Resentment Starts the Ball Rolling

Ask anyone who’s loved, lived or worked with one, and they’ll tell you that alcoholics, drug addicts, really anyone beset with obsessive behavior and substance abuse of any kind, are selfish and self-centered bores. It’s their leading trait.

But this observation goes only part way toward the solution. The deeper question must be, "What is the cause of this Selfishness?"  The answer is so dreaded by Self that it is hardly ever asked.

The vicious cycle, not having the power to stop drinking or drugging once starting, compounded with the insane behavior of not being able to not start, can seem hopeless while you’re stuck in that dilemma. But as with all things, alcoholism or addiction is not always all that it seems.

Hopelessness doesn’t have to be permanent. Real hope exists and it is more simple and closer at hand than you might at first guess. That hope arrives upon seeing that the root of all problems has indeed been our own self-centeredness—our dedication to Self, but also in how selfishness spawns, not by itself, but through the bitter force we call resentment.

Resentment is the nasty negative element that gets the whole ball rolling. It is the metaphysical force at the origin of every problem of every man, woman, and child since the beginning of the human race.

People in 12-step recovery know this, or at least they used to, back in the day. Apparently, some of their old-timers still do, at least the ones I’ve spoken with. If you’re familiar with that recovery approach, you may know that the original co-founders of “Alcoholics Anonymous” acknowledged that by completing a thorough and searching personal inventory, recognizing the lifelong accumulation of repressed bitterness, they could clearly see that it has been their resentment of others—expressed in envy, jealousy, annoyance, irritation—hate, by another name, that is the cause of emotionalism separating us from God.

This severance is what they described as “spiritual disease.”

Resentment, in all of its assorted flavors of emotion, has been the sole cause of every tormented, spiritually suffering mind and malfunctioning body that’s ever existed. It's been the pain of the separation from the Creator's will that's created the need to obtain relief.

The anesthetizing effect of alcohol (as well as food and sex) turns out to be the solution, not the problem. It’s been a Godless existence that’s brought those suffering from substance and behavioral obsessions to becoming the pained human wretches we know to be addicts and alcoholics.

There is no other reason. None. All alcoholics and drug addicts become ill and wretched exactly this way. Their addiction not being the disease itself but the rather the terrible symptoms of the real disease, the spiritual brokenness in playing God.

There has never been a single exception—not since the first grape turned bad, and the caveman-farmer drank its juice, rolled his eyeballs up into his head, and said, “Ahhhh,” because he felt so much better than he did before.

We aren’t resentful because we are selfish. We become selfish because we resent. That is the chronology of all human suffering. Get free from anger and lose selfishness automatically. The dark cause of all Selfishness and egotism is resentment, playing God.

Note from Dan: There are folks who think the opposite of what this piece proposes is true – that selfishness causes resentment. They try to argue this point with me all the time. But they’ve got it backward, for which reason they never get well, remaining angry, resentful, fear prone individuals who can never do quite enough to find true peace within. These are the people who are always working on themselves, searching for the right religion, guru, cult or self-help book. Resentful folks, even those who do good deeds, never find the happiness they are trying to deserve. It keeps them on the prowl. Acting as if one is unselfish does not produce an unselfishness individual. It produces an actor, perpetually disposed to anxiety, fear and emotionally induced malady. It’s just a nasty trick played on them by a judgment loving Ego, that must believe It can reverse the ill effects of a life poorly lived by reversing behavior. It can’t. Our nature must be changed and that happens to us, not by us, once we give up anger. ~ Dan