“If a man has no sense of meaning, he will numb himself with pleasure.”
— Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning
(via Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Finding True Intimacy by Donald Miller)
Category: SOBRIETY
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The demons generally produce in us the opposite of what has just been said. For when they take possession of the soul and extinguish the light of the mind, then there is no longer in us poor wretches either sobriety, or discernment, or self-knowledge or shame; but there is indifference, lack of perception, want of discernment and blindness.
What has just been said is known very vividly by those who have subdued their lust in order to become chaste, who have curbed their freedom of speech and have changed from shamelessness to modesty. They know how after the sobering of the mind, after the ending of its blindness, or rather its maiming, they are inwardly ashamed of themselves for what they said and did before when they were living in blindness.
—St. John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent
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The fact that most of us experience throughout most of our lives a sense of absence or distance from God is the great illusion that we are caught up in; it is the human condition. The sense of separation from God is real, but the meeting of stillness reveals that this perceived separation does not have the last word. This illusion of separation is generated by the mind and is sustained by the riveting of our attention to the interior soap opera, the constant chatter of the cocktail party going on in our heads. For most of us this is what normal is, and we are good at coming up with ways of coping with this perceived separation (our consumer-driven entertainment culture takes care of much of it). But some of us are not so good at coping, and so we drink ourselves into oblivion or cut or burn ourselves “so that the pain will be in a different place and on the outside.”
Into the Silent Land: A Guide to the Christian Practice of Contemplation
Martin Laird -
James has had only one slip in five years. But on any given day there could be a near miss. He looks and acts perfectly normal. “People look at me and presume that because I appear to be reasonably well put together, everything is fine. They have no idea what it is like for me on the inside, how each day is an ordeal just coping with the storms of chaos in my mind.”
Into the Silent Land: A Guide to the Christian Practice of Contemplation
Martin Laird -
“The problem with my head is that it’s not content with peace of mind. I can be having a wonderful day, and then out of the blue something in me begins the pre-use ritual. I’ll start checking to see if I want to use. If I don’t want to use, my mind often won’t be content that way. It will try to scratch the itch to make it itch so that I can then scratch it. My heart begins to pound and my stomach tightens and shudders. This fragmented craving will be moving in several directions at once. There’s the memory of the thrilling rush. There’s my present awareness that, since I’ve stopped using, the so-called rush never was so thrilling but more of a muzzle over my pain and anxiety. And there’s the seductive voice of the future that says, ‘Yes, but this time it will work. It’ll be wonderful. You can control it. No one will know.’ All these are colliding in my head.”
James’ struggle with this demon doesn’t differ much from Evagrius’ description of the demon stirring “thoughts of various affairs by means of the memory. He [the demon] stirs up all the passions…. In this way he hopes to offer some obstacle to that excellent course pursued in prayer on the journey toward God.”
Into the Silent Land: A Guide to the Christian Practice of Contemplation
Martin Laird -
“I felt like sobriety was my secret weapon.”
—David Cain, Beer and Coffee: My Problem Children, Put to Bed at Last -
I can’t remember a day since I got out of college when I wasn’t boozing or had a spliff, or something. Something. And you realize that a lot of it is, um—cigarettes, you know, pacifiers. And I’m running from feelings. I’m really, really happy to be done with all of that. I mean I stopped everything except boozing when I started my family. But even this last year, you know—things I wasn’t dealing with. I was boozing too much. It’s just become a problem. And I’m really happy it’s been half a year now, which is bittersweet, but I’ve got my feelings in my fingertips again. I think that’s part of the human challenge: You either deny them all of your life or you answer them and evolve.
Brad Pitt Talks Divorce, Quitting Drinking, and Becoming a Better Man (via highsnobiety)
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How about alcohol—you don’t miss it?
I mean, we have a winery. I enjoy wine very, very much, but I just ran it to the ground. I had to step away for a minute. And truthfully I could drink a Russian under the table with his own vodka. I was a professional. I was good.
So how do you just drop it like that?
Don’t want to live that way anymore.
Brad Pitt Talks Divorce, Quitting Drinking, and Becoming a Better Man (via highsnobiety)
SO GOOD QUOTES 