Find freedom from addiction
Ginny Luedeman
Millions of people are affected by the use of addictive drugs, whether in their own life or in the life of loved ones. And sometimes it can seem difficult to know how to begin to break free from the chains of addiction.
In this insightful chat, Christian Science practitioner Ginny Luedeman explains how addiction of any kind can be overcome with the understanding that each of us is already complete, possessing all the qualities within us that we look to artificial outside sources to provide.
Using experiences from her own life—as a '60s rock musician who overcame LSD addiction and as a mom whose son went through his own period of drug experimentation—Ginny answers questions from site visitors about addiction to abusive relationships, smoking and drinking, and hard drugs, as well as exploring the roles of fear and selfishness in addictive behavior—and how they can all be overcome.
spirituality.com host: Hello, everyone! Welcome to another spirituality.com live question and answer audio event. Today we’re going to talk about how to “Find freedom from addiction” with Ginny Luedeman, a Christian Science practitioner from Salem, Oregon.
Ginny was a rock singer and a drug user during the 1960s, and overdosed on LSD. In distress, she opened the Bible at random and found answers that helped her through the crisis. The spiritual journey that began with that experience led her to Christian Science. She’s been a Christian Science healer for about three decades now, and has also written many articles for the Christian Science magazines. A public speaker on Christian Science, she has spoken at churches, in prisons, and other public venues.
Ginny, do you have some thoughts to get us started?
Ginny Luedeman: Well, I do. Thank you, and thank you for that introduction. Also, thank you all at spirituality.com for the love and work that goes into putting on these chats and for letting me be part of it today.
spirituality.com host: Oh, it’s great to have you here.
Ginny: Oh, it’s fun. When I was a teenager, for a time, we lived on the beach in California. And I loved to surf and to swim in the ocean, but there were these strong currents calledriptides along the beaches, and those tides could take a swimmer a long distance from shore if you got caught in one. And if you tried to swim against the outgoing current toward the shore, which was the instinctive thing to do, you’d find yourself exhausted and unable to swim. And you couldn’t just go with the flow, because who knows how far out you might end up. We were taught to swim parallel to the shore—not to panic, but to think clearly and to go in a different direction, and eventually we’d find that we’d be free from the strong pull of the tides. And that’s what I found Christian Science does. It shows us the way out. It presents a whole new direction, a spiritual direction that frees us from the pull of addiction. It reveals what’s true and real about each of us, and then it turns our lives in a direction where we can find that freedom, that truth, and the freedom from a pull of fear or uncertainty, or loss of control or hopelessness.
As I’ve studied the ideas in Christian Science, especially Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures written by Mary Baker Eddy, I’ve found that it brings spiritual truth to light in my life. And in that beautiful light, I’ve found that I’m good and loved and that I have a purpose, and that’s what this Science is about. It’s making practical the Bible statement that says in John 8:32, “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” And the spiritual truth, when known or understood, works. It freed me, and it frees us from addiction as we apply it to our lives.
Now what’s true about each of us is that we’re more than just little blobs of material stuff, more than blobs of energy, even. The spiritual truth is that we come from a God who is Love, who is Spirit, and who’s with each of us right now. And life is about waking up to what’s really going on here. Creation is complete, and we each have an important place in it. And the truth is that we’re each already full of what we hope to find in the things we’re addicted to. Addiction is a waste of time, of money, and effort, because we already have the peace or the joy or whatever else the addiction promises us. And that’s what I see Christian Science being so fantastic for, is that it shows us that in our true spiritual natures, we’re already complete and satisfied.
spirituality.com host: That’s really helpful, and I think we’ll have some opportunities to explore that as we get into the questions. Would you like to start with them?
Ginny: Sure. Let’s go.
spirituality.com host: Okay. This is from someone in Arizona who says—now we’re going to have some people talking about their families and some about themselves. This one is about a family, I think. They’re writing, “Can a loved one be healed of addiction without a measure of spiritualization of their thinking?”
Ginny: Yeah. I had an experience that proved that. You bet. That what you think about your loved ones, especially when you’re seeing them in light of their spiritual natures is very powerful. My dad was an abusive alcoholic. And I was with him until he left us in the middle of the night when I was 15-and-a-half. By that time, we’d moved 20 times. So he lost his family, his three kids, the whole thing, just because of this addiction to alcohol. I started studying Christian Science a few years later, and started thinking about fatherhood, what it was really all about. Because I thought Dad, when he went out the door, took fatherhood with him. But Christian Science showed me that fatherhood is really spiritual. It’s not something that people possess in their little bodies, and can walk away with. It’s the spiritual nature of God’s love that expresses fatherhood in each of our lives, whether we’re all alone or we have wonderful birth-dads.
So I started thinking about fatherhood, and it was so beautiful and so clear that I only had one Father, and He wasn’t an alcoholic, He was God. And that fatherhood never left me. That love was still with me. Tenderness was always with me. The spiritual nature of fatherhood never left me. And I was thinking about this one day, and it was so clear to me that I just felt lifted from this feeling of having been a victim of an alcoholic dad.
A few months later, Dad—I hadn’t heard from him for years—called me, and he said, “Ginny, something happened to me last September.” And I knew when I’d had this realization that I didn’t have an alcoholic dad—I knew when it happened, because it was very strong in my thought. And he said, “Something happened last September.” He said, “I was laying by the side of a river like a bum. And I woke up from this state of existence, and I thought, ‘I never want another drink.’” And he said, “I found a dime in my pocket and I called AA, and they came and got me." He said, “I haven’t wanted a drink since. And I think you had something to do with it.” That kind of blew me away, because I didn’t know too much about how to pray for other people, but I was learning about fatherhood, and I had released him in my thought from being an alcoholic who had control over me.
