Salutation # 55
"Saints and Addicts are the same -
both are born of great loves;
one is a love born of things below,
the other a love of all things above.
And freedom is to know.
(13 Responses to the Evil of Drug Addiction: A Salutation to Recovery and Personal Transformation)
These 13 Responses I write
for all who suffer from drug addiction,
the victims and their victims.
To those who prayed for me,
my thanks and appreciation -
I send you all my love.
I write this primarily for those
who are suffering as I am
from the scourge of drug addiction.
For your inspiration...
(1) To the Addict Soul -
So may Peace be unto your heart
- as pristine as the dew of the early morning -
my heart speaking unto your heart, O my precious beloved,
about the evils inherent to the global problem of drug addiction,
addressed to relevant segments of our suffering humanity,
as an aid to our one whole understanding
in behalf of those who still suffer in the darkness -
for the danger of drug abuse affects all human beings.
I do not blame you
nor do I pretend to judge you
for I am to you as I really am,
a peer and an equal in common creation.
I am here not for your sins but for your hope.
Do not empower the past.
Whatever the cause of your addiction to drugs,
it belongs - Now - to the past.
Let the past go and accept it as it is, gone.
It shall never serve you to dwell on things
- that have already moved on -
for there is nothing to be found by looking back,
we stand only to lose ourselves in the attempt.
Never forsake the choice that leads out of the darkness
even though it is difficult to see where the darkness ends.
Believe in your recovery and your recovery will believe in you.
Never believe in your addiction,
however deeply you find yourself mired in it,
it is an illusion that will rob you of your chance to be truly happy.
Look deeply into the present
and you will find hope where you once had none.
For many people in this world suffer - as we do -
and from various ills and pains
but it is not the severity of their suffering
nor the degrees that we are better off than others
that should console us - it is their common hope;
a hope all human beings may meaningfully understand.
For in the hope of our family and friends
we are empowered - despite ourselves -
to give remedy to the evil that plague our soul
making us blind to our own need to recover.
Believe in the person who believes in your recovery.
For hope empowers hope,
hope being the very language of the human spirit,
it is communicated freely among our souls
as a network of common relief
that save against despair
the truth that lives in other people's lives.
As our ability to accept help from others grow,
we witness our own hopes begin to grow.
There is a certain solidarity in human suffering
but there can never be any consolation to be had
from every and all forms of human suffering
whether one suffers more or less than others.
Suffering does not serve to empower
those who are outside it's fold of experience - as a matter of fact,
it is a cause of much of our complacency.
Those who do nothing in the name of anything
- in the face of human suffering -
do not understand what it means to be human.
For to be human is to be defined by common needs.
- selah -
What then is above you
and what is there below you, O Man,
that you should forsake yourself?
Shall you be what you are not
and relinquish the hope of your existence?
Drugs are an evil,
commit that this evil shall meet it's end with you,
never introduce this evil to other souls.
Pray and then pray for each other.
As human beings,
we are powerless against the overwhelming evil of drug addiction,
let us humbly admit to this powerlessness
and willingly relinquish control of this part of our lives over to God -
to the LORD Who knows
- when and how -
to deliver Man from every evil.
And commit to do this sooner than later.
(2) To the Unconcerned world of empty promises -
The world at large is a vast and empty wilderness,
- it is a desolation of war -
dangerous for our isolation
as wild and as rugged as the tracts of our inhabited earth
and made even more dangerous by the predatory malignancy
of the cognizant evil that intelligently prowl
the darkness of this open landscape
for those souls - who -
with complete disregard for it's own safety
have wandered too far away from the LORD
and the shelter of our communities.
Will the world show concern
- for those unhappy souls -
who have wandered too close
to the gaping maw of the beast?
Perhaps it will
- but often -
with a certain flimsiness that betray it's true colors.
For in principle,
- the world at large -
will never side with the weak.
There is a kind of superiority
in the world at large
that with much thunder and noise
hide the cowardly will
behind the shallow action and token gestures
that does so little for the Sacred Life
of the very least of our one family of humanity.
It will be foolhardy to place our sacred trust
onto the unproven conventions of the Unconcerned world;
a world that without us, become empty of it's own promise.
