Spirit Gives Birth To Spirit

 When I was a young child, my parents poured endless love into me.  I soaked it up and asked for more and more.  I was an empty vessel asking to be filled. As I grew older, slights from circumstances in my life caused cracks, so that love poured into me would run out.  I looked for love anywhere I could find it, and could never get enough because all that was poured into me, more or less, ran right out. Personally, I looked for approval from my peers.  I had a particular affinity for finding people who would constantly build me up.  This is not a bad thing in itself.  But I began rejecting positive praise - writing it off.  This progressed in my life and I came to a point in my late teens and twenties when I would actually counter positive affirmation with negative thoughts about myself.      This progressed. It wasn't until I found myself heavily addicted to nicotine by the time I was 40 that I began looking for a way out. ...

The empty tomb cannot be proven.  It must be believed.  For me, the experience I have of God is the inherent proof. God exists for me because I experience Him. But I have to get the ball rolling.  I must choose to believe for the belief to prove itself in the relationship with God.  The relationship becomes available to me when I believe. If I believe Jesus' tomb was empty, then for me, it was empty.  No one can refute that. The disciples believed it was, and so their experience led them out into the world with a fierce belief in love.  And that belief then spread because it was true for them and, because of their experience, their transformation was proof for others.  Others then had their own experience of the living Christ because of their relationship with Him (that transcends time and space).  The proof comes for me in my personal experience of relationship with God. And so personal experience confirmed my, and the disciples' belief...

I think everyone has some addiction, more or less. Something they value to the detriment of all else. Addiction runs the gamut: food, TV, drama, caffeine, sex, love, nicotine, attention, money, technology, entertainment, acquisition, pot, alcohol, hard drugs, control.  I believe that the seriousness of it - how much it impacts peoples' daily functioning - varies in direct proportion to the level of self-loathing the person has.      I have a very strong addiction to nicotine.  It impacts my family, my wife, my friends, even my dog.  It impacts my health and my career.  What is the salvation for a socially acceptable, but no less contemptible, junkie?  It is only in the 12 steps and God that I personally have any hope of being free...  Whatever I (or you) believe "God" is, and however well I (or you) knows the 12 steps, though we may have no formal knowledge of either actual thing.      What can I do to earn my freedom? ...