> Let me tell you about the godfather of mind blindness...
>
> Charles Ponzi, an Italian immigrant, was born in the late 19th century
> and was credited with developing the first pyramid scheme in the
> 1920's, which has appropriately been dubbed "The Ponzi Scheme" He
> would deliver the promise "Would you like to be rich? I can double
> your money every ninety days, guaranteed" and was successful with
> bilking people out of many millions of dollars For those that do not
> know what a pyramid or Ponzi scheme is, here is the definition from
> Investors World dot com:
>
> "An illegal investment scheme in which investors are promised
> impossibly high returns on their investments. These are scams in which
> money from later investors is used to pay earlier investors. The
> creators of the scheme get most of the profits while those who come
> later are left with nothing because there are eventually an
> insufficient number of new investors to pay the existing ones. These
> scams inevitably collapse because they require exponential growth in
> the number of participants at each step, which is impossible."
>
> A few years ago I read an article in the Wall Street Journal about
> Ponzi. The article stated when Ponzi was interviewed he was asked how
> he was able to swindle so many people so easily, his responded, "When
> a man's mind is concentrated he is blind." When I read this it hit
> home that this is what I had been doing all those years with my
> addictions. I was anesthetizing myself to living and dealing with life
> with my drugs and had done a good job blinding myself with my
> addictions and unbalanced way of living. This blindness lead to more
> blindness and more unbalance and it snowballed from there.
>
> Atheists and theists both suffer from blindness when they 'get
> attached' to their views. When we invest excessive time and energies
> in acquiring or building attachments these attachments become
> veritable extensions of our being and come to define us for ourselves
> as well as define who we are for others. When these attachments take
> on this role we become susceptible to pain via these extensions. If
> the person, place or thing we are attached to gets rebuked it is a
> personal rebuke on us, if they get damaged or defaced so goes the
> defacement and damage to our very being.
>
> It is hard to become full detached to ideas, for if we did we would be
> like a feather floating wherever the wind blew us and would pick up
> any old idea with no firm grounding of what we perceive as right or
> wrong. But, we can practice being open minded and look at ideas
> without prejudice that we immediately hit ideas with. Learn to judge
> other less. We especially do this with everyone we meet...they are
> better or lesser than me type of thinking.
>
> This case of having your mind concentrated to the point of blindness
> is not anything new. The ancient philosophers new this well. They
> called it "putting passion before reason." Both these areas of passion
> and reason where the foundation of much philosophical discussion of
> ethics and virtue with the ancient Greeks. They knew when passion
> rules the mind, that the only job left for reason is that of the
> subservient task to find cleaver ways to satisfy the passions. When
> our minds are occupied with too much wreckage of the past, too many
> problems and complexities and out of control passions then there is
> little room left in it for reasoning. This is why addicts make poor
> decisions a lot of the time. Addicts blind themselves with their
> addiction and out of balance life.
>
> You see this same concentration of mind in many other lifestyles as
> well. The chronic volunteers that mind everyone's business other than
> their own suffer from it. Remember what the program tells us - "we
> cannot transmit what we do not have." They do not understand the
> concept of getting their own house in order before loosing themselves
> in others problems. The collectors that concentrate on perfecting
> their obsessions can also suffer from it. I've know many collectors
> and was a massive one myself. A funny thing with many collectors is
> once they finish a collection they lose interest in it and must find
> another collection to start to occupy their minds. It is a never
> ending treadmill of desire, attachment and unsatisfied demands. This
> is the same reason that we can only find transient state of happiness
> in people, places or things that we pursue in life. They all deliver
> various states of pleasure but the happiness they deliver is short
> term and not sustainable.
>
> Once we acquire our acquisition the happiness only lasts a few days
> and sometimes does not even last for the drive home from the store.
