The Stages Of Change

It would appear that we assign and supply our own meaning. Is there some grand and cosmic purpose? If there is, no one has let me on it yet. I think every generation inherently attempts to make life better for their progeny, but what it seems to amount to is endless cycle of making the same mistakes our forefathers made before us.As Solomon said in Ecclessiastes, "there is nothing new under the sun." That book specifically talks about the grand questions you are asking. He looks at life and how we toil and labor under the sun and asks if it is all just meaningless. He searches for meaning and purpose in this life and can only conclude one thing. You have to read it yourself to find out his conclusion. The Amish don't bother me. In many ways I commend their lifestyle, in other ways I don't. They kind of remind me of modern-day Essenes in that they are isolationists. That goes against Jesus' "Last Commission" in (Matthew?) I don't think it is ridiculous to ponder these things. What is ridiculous is the conclusions that some believers come to. As a non-non-believer (somebody who neither believes nor disbelieves) I find Jesus' message very appealing and very commendable. Of course, putting that in to practice has been probably the most difficult thing to achieve in all of mankind. Conquering the self is the most difficult task anyone could ever undertake, in my opinion. On so many levels we are ALL failures. But try, try again, aye? Maybe not but that's all we have to go by. It is a mistake to assume that the bible has all of life's answers and it is a mistake to assume that it's all just hocus-pocus. Something good can extracted from it. Inversely, something terrible can be extracted from it.

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"Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear." Thomas Jefferson

Hi Phat, Yes and no. Individual purpose exists, and is subjective so it varies. But an overall purpose, I would say no. Just as there is no overall purpose for any other species.Me personally, my purpose is to make people laugh; to bring happyness for a short while since most people are so stressed out and take life too serious. I get a personal joy out of it. That's my purpose. LMAO - no meaning or useful relevance? Fuck, how deep do you want to get into that statement?98% of what's on TV is meaningless and has no useful relevance. When was the last time the SuperBowl changed your life? or American Idol?Not you specifically, but most Americans waste most of their free time on shit that has no meaning or useful relevance: TV, professional sports, new technology(ie. phones, cameras, TV's), sports cars, night clubs, alcohol, etc. All of these things are pointless and meaningless and void of any real relevance, yet NO ONE would dare challenge why professional sports is on TV, with it's own channel. Why nightclubs exist, why sports cars are sold, why alcohol is legal, why cellphone companies make so many different phones, when the last thing you do is make a phone call. No one speaks up about how irrelevant to progress shows like Dancing with the Stars or Project Runway are. In fact, why do we even have professional modeling? What's the point to it?These are the real influences plaguing our minds. It's the marganilizing of America campaign. NFL, American Idol, iPhones, sports cars...they're all pointless, meaningless, irrelevant distractions in our modern world. If anything, certain drugs help you realize how pointless all that shit is...at least it did for me....end rant.My point is this, you claim to want to help future generation an you bring up pot smoking and laughing on the porch, which while fun I'll admit has no usefulness, unless you're breading future comics. But you could have just the same said - "do we simply watch hours of TV with them on the couch and laugh about stupid shit that has no meaning and no useful relevance?" - and had more relevance to what is actually plaging our kids minds.A larger percentage of children are glued to the TV than they are to pot, in fact, except for children with no home or TV, every kid is glued to the TV. So we should be worried about the garbage on TV before you even consider drugs influencing your child.Maybe tell them how shitty everything on TV is and how meaningless and pointless it all is while you smoke a joint on the porch with them. They'll respect you for it. What would you rather do Phat, watch hours of endless TV sitcoms and reality shows with your kids, or take them out into nature and smoke a joint with them? (given of course that your kids are old enough to do it). - and address the question specifically, no other options, just those 2 scenarios....continue- Oni

Hi Phat,...continued All people, even fundamentalist, are good at their core. The Amish are great, and I imagine every single suicide bomber has a best friend some where that would claim "he's a great guy. Funny, nice, giving, good family man" but yet he is a fundamentalist who is willing to die and take others with him for his cause. People have a tendency to close themselves off, to place themselves in a box and not think outside of it. Everyone does it. We are all subject to our own personal faults. I usually take issue with the individual and not so much with what institution or ideology the person is affiliated with.Quick story: I was working a shithole club in George...St. Mary's, Georgia to be exact. At the bar after my set a man offered to buy me a round of drinks(he enjoyed my set and claimed to have laughed "his ass off"); we did a few shots together and enjoyed a beer and good conversation with him. Some time into the conversation, which the dude was funny and polite to talk to, he reveals the fact that he is a member of the Klan. "Holy shit" I think, because I'm hispanic and not from there, and now I begin to question whether he's being polite to then beat my ass outside after I'm a bit tipsy. But the man was never at any point disrespectful. He knew I was hispanic and even asked where my parents were from and how they got to this country. At one point he even stated how he can sometimes sympathize with the struggles of "my people," as he called us. We said bye and now his daughter is on my fan e-mail.To this day I still don't like the Klan, obviously. But that dude was cool. I'd sit and have a beer with him anytime, before I would with many other people who aren't members of any racist organizations.Me personally, I can seperate the man from his ideologies and beliefs. People are people and they all have their faults. All you can do is keep pumping good information into society and hope that it eventually spreads....continue- Oni

Hi Phat, No not at all. To many people, it is. And I accept that what many people will consider 'necessary' will not always make logical sense to me. I imagine the same goes for others about what I feel is 'necessary'. Modern life, here in the US, yes. I think so.For some tribe in the jungles of Peru, probably not. I personally fantasize about the mythos and mysteries, while I feel my day to day experience is deterministic.- Oni

I'm curious, Phat: How are you doing now?

