Our belief system is only tested when we are confronted with pain, suffering and chaos.
The reality of life shatters the lens of our worldview into a thousand pieces. We are left all alone in the darkness trying to pick up the pieces. This is a terrifying place to be caught in.
My search for meaning
He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how
Friedrich Nietzsch
The search for meaning to make sense of our suffering is as old as time itself. Belief systems attempt the impossible task of trying to explain “why” so we can move forward through the uncertainty and chaos.
One of the pitfalls I kept running into in my own search for meaning was false belief systems or ideas.
My soul longed for something deeper to quench its thirst but unfortunately, I didn’t have anything to satisfy it with except fast-food religion, materialism and addictions.
We may only think of addiction as a dependence on drugs and alcohol (substance addiction) but it is a whole lot wider than that. We can include the otherwise very “normal” daily activities into this category when it takes control of our will and has a negative impact on our well-being such as work, eating, shopping, using your phone or social media, religion, etc. (process addiction)
Workaholism is just like any other addiction
– Anne Wilson Schaef, When Society Becomes an Addict
This is something I have personally discovered to be true. These false ideas once embraced slowly harden into habits and become deeply embedded into the psyche. It becomes a part of who you are.
I was addicted to smoking for a good part of my adult life and it comes to a point where you think you cannot separate yourself from the destructive habit.
Addictive thinking leads to catastrophic consequences and eventually death because it causes us to lose our perspective and believe that we are the centre of the universe.
Addictive thinking distorts reality
“Alcoholics just have their powerlessness visible for all to see. The rest of us disguise it in different ways, and overcompensate for our more hidden and subtle addictions and attachments, especially our addiction to our way of thinking. We all take our own pattern of thinking as normative, logical and surely true, even when it does not fully compute. We keep doing the same thing over and over again, even if it is not working for us.”
– Richard Rohr, Breathing Underwater: Spirituality and the Twelve Steps
Exodus 