Until we have regained a sovereign majority
- under this greater season of heaven -
until we have reclaimed those vast tracts of the human spirit
that we have in the past been compelled to abandon
- to the ravages of war as a whole -
we will never be sure about this world and it's conventions.
Therefore,
the world as it is today - will never understand -
that the evil that is endemic to drug addiction
- is not the human being -
of whose hopes we wish to redeem;
it will see the evil, condemn it, stigmatize and ridicule the victim
and push it out of way and out of sight.
(3) To the Broken Family about the aftermath -
Those so-called modern trends
the degrade and devalue the synergistic strength
of the complementary unity between male and female
- are just that - they are trends,
an indication of the fickle nature of the world at large.
Those who are deceived by the easy convenience
of these so-called modern trends
resort to bargain away
the infinitely precious calling of the human family
in exchange for an uncertain future that one perceives to be happiness
- all because of a failure to meet the Beloved -
in those private precincts of the timeless heart
within those specific places where it really matters.
As a result,
these families will never attain to their greatest potency.
And the children will suffer through what in these evil days
are called social sins and will be weeded out
not according to our common spirit of humanity
that believes not in depriving them of their dignity and promise
but according to the law of the jungle.
This failure of the family - will then -
become transmitted onto the greater communities
as a certain subtle belligerence pervades
like a hidden, festering, spreading rot
borne by the greater body of any society
of whose significant potential for the future
that it entrusts to the human family
has already been effectively precluded
from the reality of our common human hopes.
The stronger the trend, the greater the effect.
Indeed, to sum it all up,
divorce trends are nothing more than failures
that are enabled to perpetuate itself.
Who bears the burdens?
(4) To the Family who is concerned about drug abuse -
Indeed,
this is an evil that all concerned human families
must be able to effectively defend from
and completely repel right at the very threshold of the family home.
(I have significantly dealt with this subject in my previous work.)
(5) To the Youth who questions the evil of drug abuse -
Hear no evil, speak no evil and see no evil.
Have your parents ever told you
that this saying goes for a particular form of evil?
This is the evil of drug abuse;
an evil whose allure is it's greatest peril!
Of the many evils in this day,
this one is dealt with specifically by our ignoring it's presence
where it directly concerns our lives.
Hear no evil, speak no evil and see no evil.
However to ignore this in the lives of others
without even connecting to - even a glimmer - of their hope
is inhuman.
(6) To the Addict who still doesn't know -
If you give in to the void of illusion
and accede - in your will -
to the slavery - of the lie -
at the core of every evil,
specifically the evil of drug abuse,
- you effectively commit -
one of the greatest crimes you may inflict
- against your own humanity -
for you will stand to lose yourself
within the confines of the darkness
within your own self.
You will become the lie within the lie.
The void of illusion
- once the choice waxes absolute -
is a hellish existence;
completely empty of any glimmer
of a meaningfulness that assure the soul
and gives breath to the body.
Amidst even the deepest of darkness
where the grace of God is greatest
thou shalt be unmindful of thy salvation
being unable to reach out with thy own power
- to the freedom of the truth -
that there is a wonderful reason for thy being;
that thy life is meant to fulfill thy purpose of happiness
- upon our native earth and sky -
and that this purpose has our good in Mind
because the LORD is God!
What have led you to betray your own self;
what have caused you to commit this treason?
Admit to the problem
and acknowledge thy own confusion
and let yourself be grounded upon the truth
before your own realities turn into those falsities
that will imprison you and throw away the keys.
No one will be cognizant enough
to know where you really stand
- within your own heart -
to be able to help your soul.
(7) To the Addict who is still suffering -
Do not empower the habit.
Let go of your own rational control
and admit that you are powerless against this evil.
This habit responds by degrees
that we draw near to this evil
- it has great allure -
but at it's core is an emptiness
- which is actually the body of the lie itself -
commensurate in size
to the greatness of it's temptation.
(8) To the Addict who admits to the problem -
Admit to Almighty God the problem.
Admit to Almighty God all of the problem.
Surrender control of this part of your life
to the care of the Divine Will and cling to this trust,
taking it day by day, moment by moment,
rebuilding and regenerating your integral whole,
with hope upon hope, grace upon grace,
and strength upon strength.
Prepare yourself.
It will be difficult - before it gets even close -
to getting any better.
Speak to a safe person.