> Whenever we put our happiness in people, places or things we will
> sooner or later be let down. Happiness starts from within us and
> cannot come from anyplace else. We can achieve a "diminishing of pain"
> from people, places or things, but cannot find true happiness in these
> material things as the pleasure found in such things can readily be
> turned into pain as well. True happiness has no limits, whereas the
> aforementioned do have limits and also contain qualities of pain in
> them
>
> Perfectionists of all sorts can be blinded to the big picture when
> they get concentrated on some unimportant minutia they fixate on that
> they think will mean life or death to them. Personally, I used to work
> to perfect many unimportant areas of living. This gave me the
> illusion that I had some control over at least one "thing" in my life,
> when the broader part of my life was a total mess and out of control.
> I found that balanced living is better than concentrated living in one
> area with the rest of my life being sickly out of balance. We
> sometimes get so wrapped up in these external areas that appeal to our
> ego that we forget to work within us to develop self worth that is
> real and stems from within us. All the addictive areas we participate
> in are in the same boat whether we are concentrated on a bottle or a
> fix or what to buy next.
>
> I had to learn to restructure my life in a balanced way under the
> guidelines of the 12 steps with special attention given to living
> right size and accepting and living comfortably with my OWN means as
> is mentioned in the Alcoholics Anonymous 12 Steps and 12 Traditions on
> pages 122-125. I also had to learn not devote too much time to
> perfecting any one area of living for fear of being too concentrated
> in one thing and blind to many other important areas of my life. My
> Buddhist practice also warns me against developing attachments and
> whenever I try to perfect anything to a high degree I cannot avoid
> this area of clinging, desire and attachments so I try to avoid it if
> possible. While I can never be 100%% perfect with this, I give it much
> thought and work on living within my comfortable means in the broad
> spectrum of my life and not just on certain concentrated areas.
>
> Sometimes we make a conscious effort to escape through fantasy and
> fixation on something, someplace or somebody else. Other times we are
> not aware of what we are doing and can get lost though ignorance.
> Isn't it much easier to fantasize about something else than stay in
> the hear and now and deal with today's problems? I try and catch
> myself when I practice this escapism and work to bring my thoughts
> back to the present. Whenever the fantasy starts I check to see what I
> am escaping from? Why do I fixate on something else instead of where
> I'm at? My Buddhist practice of mindfulness helps with this area as
> well as my 12 step work of living in the present. I have to make an
> effort to stay balanced, as I can still live unbalanced even from
> putting too much effort in a seemingly good area. Chronic gamblers
> seem to live in this fantasy world quite a bit. Here is an excerpt
> from a Gamblers Anonymous pamphlet.
>
> "The Dream World of a Compulsive Gambler."
>
> "A lot of time is spent creating images of great and wonderful things
> they are going to do as soon as they make 'the big win.' They often
> see themselves as quite philanthropic and charming people. They may
> dream of providing families and friends with new cars, mink coats and
> other luxuries. Compulsive gamblers picture themselves leading a
> pleasant, gracious life, made possible by the huge sums of money they
> will accrue from their 'system.' Servants, penthouses, nice clothes,
> charming friends, yachts and world tours are a few of the wonderful
> things that are just around the corner after a big win is finally
> made.
>
> Pathetically, however, there never seems to be a big enough winning to
> make even the smallest dream come true. When compulsive gamblers
> succeed, they gamble to dream still greater dreams. When failing, they
> gamble in reckless desperation and the depths of their misery are
> fathomless as their dream world comes crashing down. Sadly, they will
> struggle back, dream more dreams and of course suffer more misery. No
> one can convince them that their great schemes will not come true.
> They believe they will, for without this dream world, life for them
> would not be tolerable."
>
> 'Without this dream world, life for them would not be
> tolerable'...sound familiar atheist and theists? The theists putting
> all hope in the next life and the atheists put all hope in destroying
> theists.
>
> As Thich Nhat Hanh writes:
>
> "There is no way to peace, peace is the way. This means that we can
> realize peace right here in the present moment with our look, our
> smile, our words and our actions. Peace work in not a means, each step
> we take should be peace. Every step we take should be joy. Every step
> we take should be happiness. Are you massaging Mother Earth every time
> your foot touches her? Are you planting seeds of joy and peace?
> Enlightenment, peace and joy will not be granted by someone else. The
> well is within us and if we dig deeply in the present moment the water
> will spring forth. If we are determined, we can do it. We don't need
> the future. We can smile, breath fully and relax Everything we want is
> here in the present moment. Peace is every step. Shall we continue our
> journey?"
