Isn't the best path to stop addiction the recognition of our heavenly Father as God?

[peter2]

Such at least is the translation of the "our Father" prayer in my TOB version (that He makes himself recognized as God), these words being usually replaced by "hallowed be thy name".
Now, what'His name but the one He gave to Moses? I am.
How peaceful this name is; no need to be anything or anybody else for him. And if we actually hallow this name, how respectful we'll be of the deep nature of our neighbours, not requiring from these fellowcreatures to be somebody else.
Doesn't this inside attitude ward off the temptation that led Eve and Adam to become slaves of sin, as Jesus named this human status with regard to sin, in John? May be can we pray the Son to free us from this slavery, at the origin of which I personally wonder wether every addiction stems from or not. Is it, or not a proper and, above all, a christian thinking? what's your opinion about it? I hope it'll be received as an, at least, altruistic one.

 

[Petros2015]

It is. Much of the addictive nature is placing the Self or something else in place of God. I wonder if all addiction is not at it's root an addiction to emotional states, and chemicals or people or other things are used as the means to get there. We prefer the other state to reality. Reality is where God is though and calls us to be. God is the God of reality. When we try to create our own reality, we are trying to be God or trying to put something in place of Him. It doesn't work. Eventually after living in or fleeing to our own escapes, things go bad. I like Lewis's quote:

It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.

And that is what happens to the addict - we stay in our eggs and go bad. The longer I stayed in, the more I resented the outside world which I could not control, and the less I could cope with it.

God though, can give new life to bad eggs. There is still lots of work to do, and it is hard to hatch, and hard to learn to walk. It's a big world - much bigger than an egg. With a big God. Much bigger than Me.

 

[peter2]

And that is what happens to the addict - we stay in our eggs and go bad. The longer I stayed in, the more I resented the outside world which I could not control, and the less I could cope with it.

hello Petros,
Are you still in this situation? If yes, what works with me is the parable of the buried talent, which led his possessor to the still worse situation of being called lazy servant by his master.
I relate it too to the temptation of throwing oneself down from up the temple, that is to let oneself be fascinated by the nothingness. The opposite side of this temptation, the taste for control, would be to let oneself be fascinated by the everythingness, not far from all the worldly glory Satan proposed to give to Jesus, in the other temptation. For me, it's as if there was a kind of balance to be find by mankind, on the narrow path between.
I hope you'll not find too violent for yourself this thinking, for indeed I found it so, as soon as it occurred to me; It can be justified by the hope it can also be a healing starting point.
God bless,
a truthseeker

 

[Petros2015]

I am moving away from it, it is a process. Those are good parables, especially the talent always strikes me as what I did. I am trying to unbury it.

 

[peter2]

The christian faithfulness of the apostles was not succesfully tested before they had received the Holy Spirit. Before that, it was useless to ask Peter to act as a hero when he denied Jesus.
May be it would have been an easy mean to experiment to go to confession and to receive also the confirmation, if such practises exist in the eastern orthodox denomination. Sometimes, it is enough to catch faith and to render oneself confident.
Yet especially today and for us catholic, it's also a sure lead to follow that this of Mary, who the first, and with her humility, recognized Gabriel as an angel sent by God, speaking undoubtedly words of truth, as distinct from Eve who didn't recognize God's voice as speaking undoubtedly trustworthy words. In both cases, God didn't lie. He is able to tell what leads from eternal life to death to Adam and Eve, and when eternal life can spring from a presumably mortal body, with Mary. Of course, since He can't deny himself, that is, He is the truth.