You just keep going back to something that actually repulses you. It maybe sniffing the vomit or wallowing in the mud, but you keep returning to foolishness. Perhaps it’s a change of heart that’s needed.
They kept on repeatedly going back to experience the same abuse.
They could see that it wasn’t healthy for them, others told them too. There was something magnetic about the pull to return.
- I feel empty and numb afterward but watching porn takes me to a place ever so briefly of feeling loved and valued.
- I hit the reality of loneliness but feeling held in the arms of the romance novel fairy tale stokes the dream.
- It may be destroying my marriage, but gambling stirs up feelings of being a rich, successful man.
- The abuse is painful, but there are also feelings of bodily pleasure.
- The bully attacks but I have a roof over my head.
- I’m disgusted that I wake up with a different man in my bed, but to be adored and desired feels good.
- The weight is piling on, but the taste of food brings so much comfort.
- I feel terrible in the morning but that ‘one more drink’ felt so good.
- I’m losing intimacy but to be in control is everything.
Your sipping poison from a chalice
that is beautiful and alluring.
Being brave asks why
It takes someone to be brave to ask the below surface question of why.
Why do dogs return to their vomit?
Why does a pig that is washed return to wallowing in the mud?
Why does a fool return to their folly?
2 Peter 2:20-22 Proverbs 26:11
We want to get OUR needs met OUR way.
We are curved in on ourselves. Incurvatus in se. There is a subconscious pull to self-reliance.
I did it my way, and I’m going to continue doing it my way until, actually, my heart has a better option.
The reward is the reason
At the end of the curve, there is a reward, and it isn’t a pot of gold.
The feeling of being secure, loved, desired, powerful, achieving, comfort, in control, sugary sweetness. Name your chalice, and you’ll find your poison.
When you discover that false reward you will always find pathways that offer promises to take you there.
Those pathways can be like ‘all roads lead to Rome.’ It’s a common thread in your life that you keep doing these things to get the desired result, but in the end, you’re left empty-handed.
The brain takes its shape
Some quotes
Whatever we repeatedly sense and feel and want and think is slowly but surely sculpting neural [brain] structure. Rick Hanson
The brain takes its shape from what the mind rests upon. Rick Hanson
Sow a thought, reap an act,
Sow an act, reap a habit,
Sow a habit, reap a character,
Sow a character, reap an eternal destiny
William Makepeace Thackeray
I know people in their senior years that are still acting like infants in their thinking. They have taken the same thinking tracks for years and years, and these routes have become ruts. Deep grand canyon thinking ruts.
Their character and eternal destiny have grown out of the thoughts and acts they have repeatedly sown and reaped.
Willpower is not enough to stop going back
Will-power is not enough in itself.
Try relying on will-power, and you will inevitably feel defeated and hopeless.
Will-power will falter when you’re Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired, Stressed or Sick. (HALTS).
The power of the will abandons the building when the magnetic pull of the habit knocks on the door.
Also, the desire to change can be so flimsy. One addict told me ‘You’ll always find a reason’ (to have that one drink).
Guardrails
Until you are fully convinced in your mind and heart that this path is dangerous, then you will always be vulnerable.
The top of that slippery slope is always connected to the bottom, so it’s time to build some guardrails.
Guardrails are those protective devices that you set up long before reaching that point of potential destruction.
Even more so you need to grow a new identity.
New identity
Something deep within you has to slowly grow. It’s a strength, an acceptance of yourself, a love of you as a person separate to anything else. It’s not a self-love narcissism, more so it’s a solidness of self-acceptance.
Real progress begins when we adopt a new and different identity. An identity that portrays your truest self. Loved, valued, beautiful, strong.
We nurture and feed this new identity with truth. We speak grace and kindness to failings.
Then the appeal of those lesser things may begin to lose the power they have over. You are drawn to first things.
The woman who makes a dog the centre of her life loses, in the end, not only her human usefulness and dignity but even the proper pleasure of dog-keeping.
The man who makes alcohol his chief good loses not only his job but his palate and all power of enjoying the earlier (and only pleasurable) levels of intoxication.
It is a glorious thing to feel for a moment or two that the whole meaning of the universe is summed up in one woman—glorious so long as other duties and pleasures keep tearing you away from her. But clear the decks and so arrange your life (it is sometimes feasible) that you will have nothing to do but contemplate her, and what happens?
Of course this law has been discovered before, but it will stand re-discovery. It may be stated as follows: every preference of a small good to a great, or partial good to a total good, involves the loss of the small or partial good for which the sacrifice is made.
. . . You can’t get second things by putting them first. You get second things only by putting first things first.
—C.S. Lewis, “First and Second Things,” in God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics(Eerdmans, 1994), p. 280.
What have you been putting in first place where it actually needs to be in second place?
Quotes to consider
- As long as you’re convinced that you can’t change, you won’t try. William Backus and Marie Chapian
- It’s healthy to challenge the origin of your own desires. Why is it that you want it so much? Desires can so easily become dictators. D. Riddell
- True spirituality is not about running away from your desires it’s about going into the heart of them. Rob Bell episode 63 robcast
- When our needs are met, we are secure and significant. When our desires are met, we feel secure and significant. When our desires are not met, we hurt. But because our need to be a worthwhile person is met in Christ whether we feel it or not, we can choose to maintain the goal of ministering to a spouse who is failing to meet our desires. Larry Crabb The Marriage Builder
- A desire is an objective that I may legitimately and fervently want, but cannot reach through my efforts alone. Larry Crabb
- Transformation is seldom truly desired by most Christians or welcomed by most churches. Most of us prefer to keep the change process under our control and limited to the small tinkerings associated with our self-improvement projects. David G. Benner
Questions to answer
- What is something that you do but you don’t want to, but you keep going back to it?
- The pull to have a lesser thing, a secondary pleasure is always there. What has to happen in us that cultivates the desire for something divinely better?
- If you always do what you’ve always done you’ll always get what you’ve always got. What needs to change within you to get something better?
Barry Pearman
Image cc: Simone Acquaroli
https://turningthepage.co.nz/7-steps-to-make-life-changing-guardrails/