>
> Until atheists and theists can find peace in the present, they will
> continue on their hopeless path in life disregarding the present and
> just looking towards the future, just wishing their lives away for a
> state of happiness that never seems to come.
>
> It is important to be able to concentrate, but it is also important to
> be able to see life in a balanced way and not get too concentrated on
> one thing. Contemplative time, meditation time, down time or
> relaxation time is very important to fostering peace in our lives. A
> lot of the addicts I read about live lives of constant doing and
> running with no time for such useless things as sitting around to
> relax or meditate. Workaholics usually put little time in self
> actualization. They may think that workaholism provides all the
> financial benefits they need to live a happy and fulfilled life, but
> while putting all effort in this one area they are bankrupt in the
> area of their inner peace and contemplative needs.
>
> When we are not self aware of our real needs it is the same as not
> having controls in our car that tell us the internal condition of what
> is going on. We cannot tell how fast we are going without a
> speedometer, nor can we tell if our car is overheating until it its
> too late without a temperature gauge and without a gas gauge we will
> be left stranded with an empty tank. All these instruments give us
> feedback as to the internal condition of things and so does his time
> spent with ourselves when we look within.
>
> There was a successful local businessman named Bobus who owned a
> communications company. He was a workaholic was fat, smoked, consumed
> lots of coffee, never exercised and ate junk food all the while he
> overworked at his office desk while building up a million dollar
> company. I read in a newspaper article he died from heart attack in
> his mid 40's right at his desk. Isn't that the dream of every
> workaholic to die at their desk? Bobus could not comfortably have the
> company he built up. He created it artificially by sacrificing his
> life. Bobus robbed Peter to pay Paul to develop his business by
> sacrificing his health. Bobus was blinded to many areas of living
> healthy by his ego and greed for money. Ruskin tells a similar story
> "In a shipwreck, one of the passengers fastened a belt about him with
> one hundred pounds of gold in it, with which he was afterwards found
> at the bottom. Now, as he was sinking--had he the gold? Or had the
> gold him?"
>
> An addict once told me she disliked spending any contemplative or
> introspective time on herself to become self aware. She claimed it
> just promoted being more "self obsessed" and she wanted to spend less
> time thinking about herself and not more. Well, all this has to
> balanced up, but without giving the question of "who I am and what are
> my real recovery needs" some thought, I would not have the recovery I
> do today. When I was blinded by the Ponzi effect, I had little time or
> ability to look within me to see what was wrong. As an addict, this
> self inventory is needed every day on a continual basis, as each day
> has 1440 minutes in it and it only take one of these minutes, or even
> less sometimes, to suffer a slip. Seemingly good areas of
> concentration, when overdone, can lead to bad outcomes as well.
>
> A 12 step acquaintance was the poster child for doing all he could do
> in his respective recovery program. He did tons of service, went to
> all the meetings and out of state conferences. Unfortunately for him,
> his excess concentration in his one 12 step program did not help him
> in an area of speculative gambling and he ended up losing just under 2
> million dollars...gambling it away on a Ponzi scheme. Myself? I am a
> minimalist and only put enough recovery work in each respective
> program to give me a semblance of peace. I could never afford to work
> 8 - 12 step programs any other way and still maintain a healthy
> balance.
>
> Balanced living - As the Buddhists recommend, "I seek the middle path"
> and have to accept I need some introspection time as well as some non-
> introspection time in my life. I try to work towards balance and work
> in the direction of not over doing your self awareness and insight or
> under doing it as well. Don't ever expect perfection either with this
> balance of self awareness and self obsession. If you see things
> getting out of hand, reign things in some. I don't run perfect
> programs by any means, but I run successful ones as long as I work
> towards perfection but am not upset if I never get there. I have to
> look out for blindness though fixation or concentrated mind as well as
> ignorance and have to be aware that if I concentrate on any one thing
> too much it can blind me from other important areas of living.
>
> Take care,
>
> V (Male)
>
> Agnostic Freethinker
> Practical Philosopher
> AA#2