I have said before that forgiveness is the wellspring that extinguishes the fires of hell in our hearts.
Tonight’s meeting of Narcotics Anonymous at the monastery reiterated this concept in my mind. The other subject that came up this evening was the way in which fear can paralyse a person.
Forgiveness of oneself is as important as forgiving others. One of the primary aspects of confession should be helping people to forgive themselves once they have received God’s forgiveness. Failure to forgive oneself can also be crippling and could cause a person to fail in their struggle against addictions. This is an aspect that is often overlooked by those who hear confession.
Building up one’s self-esteem is also a necessary aspect of helping to achieve a remission of addictions. Addictions are diseases, and they should not be over moralized. Everything that helps to crush or lower a person’s self-esteem must be studiously avoided when working with people who are addicted. Addiction is never “cured”--they can only be put into remission. It is a life-long struggle to maintain their remission. One of the primary strengths of Narcotics Anonymous is the sincere co-suffering love among the people who attend these meetings. They really understand each other's suffering and are genuinely committed to helping each other in the struggle.
The notion often put forward that lowering self-esteem is a part of the spiritual life is simply wrong. I realise that it is often spoken of, but it is counterproductive and destructive.
Also, couching everything in terms of “sin” is often counterproductive also, and does nothing to get to the root of people’s problems. There is always some kind of fear or alienation at the root of many of people’s problems and failings.
Fear is the primary source of hate and anger and one needs to find out what the source of the fear is. Addiction is a special situation which is often genetic in its source. When people have low self-esteem and are crushed further with burdens of priest-imposed guilt and are told that the whole problem is sin, this is sheer ignorance on the part of the priest and it helps to push a person further down into the darkness.
Somehow we really have to master the concept of co-suffering love – we have to enter into the person suffering in order to help them. We must never forget that the word "passion" means suffering and that people often fall into sin because of the pressure of their inner human suffering which is seeking the safety valve.
[Vladika Lazar]
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