(The first addiction: identification with a self as the root of all others)
Under A-Rest The First Addiction I would say that the rst addiction is the mind being addicted to the idea of being a self, (sel ng) the sense of being a long-lasting, independent, separate entity. The expression of this addiction is a devotion to the thought system. Its result is an identi cation with the body. No-thing, (a Higher Power) is seemingly forgotten as the body-thing is remembered. How is the body-thing constantly remembered? By being thought about. The thought system is rooted in its rm conviction that we are a body. The thoughts are used to suggest that we are the thinker or the thought about subject—object.
The rst addiction spawns all other addictions. All the other drives to escape were attempts to get relief from the rst addiction. The dilemma is that the problem is identi cation as self. If the self attempts to escape from the self, that’s just more self. As we say in AA, self cannot get out of self. Therefore the only way to get out of self is to realize you are not in self. The alcoholic and/or addict has lost the ability to control their drinking and/or using. Unknowingly, the host has been taken over by a parasite (alcoholism). For all intents and purposes, you are being used to get its food.
It’s not about ever nding anything because it’s never about the drug, it’s about the addiction of self. That is what’s causing all the other addictions such as eating, sex, gambling, shopping and everything else. People are trying to get out of something that they are not in. That’s why nothing works. If it worked, you would not have to keep applying it every freaking day, because it would work. It’s like having a tool that works and then you put it away, you would honor that tool but you wouldn’t have to pick it up again.
(Seeing yourself as the problem: truth-telling as the path out of self)
Uprooting The Root Once you realize that the drinking and using are symptoms, then you start to see the root of the problem is that you are the problem, and once you start telling the truth about being the problem, there is another place that it can take you. That place is when you thoroughly own what you are not, then what you are not, will become obvious.
We’re trying to get in what we can’t be out of and trying to get out of what we can’t be in.
You cannot use that system to nd out your own nature. For me, it’s just recognizing that you are not what the system presents you to be and then your own nature will be revealed.
(Recognition: you are what is looking, not the object being sought)
Mind is like space and empty sky. When a bird takes a shit, it doesn’t land on the sky. A myriad of things appear in the sky, but do they stay long? How long do they stay?
You will realize that you are what is looking, like Saint Francis of Assisi says, “What’s looking, is what you are looking for.” He doesn’t say, ‘who’ is looking, he says ‘what’s’ looking. Under A-Rest
But it’s not you, it’s what. It comes to you. Really. It’s like a Zen bitchslap. That’s what it’s like. NOTHING happens and that proves to be everything.
Change, it will, but now the change will be directed by the Spirit, not the mental state. It’s just that your interest and attention has been withdrawn from that dead preoccupation.
While you are trying to get out of it, you’re in it more than ever. The mind moves in di erent ways and it has di erent strategies and yet most of them don’t work. It’s a failed system. That’s why in the program of recovery, they say in the Fear Inventory, “Why are you in so much fear today?” and it doesn’t let you answer because you’d probably tell a huge story about circumstances. NO, no, no, no!
(Service, surrender, and the free sample of living from Spirit)
No self, no bondage. The freedom from bondage is freedom from self. They found that the solution was not trying to deal with it on that level, but to provoke or to surrender to another realm which is what we call the Spiritual realm.
I can tell you, the joy of living is not in remembering. To be alive now, is the only place where life is. This is what the Spiritual condition is.
Your drive to manage is an expression of the root of the problem. We
Remembering the problem resides in the mind, you don’t want the problem to have much say in your sobriety. Repeated actions are going to produce habits which are actions without thought.
Because you’re identi ed AS playing God. How the hell are you gonna get out of that?
don’t see any other diagnosis that could possibly work other than seeing that you are identi ed with that which is playing God.
noticed that you are not going to get the 4pm card at 8am, you are going to get the 8 a.m. card. But what happens when the mind is playing God? Even before it gets the 8 a.m. card, it has come to a conclusion about how all the cards are going to look that day. It totally plays God with life. You are not even available to nd out because you, in a sense, know it’s going to suck, you know it’s going to go this way or that. That’s like neutering life. It takes all the joy out of it. “I know it’s going to suck today.” How do you know it’s going to suck, you haven’t even shown up yet? This is the state of mind in sel ng, the sense of being so sure when you actually have no idea. You
BB: We had a new Employer. Being all powerful, He provided what we needed, if we kept close to Him and performed His work well. Paul: Here, the whole aspect of future worry is taken care of in one fell swoop because He is going to provide what we need when requirements are met. The rst one is, if we keep close to Him. For me, you cannot be far away from everywhere, if God is everywhere, then it’s there right where you are because no
Service is the tried-and-true practice of getting out of one’s self. When you get out of one’s self, what happens? You feel available. That availability gives a sense of being spacious, of presence, and through the presence you get to see how shut down you were. The solution allows you to know the problem. It’s so incredible. It allows you to see how claustrophobic you were just before you did the service. Usually, in that spaciousness, what happens? The mind senses a presence of what we call the Higher Power. This is the beauty of it. By doing service, you will have a free sample of where you could live from. BB: Established on such a footing,.. Paul: Let’s say you’ve sincerely taken this position, now you are getting stabilized. In other words, you’re living from that point of surrender.
