Strength Offices 662
A paragraph read at every FA meeting defines abstinence as follows:
“Food addicts have an allergy to flour, sugar and quantities that sets up an uncontrollable craving. The problem can be arrested a day at a time by the action of our weighing and measuring our food and abstaining completely from all flour and sugar.”
I have completely followed that regime for 14 years…and will continue to.
But, for me, it is caffeine that sets up an uncontrollable craving.
I cannot do what members of Food Addicts in Recovery Anonymous can do…and feel abstinent.
I am “bodily and mentally different from my fellows”.
Strength Offices 663
I am so grateful for the two simplest of things that give my life some of my greatest hope.
1)Counting my breaths, as I breathe deeply, and 2) surrendering each intruding thought as it enters my head.
With those two tools I can wander around, down inside myself, and look amiably for my soul…and on a blessed, healthy, lucky day…I can find it.
Strength Offices 664
HP,
I am grateful that the overwhelming desire to masturbate and the tsunami pull to cheat on my wife is gone.
I am grateful that the desire to intrigue, fantasize and objectify has been lifted.
I am grateful that comfort with chastity taught me that being without relationship was perfectly satisfying.
I am grateful for applying Saint Augustine’s maxim “Perfect moderation is more difficult than complete abstinence” to my wife and I’s physical intimacy.
It has required surrendering some things I seriously like, but that has actually made me more unselfish…and that’s good for me, spiritually.
Strength Offices 665
I am on rock solid ground not drinking caffeine.
The world feels like it’s trembling to me when I imbibe caffeine.
Of course it’s not the world trembling…It’s me.
Strength Offices 666
When someone says “It’s a beautiful day”…my first reaction is “Let’s get high!”
Where did that get hard-wired in my brain?
Joe V….the boy that introduced me to world of drugs, fast cars and faster motorcycles.
Notice, on finding it was a beautiful day Joe didn’t say “Let’s go to the park, work out, play guitars or be of service to somebody…he suggested “Let’s get high”.
In the Lighthearted Offices Confucius says “To see and listen to the wicked is already the beginning of wickedness”.
Strength Offices 667
I’m not sure all competition is bad.
I did my third 5 mile run in three days trying to recover from a hamstring injury.
I was only going 5 miles an hour, but I got passed three times, by three different people.
I got tired of it, and raced each one of them…and beat them.
Racing these three increased my speed 27% over yesterday’s run.
That’s good for my heart…
So, yeah, competition is good for me.