jtg@cbnewsc.ATT.COM (Kathy Glomski) (01/19/90)
I found out about your newsgroup to someone who wrote me. I am presently focusing attention on talk.religion.newage, so if you care to write me or have a question about the following material, please know that I may not see it if you post back into alt.recovery. If you write me privately, I can respond, but presently am not able to read all the postings in alt.recovery. Some time ago I did some postings in t.r.na. about the dark night of the soul. Today I received in the mail a tape I ordered that I wanted to mention to you...it is entitled "Addiction As Spiritual Emergency" by Christina Grof. From what I understand, Christina had kundalini experiences and additionally became chemically dependent.. so this talk may possibly be of great interest to some of you in this position. I would like to quote some of her statements on the tape, to give you some idea of what you may find on this tape, should you feel led to purchase it: "Every alcoholic or addict experiences an internal loss. I love the term 'spiritual bankruptcy' or 'soul sickness' which cuts them off from their inner resources and the world around them. They enter the dark night of the soul and wrestle the same demons of fear, lone- liness, insanity, and death, that people in other forms of spiritual emergency wrestle with." --- "Whether or not they are facing a biological emergency, where they're physically DYING, each addict or alcoholic moves progressively toward a total emotional, physical and emotional annihilation. As that experience approaches, suicide seems to be the only way out for some people. The only way out for such a desperate dilemma--and people caught in that hopeless spiral toward destruction have no under- standing, that this is only a PHASE--this is the death phase of what could possibly be a death-rebirth process and so, people DO kill themselves in this process, and you know the grim statistics that reinforce that, what they don't know is that this is the turning point --this experience of losing everything internally is the gateway into a new way of BEING." ---- "...a person comes to a desperate point where his or her world is no longer working and that person is POWERLESS to control life. During the ego death, whether it occurs during an episode of spontaneous awakening, during spiritual practice, and some people will experience it in meditation, or at the bottom of a person's drinking career--every one that is or was, all rlationship and reference points--all ego games, all defenses, denials, COLLAPSE, and the person is left naked with nothing but the core of one's being." ---- Here Christina quotes D.H. Lawrence, the poet, who wrote a lot about The Phoenix: "Are you willing to be sponed out, erased, cancelled, made nothing? Are you willing to be made nothing, dipped into oblivion? If not, you will never really change." ----- If you are interested in obtaining this talk, write to: Eupsychian Press Publications PO Box 3090 Austin, Texas 78764 Ask for the tape, Addiction as Spiritual Emergency by Christina Grof ($9.00 plus $2 postage)....and ask for a list of all their books and tapes. Having felt myself this space of being totally POWERLESS, I can some degree identify with what many of you are going through. Once in a while I post in t.r.na.--maybe you will want to check this newsgroup out once in awhile. Take care, Kathy Glomski att!ihlpe!jtgdba (I think my 'spiritual emergency' was possibly because of a great desire to know God (Higher Power)...and I have spent many years meditating and seeking truth). I think many of you out there are very brave, courageous souls, and I send you love.