I have still struggled intermittently with addictive behavior regarding compulsive gambling. The fault has been entirely my own--I quite frankly preferred fantasy over reality. Since I no longer have credit, I never dug myself a hole too deep to get out of, but I was broke many weeks.The brain patterns of an addict show definite changes, and the cure is sobriety. The experts have shown---proven scientifically--that a brain will heal from addictive damage but that it takes as long as a year of sobriety to do so. My top sobriety streak was 62 days...and that was a year ago.I am sober now for 3 days. I am resolved to become healed. It requires denying myself and being attentive to pattern behavior.

Iano brought up the book by Allen Carr more than once here, another time on a thread about quitting smoking, and for some reason everybody ignores it although it's the most intriguing idea I've ever seen about how to quit an addiction. I haven't read the book but from what he's said about it I'm sure that I quit smoking on exactly the same principle, just "realized" there was NO positive reason to smoke although I'd been as crazed a smoker as anyone could be before that. I prayed for the ability to quit but I think the psychology of how I quit was very much along the lines he describes. EASY because you no longer WANT to smoke, or do whatever addictive thing you do, at ALL. Somehow the book manages to bring about that state of mind leaving you without a shred of interest in the addictive substance. Not a shred. I'd get the book myself out of curiosity but I can't afford to buy something I don't need.Why isn't anyone interested in this method? Phat? MUCH better to find an easy way to quit an addiction than all that struggle everybody goes through by the usual means. Even those who get through it with a minimum of struggle usually still have SOME struggle.Although the ones who quit "cold turkey" and never look back are probably those who realized just as I did the utter lack of positive reasons to smoke or drink or whatever and totally lost the desire in a flash. I would have thought I was the least likely person on the planet to quit smoking cold turkey, but that's what I did, and had NO desire for it at ALL from the moment I quit. EASY because there's no struggle about something you simply have no desire for.
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ABE: I suppose if it doesn't specifically address gambling you might not be able to glean the necessary principles from it. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Denying or providing?Denying your addiction is providing for your well-being.

Christians have a term for this. It is the war between the carnal nature and the spiritual nature. Flesh & Spirit. When Jesus speaks of denying yourself, He means denying your flesh. An addiction fuels pleasure in the brain. It is feeding the "flesh."...the carnal nature.

I have a friend who says that, "Attitude is everything." If you have two conflicting attitudes - that you want to smoke but you also want to quit, there's bound to be a struggle. I can see that losing the attitude that you want to smoke would be effective - if you can do it. I'm a life-long non-smoker, so I've never seen any positive reason to smoke - although I think Humphrey Bogart is very cool.

Have you ever been addicted to a chemical?Its pretty crazy.

I've been under the influence of several chemicals (usually one at a time). I've often said, "Never again," but never often turns out to be a short time. I guess that's bordering on addiction.

Well, its a very long fall from that border.You can't really talk to people about what its like down there if you've never been.Its probably darker than you think.

Yep, that's the struggle in a nutshell. You are out of cigarettes and try to make that a good reason to quit, but not too much later there you are digging for butts in all the ashtrays and trash cans and when you find one you smoke the last quarter of an inch that's left above the filter all the way down. How crazy is that? You throw out half a pack of cigarettes and later dig them out of the trash; you even drown the pack so you won't be able to smoke them later, but find yourself going to the store for another pack. Even at three in the morning. Smoking addiction does weird things to people, but that's the struggle, trying to force yourself to quit because you know it's bad for you but then having to smoke even if it's absurdly inconvenient and you know it is going to kill you. Then for a time the reasons to quit win out over the reasons to smoke and you spend months, even years, not smoking but craving a cigarette day after day. Is it really possible that there could be a method that makes it EASY? This book sounds like it probably is just that. But I stumbled on the method on my own. With help from God in my case for sure. It's funny to call it a method, it IS an attitude change, but there's no way to force yourself to change your attitude, it has to come as a persuasion, engaging your will and desires.Iano says the same author wrote a book to help alcohol addicts. Somebody should write one for gambling addicts too. The psychological principles have to be the same: to get you yourself to see the stupidity of the reasons you are addicted so that you haven't a shred of desire for it left. Well, that's the thing, if it has anything to do with something you can or can't do, that's forcing yourself and you'll fail. You have to SEE the situation for what it is and DESIRE to quit, or better yet, simply have no desire whatever to continue in it because of a change in perspective. The two people I know who quit smoking cold turkey years ago came to that frame of mind spontaneously. One of them believed the Surgeon General's report in the fifties that it would kill him and that did it, no more desire. A rational man, didn't want to die. Me, that never worked. Every day I'd choose to smoke over staying alive, choosing the "comfort" of it or whatever it is over survival. The other person just took a look at his cigarette one day and said to himself, this is making me feel rotten, gives me a rotten taste in my mouth, makes it hard to breathe, and is going to kill me, so he put it down and never had the slightest desire to smoke after that. From what Iano has said I gather that book really manages to lead a person to that recognition, even the toughest cases like I was. Not everybody but a huge percentage of people. There will always be some for whom the reasons they smoke are still more attractive than staying alive. And that is one of the irrational reasons on the lists of why most of us got addicted: SO cool.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Do you think trying to fit everything into a bumper sticker slogan is helpful to the recovery process? And I am saying that perhaps nothing is denied. Your addiction isn't some life-sustaining act; so whether talking about your flesh, your spirit, or your left shoe, I think that not giving into the addiction probably doesn't represent a denial of anything.At most it is a payment; an exchange of instant gratification for long-term well being.