Dealing with desire in recovery

Desires are born in the imagination of men. Desires can be transformed into wants and wants can be spun out of control and be transcribed into needs. Needs are the highest form of request the mind is confronted with. A need is a mandatory requirement and must be completed regardless of the consequences of completing the request. Needs are life preserving requests. Needs are ranked right up there with food and water. Components of life itself. Once a desire is cycloned into a need, it will be chased until acquired. Capping desires is a mandatory step in sustaining recovery. Listen as Trent speaks on the steps he takes to cap  desire to sustain his recovery.

Transcript

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Welcome to the Recovery is a Process of Decisions podcast. This is Trent Thomas, your recovery peer support specialist. This week's episode is entitled Dealing with Desire in Recovery. Desire is defined as a strong feeling of wanting to have something or wishing for something to happen. Desire can be the beginning of deception. In the mind of an addict, it could translate to self deception. Desire begins in the mind and cultivates in the heart. In the mind of an addict, this desire will readily transfer into a tornado of want. Raging want focus into what becomes a raging need. Needs rate higher in terms of necessity than food and water. Thus a simple desire can readily become a blatant necessity greater than the staples of eating and drinking the components of life itself. This once simple desire can transform itself into a cry for life. Desires exist in the imagination of man. Imagination is the gift from God that lifts man to the highest order on this planet. Everything we see, enjoy or use, such as the phone, the car, the train, the plane, or the clothes and shoes we wear, all began in the imagination of a man or woman. With the imagination we can conjure up and invent things that never before existed. With imagination God formed into being the sun, moon, and stars. In fact, the entire universe was fashioned from the imagination of God. From the darkness of nothing, every entity that exists today was formed from the imaginative genius of God's mind's eye. His imagination is so extreme that he calls into being the atom, the building block of all life and materials of every structure in the known and unknown universe. The quality of imagination was presented as a gift to man. It is what makes mankind exceptional. We can draw from a blank slate the inventions of useful objects, objects such as sports cars and jet engines. All these structures, including the raw materials used to fashion them into shape, came from the imagination of mankind. Our imagination can be vivid and transformative. Our imagination can be enriching as well as destructive. From our imagination we can draw any picture and project any reality. With our mind's eye, we can create any scenario and make any situation a reality. Our imagination exists while we are awake or even asleep. The images of our imagination while asleep are called dreams. We know dreams can be vivid kaleidoscopes complete with images invoking pleasure or pain. They can perceive happiness or horror, fantasy or nightmares. Within our imagination is where desire is seeded and planted. This desire, if cultivated and not capped, can foster into deep desires, otherwise known as wants. These wants can cyclone into needs. Needs circumvent all reality and press one into perpetual action. Needs are of the highest order of request for our lives. A need is slated as a primary request for our mind to follow. With needs, there is questioning of if it is a necessity. Needs are obeyed in the mind's eye. Food or sustenance is a need. Water is a need for our mind to obey. Needs are obeyed as life depends on them. Once the mind determines a request is a need, obtaining it is mandatory. Life is dependent on satisfying all requests that are in fact needs. If a desire is seeded and cultivated and then transformed into a want, which is then cycloned or spun out of control until it becomes a need. This desire is hunted and tracked until it is acquired, regardless of the sacrifices that must be endured to obtain it. For an addict there is no off switch. For an addictive mindset chasing a cyclone want that is being considered a need is in everyday occurrence. The chase becomes normal, in fact expected. For me, I crave the daily chase. My very life was dependent upon chasing something every day. There was never a conclusion. Once acquired, a new chase was initiated. In fact, the statement one is too many and a thousand is never enough was so very true for me. It was my life's motto. It is how I scheduled my life, chasing the very substance that rushed my early premature death. The desires of the mind matured until they became death dealing components of self deception. In recovery, I have learned to cap my desires, putting a blanket over the fertile growing field so that the seeds of desire do not take root and grow into seedlings of wants and cyclone into self deceptive images of needs. Life is short. Sometimes we do not know how short. Only by transforming how I look at items of desire can I cap these desires. By perceiving the very items I once desired as poison or disruptors of my recovery, these desires become disgusting tasting bitters in my mind's eye. Unwanted, undesirable in unfulfilling concepts. Only when the desires become undesirable can the desires be capped. Dead seeds in barren soil. Misaligning the dreams of desires is an effective tool in stemming the flood of images. In addition, knowing yourself, knowing what starts your inner desires and presatisfying those urges. You don't chase what you already have. Finding satisfaction in your life and contemplating your wants before they become needs. Understanding what you cannot change and praying for the strength and courage to change what you can. To thyself be true. Beware of people, places and things. Know your own weaknesses and submit to being satisfied in your life. The chase is no longer necessary. Being satisfied with the fact that you could have that, and you don't necessarily need to acquire that, the fact that you could is good enough. Living in the here and now, satisfied with where you are at in life and forever grateful for the second opportunity to just do better. Knowing that you can't take it with you, and just because you can doesn't mean you should. All things that look good to you are not necessarily good for you. Gratitude is the key to sustaining recovery. God knows what we know not. All things according to his plan, not ours. For me, I know I serve a awesome and magnimous God, a God of immense power and forgiveness, a God of second chances, a God of recovery, and his mandate of not requiring perfection, but instead a requirement to just do better. Better today than yesterday. My desires do not haunt or tempt me. I cap them with gratitude and serenity. The satisfaction of knowing each day I breathe, I got it all. Serenity at its best. This is Trent Thomas on another episode of Recovery is a process of decisions podcast. You can now subscribe to this podcast and receive special in-depth episodes for subscribers only, as well as a private personal email account to communicate directly with me for comments and show suggestions. In addition, I will be doing podcast shout outs to all those subscribers who request shout outs. As always, your inspiring comments can be left at transnetrecover.com forward slash podcasts. 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