Thursday, July 19, 2012

Addicted to Samsara


"All we need to do to receive direct help is to ask. Didn't Christ say: 'Ask and it shall be given you; seek and you shall find; knock and it shall be opened unto you. Everyone that asks receives; and he that seeks finds'? And yet asking is what we find hardest. Many of us, I feel, hardly know how to ask. Sometimes it is because we are arrogant, sometimes because we are unwilling to seek help, sometimes because we are lazy, and sometimes because our minds are so busy with questions, distractions, and confusion that the simplicity of asking does not occur to us.
               The turning point in any healing of alcoholics or drug addicts is when they admit their illness and ask for aid. In one way or another, we are all addicts of samsara; the moment when help can come for us is when we admit our addiction and simply ask."

GLIMPSE AFTER GLIMPSE
 Sogyal Rinpoche
July 19th


Isn't it amazing that some dude, who descended from the high Himalayas, came up with the same conclusions we in AA had to understand?
            Because "we are all addicted to samsara" is exactly why those of us who are addicts or alcoholics are oddly fortunate. We are fortunate because our behavior painted us into a corner where we ceded to a spiritual solution. We could no longer avoid the consequences of a very personal samsara… a self-centeredness that had accumulated and forced us to take active steps if we were to be free from the grip of our disease. It would appear to be enough to have our obsession relieved but it is entirely another thing to proceed from there. The discovery that the "samsara" the Rinpoche speaks of was the root cause of my disease drove me to seek a way to escape its spider web. That discovery revealed I needed something more than to be dry. It was also impossible to do so on my own. It was humbling to admit to myself, let alone another human being or some mysterious "Higher Power", that I needed help. However, the very things I avoided with all my heart was exactly what I needed. Why then should I not apply the same liberating surrender before the Heart of Compassion to the rest of my life?
           



geo 4,827

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