Our story, our beliefs, attitudes and values, derives its energy from fear. As a result, many of us put that energy into activities that will repress that fear, dull our experience of that fear. Naturally, we would discover or create substances that will aid in our distraction, benumbing or aiding in our escape from the scariest experience we have imagined, namely death.
Policy decisions by our government have been influenced by our fear of those drugs which many of us have turned to for relief from our fear. In America the use of self-medicating drugs has become a criminal justice issue whereas in Portugal of late they have begun treating it as mental health issue. “After more than 15 years, it’s clear which approach worked better. The United States drug policy failed spectacularly, with about as many Americans dying last year of overdoses—around 64,000—as were killed in the Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq Wars combined.” (1)
The search for a solution for our overdependence on drugs is fundamentally a search for a distinction between truth and illusion. “To the degree that the [ancient] Greeks’ highest aspiration was wisdom, to that degree Greeks sought to create P-A. To the degree that the highest aspiration is material wealth, to that degree Americans seek and of course succeed in creating P-B.” (2)
Click on the link below to find the path that leads to Paradigm A.
Insight # 174: Do not judge by appearances, but judge with right Judgment. John 7:24
Link:
- Near-Death Experience on this blog and in print in The ABC’s of Simple Reality: The Encyclopedia of Self-Transformation, Vol II (2018), pages 3-7, by Roy Charles Henry.
References:
- Kristof, Nicholas. “How to Win a War on Drugs.” The New York Times Sunday Review. September 24, 2017, page 1.
- Henry, Roy Charles. The Human Community. Simple Reality, October 2016, page 61.
