Ever since I first heard Archangel Michael talk about our addiction to pain, I chuckled to myself. How is he going to explain this one to people to whom it sounds foreign?
Everyone knows people are addicted to pleasure, not pain. The conventional wisdom is that we flee pain, run from it, hide from it, escape from it. It’s so obvious to every person on the planet that a human being seeks pleasure and avoids pain. How will he explain it being otherwise?
And then I got it.
Think of how much we’re under wraps. We’re all of us angelics and yet here we are, hanging out in the chaotic Third/Fourth Dimension, separated from our experience of love energy, force-fed a diet of self-righteousness and competitive strength (“I’m right. You’re wrong.” “We’re going to do it my way.”). This is no one’s idea of fun.
My mind says: If I can’t have fun (pleasure), I’m gonna kick and scream about it. I’m gonna be the worst rabble rouser you ever heard or saw. The world is gonna know about it.
And then we make trouble and pride ourselves on not being discovered doing it. That’s about how it goes, isn’t it? (1)
And we call it civilized society, western culture, our democratic way of life?
Yes, addicted to pain. Not knowingly. But, in the absence of the real love we know deep down, acting out and addicted to feelings like self-righteousness, vengefulness, greed, and so on. These bring pain in their train.
Addicted to gain. Addicted to revenge. How did Werner Erhard characterize our way of being – resist, resent, revenge?
We certainly aren’t addicted lo love and its various forms. We’re not addicted to the divine qualities. We may have flash-in-the-pan moments when we “go” with them for a while – after a tumultuous event, for instance. But by and large, when poked, we’re resist, resent, revenge, with or without a smile.
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What to do? Well, first of all, we as a society somehow need to stop. Resist, resent, revenge simply takes us further into emotional hell. Just cease and desist. We’re harming ourselves and opening ourselves to all manner of manipulation from the dark side.
Next, go another way. I have an idea. Go a way dictated by the divine qualities.
What I’m noticing, because I’m writing as I’m realizing, is that I can take any situation I face and approach it as a problem that’s going to rob me of energy or as a project I want to take on to make my life better.
The point of view I take on the matter is crucial in determining my approach to it and my actions.
Everything will be referred to my point of view to see if I’m being consistent. And of course we usually if not always make our point of view right anyways.
So I’d better know and watch what my point of view is.
Let me stop there. Step One in breaking any addiction to pain I may have: Create a constructive and wholesome point of view. Is this a project I want to take on to make my life better?
Footnotes
(1) Hindus have a word for it: thamas, the lethargic psychological state.