Surviving (Adrenalin) Addictions, Chapter One, Part 2: Challenges

Anastasia’s Introductory Comments on Chapter One, Part 2: Challenges.

The following section is a complete and total revision of a corresponding part of the original text of Surviving (Adrenalin) Addictions (Book 1, 1990 – 1991). It incorporates an introductory portion from Exploring Your Dark Side: TheAdventure Of A Lifetime (Book 3, 1998).

Because the following has been written without editing as a first draft for the manuscript revision now in progress to accommodate this blog site, expect to view it in updated versions on a semi-regular basis..

Chapter One: Surviving (Adrenalin) Addictions

Challenges

Having stated my basic premises for writing this book, we will now need to address the challenge of how the book will take up the most evident problems of our being a nation of adrenalin addicts with the accompanying consequences of that circumstance. 

Remedying the underlying anguish; the alienation and isolation from human connectedness at the core of all addictions, will take us a far distance toward our destination; personal and collective transformation. 

Yet a major obstacle to the objective reveals itself almost instantaneously -- the inordinate resistance and lack of motivation existing in the majority of our world population to addressing the enormity of the problem of -- adrenalin addictions and their attendant consequences.  

A quote from Neale Donald Walsch spotlights the dilemma –

How is it possible that 6.9 billion people can all claim to want the same thing (Peace, secuity, opportunity, prosperity, happiness, and love) and be singularly unable to get it?

The answer to the quandary is almost self-evident if one basic fact is closely examined.

Built into our DNA, humans are uniquely equipped with a wonderful capacity for personal transformation as well as self-destruction. It is our human nature, unlikely to change without a dramatic alteration in that DNA. The same equipage that produces these extremes can also enable the mundane.

In summary this fact of our uniqueness as humans can be stated thus –

The personality’s most powerful biological influence – your survival instinct – has a mysterious capability. It can help you to either reach the highest levels of consciousness, health, compassion and spirituality or to self-destruct.

The challenge of a life for each and every one of us is to be better than we are. And in the summing up to leave this world behind us better than we found it. How to achieve this is part of the wondrous mystery that grants us this opportunity; the sacred and the holy that is larger than life.

The "how" embodies faith, courage, hard work, determination, passion, discipline and Love.

Love being the sacred ingredient that binds all together, it is the element that made a shaman of me as I dealt with extended blindness, trauma and extensive losses, not unrelated to the blindness, taking me down into the darkest parts of myself – and -- high into the sky and beyond to the Light.

You have this capability in you too.

This book is about that wondrous capacity, unique to humans. It is offered, thus, as a primer, on how to best use the inimitable personal power of the survival instinct. 

This capacity is described in this book in terms of the basic principles of Transactional Analysis (TA), the theory that originated the concept of the Inner Child or Child Ego State, its original term.

My overarching goal here is to assist and guide each and every would-be traveler that seeks me out – through my writings, radio shows, public presentations and private consultations -- to reach these heights. And to aid each on in being able to approach and embrace the depths with courage and a minimum of distress, with as much a sense of safety and security as I can offer.  With this text as your guidebook – and – myself as your guide, I offer these resources to you.

Besides the resource of my personhood, I will be introducing you to a series of trail maps that I have found to be most beneficial for my own journey, both personally and professionally. These trail guides come from four main sources.

• Basic Transactional Analysis (TA);
• Advanced TA as derived from Martin G. Groder, M.D. who originally authored them;
• My advancements of Marty’s work that became the Groder-Rosen Addiction Development theory (GRAD); and
• The ancient teachings of Ahmsta Kebzeh as taught by Murat Yagan, the last living Elder of this tradition. Murat died in December, 2013.

The main map we will be using for our adventure is shown as the diagram accompanying this article. It is a derivation from a much more complex version designed by Murat Yagan.

It is offered here in this modified adaptation in order to simplify your introduction to it. The details of this map will be referenced and discussed in the text of this book, item by item.

The original form of the diagram, Murat's Chart of Ascension, will be offered as Murat created it later in my presentation of this text.