Surrender:Addiction and aversion. Attachment and desire

[Anonymous_1]

The path to peace is the unification of desire.

“Set aside your selfish ambition, take up your cross, and follow me.”

There are things within me that prevent me from fully surrendering to God including selfish ambition, desire, addiction, attachment, fear, aversion to suffering and sacrifice, etc.

However, I sense that this life journey is about our surrender to God as an act of love. By saying yes to God over ourselves and our desires, our love for Him is perfected and manisfested. Afterall, this is the way that Christ exemplified for us.

Addiction and attachment to various pleasures and the pursuit of fulfilment of my insatiable, hedonistic wants and desires make it difficult, if not impossible to freely serve God.

“I beat my body and make it my slave.”
I need to be disciplined. The problem is that I have a very addictive personality and I often compulsivley repeat my mistakes over and over again. I’ll pray about something and make a decision to stop, then, the thought comes, which turns t o an obsession, and I make the mistake over again.

I struggle with this surrender and feel like I really fail to surrender in light of my own cosncience(what I feel is the right thing to do in a given situation), knowledge, etc. How can I grow in willingness, strength and faith?

 

[dulcissima]

Know that you are not alone in your struggles. Turn to God and to the saints for help. Let their prayers strengthen and sustain you.

“Addiction and attachment to various pleasures and the pursuit of fulfilment of my insatiable, hedonistic wants and desires make it difficult, if not impossible to freely serve God.”

“I often compulsivley repeat my mistakes over and over again.”

Clearly that pleasure to which you keep turning, again and again, is not bringing you any real satisfaction. The pleasure is therefore just an illusion. Empty yourself of all your hedonistic wants and desires, and let God fill you up with what is real and what truly satisfies.

St John of the Cross describes how to slip away, hidden, from such enemies as the devil, the world, and the flesh, and that is by cloaking yourself in the virtues of faith, hope, and charity.

“…for faith is an inward tunic of whiteness so pure that it completely dazzles the eyes of the understanding. And thus when the soul journeys in vestment of faith, the devil can neither see it nor succeed in harming it, since it is well protected by faith - more so than by all the other virtues - against the devil, who is at once the strongest and the most cunning of enemies.”

“…the soul can not put on a better vest and tunic, to serve as a foundation and beginning of the other vestments of the virtues, than this white garment of faith, for without it, as the Apostle says, it is impossible to please God, and with it, it is impossible to fail to please Him…”

“Next over this white tunic of faith the soul now puts on the second colour, which is the green vestment. By this, as we said, is signified the virtue of hope, wherewith, as in the first case, the soul is delivered and protected from the second enemy, which is the world. For this green colour of living hope in God gives the soul such an ardour and courage and aspiration to the things of
eternal life that, by comparison with what it hopes for therein, all things of the world seem to be, as in truth they are, dry and faded and dead and nothing worth…”

“…over the white and green vestments, as the crown and perfection of this disguise and livery, the soul now puts on the third colour, which is a splendid garment of purple. By this is denoted the third virtue, which is charity…This livery of charity which is that of love causes greater love in the Beloved, not only
protects the soul and hides it from its third enemy, which is the flesh…but even gives wirth to the other virtues, bestowing on them vigour and strength to protect the soul, and grace and beauty to please the Beloved with them, for without charity, no virtue has grace before God.”

“…For faith voids and darkens the understanding as to all its natural intelligence, and herin prepares it for union with Divine Wisdom. Hope voids and withdraws the memory from all creature possessions, for as Saint Paul says, hope is for that which is not possessed; and thus it withdraws the memory from that which it is capable of possessing, and sets it on that for which it hopes. And for this cause hope in God alone prepares the memory purely for union with God. Charity, in the same way, voids and annihilates the affections and desires of the will for whatever is not God, and sets them upon Him alone; and thus this virtue prepares this faculty and unites it with God through love…”

 

[Anonymous_1]

very interesting. Thank you.