Re: Aligned Self
In-Reply-To: <B0000006935@coqueiro.cpunet.com.br>
The subject of Core Transformation (CT)and finding a spiritual direction
for the new, sober life, was mentioned. Now, please read on...
The spiritual dimension is very interesting: it underpins AA to a degree
that very few appreciate. (What are the Steps, other than Biblical
Commandments? And the meetings, the Catholic Confessional... and even the
ritual, incense... the cigarette fug?)
AA was founded as the result of Carl Jung (hugely underrated, I suggest)
telling a patient he could not cure the man's addiction to alcohol and
suggested he go away and seek a religious conversion, as a last resort.
He did... and it worked.
This man, 'Ebby', later ran into an old drinking buddy 'Bill W' and
turned down the latter's invitation to a drink, to Bill's astonishment.
When he heard the full story, 'Bill W', too, set out for spiritual
conversion. Within weeks he had stopped drinking and shortly afterwards
founded AA.
Now the interesting part... Twenty years later, 'Bill W' contacted Carl
Jung. Jung said he was delighted at the progress of AA (to his credit)
and stated that the following had occurred to him: perhaps alcoholism was
a spiritual disorder and that alcoholics were people with a greater
thrust for the spiritual dimension than others...
For more on this, read Chapter 8 'Addiction' from 'Further along the less
travelled path', by M Scott Peck, ISBN 0-671-71356-6 (READ ANYTHING BY
HIM!). It's very interesting stuff. He suggests that alcoholics have a
yearning for a womb-like Paradise - a lost, warm fuzzy sense of oneness
with the universe - to 'go home'. This regressive inclination must be
transformed into an urge go forwards to 'home', across 'the desert',
rather than backwards, he suggests - hence the NLP CT application, I
suggest.
Best wishes
Patrick Rea, London, England - Nov 25 1996
prea@cix.compulink.co.uk