[Boleo]

Why is it that a person deprived of food for as little as 3 days can starve to death while another person can voluntarily fast for as much as 100 days and still survive? The answer to this physical question remains a medical mystery. The answer to the psychic riddle lies in something known as the power of intention.

The power of intention, in a nutshell says that the motives and expectations of a persons actions have an impact on their performance and outcome. Take for example optimism vs. pessimism. Countless songs, books and movies recount some person, group or team to having overcome seemingly overwhelming obstacles simply because they had the right attitude. While optimism can be used to explain the success of the fasting individual described above, there remains the question of where the optimism comes from in the first place. Optimism is not a simple matter of will-power or groundless positive thinking. Optimism cannot be pulled out of a hat so to speak; it has to be founded on something. St. Augustine said, “If you want to build a tower of virtue, you must start with a foundation of humility”.

How can the power of intention be used to described the various levels of success within the addiction recovery movement and, more importantly, how can it be applied in such a way as to increase ones chances in getting lasting benefits from recovery treatment therapies such as 12 step programs.

For example; how can we pry people’s perception away from the misconception that humility is synonymous with humiliation? These two words sound pretty much the same to the casual listener and have definitions, which to some degree, overlap with each other. The difference in most circumstances is quite subtle and therefore not always worth arguing about. It the case described above, the starving man feels humiliation where the fasting man feels humility. Same circumstances, different intentions. The humble man survives 97 more days on the same diet as the humiliated man.

By the same token a timid person may appear humble while a humble person may appear to be timid. Same behavior, different intentions. While the timid individual has had his or her pride taken away from them and thus feels humiliated, the humble person surrenders their pride freely. This same behavior can also be looked at from the standpoint of courage. The timid man has no courage and chooses to procrastinate. Conversely, the humble man has plenty of courage but chooses to focus it on patiently waiting for Gods guidance. Procrastination and patience may look to be identical responses to the same stimulus, however; in this case, patience takes the form of delayed action rather than no action.

In a recovery program there can be a world of difference between suffering humiliation and gaining humility. Again the difference lies in the intention on the part of the subject in question rather than the actual observable event from the perspective of an outside observer (one mans ceiling is another man’s floor). The person who feels that they are just a victim of circumstances has far less optimism than the person who feels that they can simply face the problem with some degree of humility. In other words, the humiliated person sees the cup half empty whereas the humble person sees the same cup half full.

There is also a perception difference regarding the degree of control between the two individuals. The humiliated person feels that they are in a completely helpless situation without any rights or alternative choices whatsoever. The humble person recognizes that he or she has at least one option even if it is merely a change of attitude on their part. The humble person has the ability to recognize that there is always a possibility to gain a valuable lesson from the experience. They are willing to at least take a “wait and see” attitude toward their adverse condition before passing judgment on their situation.

In addition to the psychological differences between these two words there is a spiritual connotation to the word humility that its near cousin, humiliation, never benefits from. Humility contains within it a seed of positive potential that can turn it around into a growth opportunity for the person. The Chinese use the same word for disaster as they do for opportunity because they see the loss of one man’s business as the growing market for the entrepreneur. A typhoon or tsunami wipes an area clean of exiting businesses and allows entrepreneurs to come in and operate with little or no competition. In the ancient Greek language the same word used for meek (synonymous with humility) was also used for clean or cleansing. It is no stretch to see a similar meaning to the common phrase “no pain, no gain”.

Bodybuilders are not generally know for their humility but when they are working-out they see the truth about themselves, their body and the their potential to gain from a seemingly painful experience. They know the secret to fatiguing a muscle to the point of failure is to work it until they experience the pain. That is; working it to the point that it breaks down and is forced to rebuild itself. A muscle that has broken down spreads apart and opens up new pathways to let blood circulate through the middle of it. It then gains new nutrients in its interior and reassembles itself in such a way that it has fortified itself. The body-builders temporary sacrifice ends up gaining them muscles that are bigger, better and stronger than before, provided that the bodybuilder is humble enough to have the patience to allow the muscle time to heal properly. Delayed gratification is also a form of humility. Some would call this behavior masochistic but it is true humility in the sense that the athlete can see “Without pain there is no gain”.

In the philosophical context, humility is synonymous with teach-ability. The old adage, “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks” is commonly used among Doctors, Psychiatrists and Psychologists. So much so, that it is a rule of thumb in some circles. The exception to this rule is humility. It is easy to see why the Greeks saw meekness as having a cleansing effect on the human soul. It, in effect, turned meekness into a “Tabula Rosa” (clean slate) allowing new knowledge to be written on the blackboard of the soul.
Another big advantage for those in recovery is that humility serves as an instrument for seeing through the ego’s attempt to deny the severity of the sufferer’s addiction. No matter how much one suffers as the result of addictive behavior, pride will always grow back, not unlike a weed, and attempt to cover up the damage with denial. Humility serves as the perfect gardening tool for this relentless emotional weed by pruning pride and allowing the truth to show through about this disease.

Einstein defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results. Humility is seeing the truth about ourselves and the truth about our potential to change (the truth shall set you free). Paradoxically, there is an ancient proverb that is the functional equivalent to the Greeks “Tabula Rosa”. It goes something like this; “you must suffer to get well, you have to surrender to win and you must give it away to keep it”.