Counterattack
The two recent pieces I wrote and posted here amount to something of an epiphany. I have been aware of my addictions and history of sexual abuse and practiced the additions for most of my life. What came to me while writing them is the realization I have long had a reliable way to deal with the addictions: Pray.
Prayer
I have been praying for years, starting with my conversion. Praying has continued because it works. I have known praying works on addiction for all those years. Problem is, I knew it works but only practiced it intermittently. Cunning, baffling, powerful.
Insight meditation has enhanced my praying and gives me more focus while praying. The goal is to clear out the mental clutter I used to survive in a sometimes dangerous world. Along with developing survival skills, I also create my own world. Some of our worlds may be congruent with reality, sometimes not. It takes lots of energy to maintain the personal world, and I am constantly revising and enhancing what is actually an artificial construct.
My inner world is filled with stories about what is going on, what happened, and guesses about the future. In the process of creating all this, I ignore the present. All those creations are the basis for my addiction. The now, right now, is not. So, it’s only logical to stay in the moment. It ain’t easy, folks. I have many years of reinforcement to stay with the mostly imaginary world I created.
I can get to the now in meditation and prayer. It is said meditation can aid one in staying in the moment most of the time. It’s called enlightenment. Watch the breath. When mind wanders, return to the breath. Repeat. I am not enlightened, although I strive to go there. My mind wanders. A lot.
I can, however, pray, which is an alternate way of staying in the moment. Another word for prayer is mantra. “Om mani padme hum”. It can be a collection of Sanskrit phrases or English words transmitted by a teacher. in my case I don’t know my teacher’s name. He is a long dead Russian peasant who became a pilgrim seeking his teachers in Russian monasteries. In his travels he used an ancient Orthodox Christian prayer known as the Jesus Prayer. “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner.” He suggested starting with 3000 repetitions daily. With sufficient practice, it is possible to synchronize the prayer with the heartbeat. This means constant prayer. How is that for staying in the moment? His book is entitled The Way of a Pilgrim.
I may have reached 3000 a few times. I have never synchronized the prayer with my heartbeat. I do synchronize with my breath. After writing those two pieces about addiction and spirituality, I had a solid week of prayer, peace, and freedom from addiction. What a glorious time! Once I had a year of respite.
Oops! Here came the counterattack. In these cases, it’s nearly a total absence of prayer and almost constant addictive obsessing along with acting out. You Tube is a great aid in distracting myself from the moment and reinforcing obsessions. During this current counterattack I had a dream about finding myself in a room with baggage stacked to the 20 foot high ceiling. That’s my world-lots of baggage. So, what to do? One way I have found is to open up about what is going on and not isolate. Remember George Thorogood singing “When I drink alone, I want to be by myself.”? That is my addiction mantra.
“Confession is good for the soul.” Here is my confession. Now maybe I can get back to prayer.