Addiction and Grace (Gerald May) - Chapter 5 Spirit

The proposition is that we are made for love and freedom, but temptation and attachment hinders us. Grace is necessary for our salvation because we cannot overcome the temptations and attachments using exclusively our own will.

We want to maintain our attachment to things and people while simultaneously trying to deepen our intimacy with God. This is the way we are made.

Why does God appear to be hidden from us? God refuses to be another object of attachment because God desires full love, not addiction. A 'too present' God would be an idol, an addiction.

The structures of religion are meant to mediate God's self-revelation through community, they are not meant to be substitute gods.

Unitive awareness is the awareness in which nothing separates us from what we perceive. But as adults we have developed thousands of self-representation systems, so that everything appears to be separate from us. These self representation systems are always associated with attachments. And in fact these systems are themselves addictions.
But then we catch a glimpse of an underlying constancy of self, perhaps called true-self, for brief moments. It seems elusive. When the cloudy sky of self-representation systems breaks clear, we glimpse this underlying constant self.

Eventually time spent in the periods of awareness of true self gives us confidence. This self is invulnerable to shifting experiences. Awareness comes and goes, but it may be that in noticing an attachment or addiction we are called out of it, and it is this central awareness that shows up.

This central awareness, or true self, is also referred to as 'the heart' in scripture.

We are likely to pull away from the glimpse of our true self because it is not comfortable, We know ourselves as one of the self-representation systems (author, parent, husband, friend, worker...).

As more of these glimpses come forward in our awareness, we become comfortable with the mystery and lack of control that they bear. If we allow this comfort to free us, we simply try to face life in a truly undefended and open-eyed way. This is the way of contemplation. We are open to reality just as it is.

So why the struggle? Why must we only see glimpses of the true self, only to return to the attached self and the systems of self-representation? Why has God created us so?

As in Buddism, God knows that suffering is caused by attachment.

Jesus came to convey the meaning of the law, not to change it. And his mission was to confront those who were addicted to the letter of the law, rather than loving it's author. He confronted those who were attached to anything (two masters, God and money, father or mother) as it interfered with loving God and neighbor. He also modeled the life which was free from attachments. "My yoke is easy and my burden is light."

Freedom is possible through a mysterious, incarnational synthesis of human intention and divine grace. This is a basic premise of this book.

Jesus proclaimed forgiveness as one of the ways of freedom from attachment. Freedom from holding on to guilt or desire for vengeance. Forgiveness of self for sinfulness.

God became incarnate to save the addicted.

Temptation precedes addiction. There is still freedom in temptation, but not in addiction.