(9) To the Addict who seeks for solutions -
This evil escapes the power of reason
- and eludes faith -
do not seek for answers
- by searching for it -
for in so doing you empower
- it's temptation -
to cast it's adulterous stench upon your soul.
Admit to the problem
and forgo all understanding of this evil.
Make it an integral part of your necessary surrender
to the will of the Almighty Who knows
when and how to deliver all men from evil.
Repair all relationships -
vertical and then horizontal.
(10) To the Addict who aspires to greater evil -
Do not become the illusion that you pretend to be -
we are real human beings
who live in a real world
with real concerns
and a real potential with God's grace
for doing an infinite amount of good.
Have We become your own illusion
or have the tiny confines of the lie
become your one absolute reality?
Never be compatible with evil - actively resist it,
even where your are in the very thick of it all,
even when it seems you have exhausted all ways and means,
until your realize the truth,
you must never cease to struggle against
the evil in all evil things.
(11) To the Addict who deceives the innocent into drugs -
A murderer who deceives his or her victims
- into the snare -
in order to take away their lives
is about the same in terms of gravity
to one who deceives others into losing
the completeness of their integrity,
for it is an integrity you can never bring back.
A human being has three lives,
one is the life in the soul,
the other is the life of the body
and the third is the life of his or her name;
the honor of a person's reputation
- that enable and empower -
every person's connection with other persons.
All three once taken away,
as one does who recklessly murder the innocence of our youth
and plunder the integrity of our brothers and sisters in Creation,
only an act of God, can ever restore.
Think about your own incompatibility with evil
and where you are deceived into thinking that you are
one of those who are compatible with evil,
think about your own incompatibility with death
for that is the permanent destination of all evil things.
(12) To the Pusher who deceives the innocent into drugs -
Why do you forsake your own nobility?
Or have you already lost your own sense of humanity?
You pretend to speak in the tongue of the truth
while the intentions within your own heart
contain something else completely!
Have you two hearts to contain your double mindedness?
Or a forked tongue that is sundered like the peace within yourself?
- selah -
Ponder your own thoughts
and return to your own sense of honorable remembrance,
DO NOT disturb the waters of our common community.
(13) To the Dealer who profits from dangerous drugs -
Everything turns to ashes eventually - but as for evil,
it has been a decree from Eternity,
your Satan will turn into ashes from the inside,
and the Devil who is your defeated lord
will stand as your own tormentor after he leads you
and all the reprobate angels and men into very bowels of hell.
For the wages of thy sin is thus - unless thou repent -
you will die an everlasting death.
- selah -
Glory to God the Father in the highest
Adoration to Jesus Christ
may the LORD restore - all addict souls -
to sanity and may the Spirit of God
bring us back to the hard and narrow way of salvation;
a way that though - as hard and as narrow -
as the old way of our active addiction
is the only way that leads away from the past
into to the life and the happiness
that we all desire - and desire so intensely -
so as to burn with the overwhelming power of our addictions.
May we learn to love the right things -
may we learn to be truly free
and to find happiness and security
- in the knowledge of the Truth -
that to love the LORD is to forsake the idolatry of drugs.
Ultimately,
after our convictions are proven in time
- by the grace of God -
and the help of family, friends, community and nation
we shall become who we must be...
---<--@
Saint Maximilian Kolbe, Patron Saint of the Suffering Addict and Refuge of the Recovering Addict, pray for us who have recourse to thee!
---<--@
A Bruised Wing
I saw half an angel wing once...
glimmering in the quiet of a corner;
I sought to fight off the vision -
or I thought I could for I was an ignorant fool
now I know what the vision was for.
God gave me a bruised wing
that I may be able to more sweetly sing
of His great love for me.
He fettered me with pain
to see me through the storm
and limited my powers of flight
to see me through the night.
God gave me a bruised wing
that I may be able to more sweetly sing
of His great love for me.
---<--@
If my recovery is the only gift I can give, then let it be the greatest gift I can give.
---<--@
Mabuhay ka kapatid ko, at mabuhay ang Pilipinas nating lahat. God bless us all!
Hope Taking wing
NOTE: For more on this particular issue (addiction and recovery) please refer to my secondary blog: My Recovery First Journal
My Miyang believed in my recovery long before I ever did.