept of 'self revelation' can also be told in a story that is used in philosophy class called the Ring of Gyges or Myth of Gyges. The story taken from Plato's Republic and recounts how the shepherd Gyges finds a ring on a hand extending from a crack in the earth and removes the ring from the hand and puts it on. Gyges discovers the ring gives him powers to be invisible at will and then uses these powers to kill the king, rape the queen and take over the kingdom. In readily understandable terms we can define virtue for us from this story of Gyges and ask ourselves the question, "What would we do if no one was looking or we knew we would not get caught?" Yes, circumstances does not make the man - it reveals him to himself.

We may avoid doing something due to fear of pain, such as fear of jail or fear of going to hell or whatever. So the person abstains, but the abstention is not genuine and authentic to that of living virtuously. Whereas, someone that has true virtue instilled within them will act the same irrespective of threats or not. Take away the threats and they will 'act' the same. Make them invisible and they are no different. In the end though, such persons still base their actions on some aspect of fear. They fear losing their inner peace. This is hard concept to explain for myself. I don't really fear losing inner peace all that much. I just prefer being at peace, so I act the part. Sometimes my actions disturb my peace and I must pay the price. This experiential education is the best way to learn that all our actions have consequences and that many of these actions are producing consequences that rob us of inner peace. Enclosed are the 3D's and the 7 benefits we derive form addictions. They shed more light on these areas.

An important thing to remember with recovery is the 3-D's: Desire, Determination and Diligence.

Desire:

Desire is the foundation for all recovery quests. You cannot help someone without the desire in them to be helped. Desire is what gets us taking that first step in the right direction when all seems hopeless. Have you every tried to give advice or help someone in need and they respond: "I don't care." They lack the desire or at least this is what they say. Desire must come from within, you cannot force someone to change, they must change themselves.

To develop a desire to change, we must first recognize there is a problem or sickness in us. Recognition or awareness is the fist step leading to desire. After we recognize we are sick or an area of our lives is out of balance, we can start accepting the fact that we need to take action in this area. When we label addicts or people as "in denial," we are saying the person is not able to recognize there is a problem in their lives that needs addressing.

Now some people recognize there is a problem in their life, but still don't develop a burning desire for change, but at least they have a somewhat true picture of things and just haven't made the crossover to developing the desire to change bad enough. Whether their block is out of fear, laziness or staying in a comfortable place, they will have to figure out what is blocking them before they can take the next step. As I said, we cannot force someone to change, they must change themselves and it must be from the inside out.

Determination:

Determination serves two purposes here. When something is "determined" it is accepted as fact. We have determined that we are powerless over our addiction and our lives are unmanageable. We have determined we must abstain from certain people, places or things that we cannot comfortably have in our lives. We are in the process of determining a new set of rules on how to live. We have also determined what injuries we have caused and what needs to be repaired through taking personal inventory.

Determination serves a second purpose and that is it keeps us on the long road to recovery. We cannot keep on this long road without being determined to change our lives day in day out. Whether it is debt recovery, clutter, restructuring our complex lives or losing weight it all takes time and determination to stay on the path of recovery. Many distractions, detours and set backs along the way, but we should always be determined to keep pointed in the direction of recovery.


Diligence:

Diligence keeps us from going backwards once we finally arrive at the recovery place we are aiming for. It takes diligence once we get to where we want to be to maintain that serene spot, otherwise we fall back on our old "natural" ways of living. Once you lose the fat, once you pay off your debts, once you lose the clutter, once you get sober and abstinent from your drug of choice it takes diligence to keep you that way. James Allen calls this watchfulness.

"Victories attained by right thought can only be maintained by watchfulness. Many give way when success is assured and rapidly fall back into failure." ~ As A Man Thinketh by James Allen.


7 Benefits We Derive From Our Addictions

There is a method to our madness when it comes to addictions. We derive the following benefits from participating in our various addictions.

1) Pain Reliever

Addictions help distract us from our pain. Most of this pain is generated from an endless cycle of wrong living that produces more pain and requires more drugging through the application of our various addictions to try and diminish the pain. Other times we use this pain relief our addictions provide us to dull physical pain we might be suffering from health problems just as a doctor gives us a pill to take to dull the pain. You can do an experiment in this pain relief area. If you have pain in your hand for instance, start stoking you arm lightly. It diminishes the pain in one area and pout new concentration in a sensation elsewhere. Addicts take natural pain relievers and turn them into pain generators. Handicapped addicts suffering great pain have a much harder time with finding peace - for there is never a complete escaping of their pain even if they restructure their life. Such addicts should get support from "like kind" and seek out recovery groups along this specialized area of handicapped addicts as well as using traditional recovery groups.

2 Pressure Relief

We use addictions to help blow off stream from stressed and unbalanced life we live though overextending ourselves to the point of breaking by living a lifestyle of "jugglers syndrome" and by having too many irons in the fire. In a lecture I once heard, Thich Nhat Hanh describes the Buddha as sitting on a lotus blossom which was regarded as a sign of peace and serenity in earlier times. Hanh goes on to say that nowadays, many people sit on burning coals instead of sitting on a lotus blossom, so no wonder they cannot find any peace. We make no time for inner peace, we are too busy for such useless things a meditation and relaxation. It feels good to get drunk and drugged up or spend money and acquire things or eat junk foods or have sex or even blow up in rage once in a while. One person mentioned how "profanity" provides a release denied even by prayer, so for some of us having a rage attack can provides a pressure relief. I had to learn to channel my pressure through other healthy release valves as well as not participating in a life that built up excess pressure within me. Adrenal steroids (cortisol) secreted when a person is under stress reach the brain and over time can affect the structure of the brain. We also produce cortisol from any other stressors the body perceives, whether it is physical stress, such as a sickness, injury, surgery, or temperature extremes as well as psychological stress that we and the world put on us. Each of us has produces a different amount of these chemicals and has a different sensitivity to them and this might be the missing link as to a part of the question as to why some of us are more addictive than others with how we each produce and react to these stress chemicals differently.

