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                %POWERFUL DEFENSE AGAINST ADDICTION 871110

     Since  an addiction is any human creation or  process
over which we  have no power of control and are tempted to
lie about, we need some transcendent  power  to serve as a
defense against addiction.

     Addictions serve to fill a vacuum of  meaninglessness
and  our  need  for  stimulation,  and  in  turn  generate
meaningless   chaos  and  the  inability   to   assimilate
stimulation.   Addictions generate tendencies to hide from
chaos  and meaningless stimulation.   They do not generate
conception of possible responsibility.

     Addictions lead from crisis to crisis with no healthy
sense of direction or overview.   Addicts and codependents
need to detach from their stream of crises,  draw away and
meditate upon the  whole process---and seek to see it in a
different light.   In serene meditation it is possible  to
seek meaningful roots and social contexts through which to
gain  the  nurture needed to make sense of  life---through
choices regarding which  one can willingly  be responsive.
In  meditation  one can come to know one's self so  as  to
have  a foundation for responsiveness and  responsibility.
Through  meditation one can choose to make sense of  one's
life with integrity  in  ways  appropriate  to  one's  own
unique attributes  and possibilities.   No other person is
or  can be well informed enough to make such  choices  for
one's own self; or vice versa.

     Away  from the conformal pressures of others one  can
in meditation seek to be honest with one's own self;  seek
personal  integrity  in  terms  of  which  to  deal   with
conformal pressures  which would push one to do that which
one  can  not do with integrity.   Only when one  honestly
knows  one's  own  self  can  conformal  pressures  toward
personal  and  communal  disintegration be  resisted  with
power.    When one spends  all  of one's time in  coercive
conformal  contexts one  becomes powerless and addicted to
powerlessness  as  a  disintegrative way  of  life,    The
futility and meaningless character of  conformity leads to
a compulsive desire to conform in order to find meaning in
other's approvals.  When  that  does not work,  there is a
tendency   to   seek  escape  through  an   addiction   to
powerlessness which will excuse one's own failures to make
powerful choices with integrity.

                                                                                                                               
                         (c) 2005 by Paul A. Smith in      
                    (On Being Yourself, Whole and Healthy)  
                                                                                                                               
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