Carl Jung said, “Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol or morphine or idealism.”
For me? Ideals can turn on me, turn on others. They can be like crack, a kind of upper where I turn everything and everyone into a project. Visionary highs.
As a mystic with a “calling” I can even put God’s name on my ideals. This can turn me into a zealot, “a person who is fanatical and uncompromising in pursuit of their religious, political, or other ideals.”
If you are suffering as your ideals are assaulted, consider joining me in the first step of recovery from addiction to Idealism: Admitted I am powerless over my ideals and that my life has become unmanageable. Click here for further reflection.
Once we peer into how we contribute to our own and others suffering through our attachment to outcomes and pictures, it is possible to find another way. We don’t have to give up our values, just our view of what is possible. Body Wisdom is trying to tell us so.
Here’s a poem I wrote about my own situation.
Ideals are like Crack
My Tarot astrologer warned
“Your stars all say Bravo
but your martyr taunts you.”
Truly, this hyper-extended heart
is strung between a yawn
and a scream.
How to crack the old martyr code,
the demonic “I tried so hard
showed up for everything,
but where were you?” code?
The Body knows the sequence.
How DNA gets padlocked,
circles the current age
underscores the 11
carved between your eyes
and arrives back at nothing.
This is a code born of teachings
that say, “Your ideal is a compass.
has God’s name on it.
How can you go wrong?”
Devil.
The “M” Code (see also Mother,
Minister, Manager, Mystic) has us
- a) Grip the ideal.
- b) Work hard.
- c) Be near saints of art and love
while spirit slowly gain weight and day by day a shadow world arises that resents all impediments, all inadequacies such as
friends barely there
structures, economies,
industries, institutions
family, lover, pets.
- d) Do drug deals with all that disappoints.
in a life dis-appointed by one’s self.
Alternative?
Admit Idealism is like crack
Addiction to ideals can foster
hate for a hateful world.
Hate for the real.
While life, uncaring,
resists all dictators.
How to recover?
Relax your grip.
Slyly free friends to walk away
Free hearts to grieve
Find a gentler purpose
Free home to be less than model
Free shame and fear as truth.
Free life from being ideal.
Then, continue to make shrines,
Make love, and if possible let go
long enough to wonder,
“What is ideal?”
Thank Heaven we can take a deep breath, shake, and find support.