BB: More and more we became interested in seeing what we could contribute to life. Paul: If you ‘try’ to become more interested in what you contribute to life, that’s actually being more interested in ‘you.’ Self can’t get out of self. But now, the sel ng is being a ected by the solution and these are some of the results. It’s diminishing the preoccupation of the mental obsession and what happens is you become aware of being conscious now.
BB: As we felt new power flow in,.. Paul: This is one of the most powerful things because we’ve been living on fumes. Sel ng has no power. It plays God because it isn’t God. It’s doesn’t have any God juice, it’s using our God juice basically to play with. That’s what it does because we are identi ed with it. We’ve unwillingly given over our God juice, in a sense, to this parasite and it’s making a mental world for us to inhabit.
BB:..as we enjoyed peace of mind,.. Paul: If your head is constructed and beholden to time, even if peace of mind broke, how much would you enjoy it? Wouldn’t your mind think, “Hey, it may not be here tomorrow.” How can you enjoy the peace of mind if you are invested in time? Peace of mind is from timelessness, it’s not a quality of time. If you have peace in time, it’s gonna provoke anxiety because you’re gonna be afraid that you will lose it. If you realize it’s of Under A-Rest timelessness, you realize there are no restrictions to your entertaining it, then there is an ability to relax in the peace. You can’t relax into timelessness from self, because self is constructed of time.
it’s the ‘my’, it’s the identi cation as the mind. It’s the thought of being the thinker that gives the thoughts the juice they have. Would you blame the radio for the music playing through it?
In other words, if you are going to have a real strong sense of Spirit’s presence, there’s gotta be a real strong sense of your own absence. Like Saint Francis of Assisi said, “It is in dying to self that we are born to eternal life.”
became conscious of the presence of Spirit, which I believe is my own presence, as I lost interest in the mental process called sel ng. It’s only because I started losing interest in the mental process of sel ng. That’s what this thing does, it produces a fake appearance, it’s totally consumed in you and you become the presence in life and what’s truly present
seems to be absent and now you’re looking for it all day.
“What self defeated you?” Everyone would have the same answer, and it would be ‘my’ self. ‘My’ self defeated me. It’s not self that defeats us, it’s the identi cation as self that opens us up to its defeat. If we are not that, we can be free of its e ects by not calling them ours. How can self manifest so much in our life? It’s in our relationships, it goes into our ambition for our nancial security, it goes into our work life. How come it’s splattering all its e ects throughout our life? Because every time it comes into
Under A-Rest Instead of being in the football game, your attention is listening to the color commentator about the game. And it’s comment is bias, it’s not even close to what’s happening. We are living in interpretation instead of living life. We have been seemingly taken over.
Resentment seems to attack you and fear is actually projected out. So you’re actually looking at where you’re coming from, not what’s happening out there. With resentment, we follow the outside Under A-Rest trail to get back to the inside, but in fear we start from the inside to look out.
The funny thing is I found in my sexual inventory that very rarely was I having sex for sex sake. I was having sex for self-esteem. I was in so much guilt and shame about how I was living that I had to convince myself that I was okay against tons of evidence that I wasn’t.
They don’t drink again or use again but they want to shut that thing o, they can’t separate themselves from it. They think it’s them, so they kill themselves. To get some peace from it. Instead of getting hit by the tail of the beast, you start seeing it from head to tail. One parasite with only a very limited amount of characteristics expressing through thousands of hosts and each host is speaking as if the parasite’s characteristics are their own.
(The pause: first sighting of true nature and the ground of new freedom)
In my experience the pause is like a timeless moment in a moment in time. It’s what makes a new happiness and a new freedom possible. The pause was the rst sighting of what I really am in this action gure life.
Why not see that you are not a somewhere and that’s everywhere. That’s the freedom. The freedom isn’t for me, the freedom is from me.