3) Time Filler

The devil finds work for idle hands - Thoreau. Many time I have heard an addict say they went to their addiction out of boredom cause they had nothing else to do to pass time. Developing a list of positive time fillers that are healthy and sustainable was a big breakthrough for me with my recovery work. (My earlier post entitled "Positive Time Fillers" goes into more detail on this subject, if you missed it and want a copy write me.)

4) Escape Vehicle

Addictions make great escape vehicles to distract us from our problems - most of what we have created for ourselves by living unbalanced lives. We get enough problems in life for free - no use adding fuel to the fire. This is what Voluntary Simplicity does for me in a nutshell. It helps reduce the problems I generate on my end and makes life more bearable so less escaping of the present is needed. I try and catch myself when I practice this escapism and work to bring my thoughts back to the present. Whenever the fantasy starts I check to see what I am escaping from? Why do I fixate on something else instead of where I'm at? Are the problems and reasons I am trying to escape from due to irregularities, falsehoods or lies I perpetuate? Can I change these problems or do I have to work on accepting them as the serenity prayer says? Being dishonest was the foundation of most of my earlier troubles. Once I started with the 12 steps in correcting these irregularities, things got slowly better and this gave me hope to keep working in the right direction. Inventory work identifies all these problems and gets them off your back when you give them away. No one is perfect, even so-called normal people go too far once in a while, so we should not beat ourselves trying to hold ourselves to a standard above the normal, non addicted person. As addicts we become super sensitized to our various addictions and can really beat ourselves with anything associated with them. But, we have to continue to take inventory work as long as we live and correct any mistakes as soon as we realize them if we want continued peace. (My 6 page post entitled "Putting Peace First" goes into more detail on this subject, if you missed it and want a copy write me.) Practicing mindfulness of the present moment as part of a Buddhist practice has helped with staying in the present as well as working the 12 steps to restructure my life into one that is pleasant to live and not one I need to hide from.

5) Pleasure Vehicle

As sensation addicts we like the sensation we get when we participate in our addiction. It feels good to receive the brain chemicals or high I get when I participate in my drug of choice. In short, if it feels good I over do it and keep doing it until it turns into pain - then and only then I know I need to stop.
The normal person does not have to go this far to know when to stop, and if they do go too far, they quickly turn things around as they see the activity not a healthy way to live. Not so with addicts, as they will refuse to stop even under penalty of jail or death. This is what's separates the addicts from the normal person - stopping ability. I had to accept that some things are just too exciting for my sensations and stimulate my brain chemicals too much to play with, irrespective of fixing the hole in my soul or not. I learned to use new positive ways to feel good that were sustainable and not destructive. But, addiction recovery is never a perfect path. Some addictions require participation in such as eating, spending or sex and an addict must have mechanical tools of clarity as well as spiritual tools for inner recovery to develop a balanced recovery program with these addictions. (If you missed my earlier post entitled "Mechanical and Spiritual Tools of Recovery" and what a copy write me) But, once we experience a change in our path of living and we see we can derive pleasure from other areas that are healthy and sustainable, we can see there is a choice in how we live and decide on which path to take. Balanced living is also of prime concern - or following the middle path of moderation the Buddha laid out in his teachings. A path of moderation which rejects both sensory indulgence and the extremes of self mortification and denial. When we find more pleasure in staying abstinent, sober solvent and are living a balanced life within our comfortable means we have turned the corner and are home.

In the book "How to Want What You Have" it details the addicts plight.

"People who dedicate their lives to the pursuit of sensual pleasure find that the more pleasure they get, the more they want. Small, ordinary pleasures soon lose their power to please and must be replaced with more intense or exotic ones. Heedless sensualists usually meet a bad end. They learn the hard way that their desires are relentless and insatiable."

6) Mystical or Religious Experience

Yes, our addiction is our religion. All our addictions have pleasure aspects within them and we get rewards for participating in them in the form of euphoric experiences. Euphoric experience can be related to the spiritual as well. The definition of a religious mystic is one that partakes in an altered state of conciseness with God / god or the spiritual realm. Our addictions also give us this altered state of consciousness and feeling of euphoria. So, we can say that our drugs are our gods and our addiction is our religion. There is a reason to our madness - it is not just pure madness as most addicts think.

7) Death Sentence

Finally, if all else fails - addictions are great killers and destroyers of life. What benefit do we get from destruction? I guess it can best be explained from something told to me from an old sponsor in DA. He one said, "If we are spiritually sick we will find a way to get rid of the money no matter what." Well, the addict that is spiritually sick will do the same with their life - they will get rid of it. Don't confuse spirituality with religion here. Spirituality deals with the unseen and our inner self, but has little to do with being pious. One writer describes religion as "dealing with social cohesion and spirituality as dealing with inner transformation." I discuss this in an earlier post called "On Meditation and Finding Universal Truth." We can be very spiritual people and still not be a member of an organized religion. I go into this in more detail in an earlier post called "I Am Having Trouble With Steps 2 and 3" if you wish either copy, write me.


Good Luck,