So I told him what had happened way back a few months ago, and I also turned my thought from the phone and asked God, “What is this all about? What does that prayer that I had been praying have to do with my dad’s freedom from alcoholism?” And the idea that came to me was, “I, if I be lifted up…, will draw all men unto me.” It was from the Bible, I later learned. And it said, “Ginny, you were lifted from your thought or belief in an alcoholic dad and that freed him.”
Dad and I stayed in contact for 22 years after that over the phone. And he never had another drink, and he devoted the rest of his life to helping recovering alcoholics through AA.
spirituality.com host: That is so neat.
Ginny: So, yes. What you think, and especially when you see the truth about another loved one, is very powerful, because the truth is true right there, right now. There’s a statement in Science and Health on page 476, line 32, where Mrs. Eddy says, “Jesus beheld in Science the perfect man, who appeared to him where sinning mortal man appears to mortals. In this perfect man the Saviour saw God’s own likeness, and this correct view of man healed the sick.” And for me, that’s exactly what happened with my birth-dad.
spirituality.com host: That sounds so great, and is so helpful. We have a question that’s sort of a follow-up from Jan in Chicago. She writes, “How do you deal with the disappointment of a family member with a longstanding addiction who has been doing great, but hasn’t been totally healed and occasionally slips back into old habits? Sometimes I feel frustrated and worn out from it. Do you just stick with seeing the perfect man?”
Ginny: Well, there’s a passage I’ve used, and I kind of call it my “metaphysical eraser,” because a lot of times, the history of abuse or of mistakes or of drug addiction or whatever, continues to keep coming back to thought. And instead of just ignoring it or sticking to the perfect man, which, yes, you have to do, you can actually pray to know that in that moment when that horrible thing was going on, there was actually a spiritual reality happening that we just didn’t see yet.
And it’s a passage on page 494 of Science and Health, line 13—it’s actually the second half of a sentence. And I use it all the time to revise my thought about the past. This is what it says: “…to all mankind and in every hour, divine Love supplies all good.” I pray to think and to know that at the moment when I messed up or Dad hit me, or whatever was going on that wasn’t good, that there was something else happening in that moment. The spiritual reality of God’s love was going on right then, right there, but that I hadn’t awakened to it yet. And so it’s a revision, actually, of my thoughts about the past that allows me to move on in my thoughts about my loved ones, myself, and our human history. And it has allowed me to find a deeper sense of love that isn’t just knowing the truth, which is wonderful, but that actually revises the human history.
spirituality.com host: That sounds very helpful. David, who’s writing from the Tenth Church Reading Room in Los Angeles, California, says, “I would like to ask, How can I be sure that I will never succumb to drugs again? How can I more easily avoid the temptation, like it says in the Bible Lesson on Mind this week?” That’s another facet of this same issue, I think, that we’re talking about.
Ginny: Yeah. For me, we’re not trying to avoid something when we’re working out of addictions. We’re seeing that the thing that we want to get in the addictive behavior, whether it’s sexual addiction or gambling or drugs or just eating a box of chocolates whenever we feel like it—that what is it we’re actually wanting when we do the things that we’re doing? And we want to see, maybe, that that desire for…well, I had to do this with smoking, for instance. I smoked a couple packs a day. And what I realized was what I was trying to get out of smoking was a sense of peace, a sense of calm. And what I did was…well, this is an exercise. I’ll give you a way to work on this. You can buy a timer and set it for five minutes before you do the thing that you’re addicted to, no matter what it is. And then think or read for that five-minute period of time. You can read something from…like Genesis 1 is wonderful, the 23rd Psalm, or sometimes I would open at random inScience and Health, or read a Christian Science periodical. But take that five minutes to think before you do the drug or whatever. And after you’ve mastered that five minutes, you can extend it to ten. What I’ve found—and this is really answering his question in a roundabout way—is that the thing that I was wanting to get from doing something outside myself, I began to find was already within me. I already had a sense of spiritual peace. But I’d been attributing peace to something outside myself. And you can’t get something from a cigarette that God’s already giving you as an individual expression of God’s qualities—like we individually express joy. Joy is everywhere. It fills all space. You can express it in your special way and I can express it. The same is true about peace. I could express all the peace I needed to express, no matter where I was, if I tuned in to that spiritual source of peace instead of looking for it in a cigarette.
And so I began to realize that when I was quitting doing something, whether it was drugs or smoking or drinking, I wasn’t really quitting doing something, I was tuning in to what God was already doing in my life. And that planted my feet on a really solid basis where there would be no doubt that he would ever need to do drugs or anything else again, because he already has everything that he hoped to get in the stuff outside. So you’re safe in that place where all good not only comes, but is yours, because you come from that wonderful source that’s Love.
spirituality.com host: I’d like to ask a little follow-up question myself about control. In a way, one of the things I’m hearing from your comments is that to be addicted is to yield control of yourself and your thoughts and so forth to a substance in the hope of getting, as you said, something good from it. But if you are really wanting to be free of that, in essence what you’re yielding to is the recognition that your identity and all the good that you could possibly long for is already being given to you by God. Am I correct there?
Ginny: Yeah, yeah. I did. I looked up a definition in the dictionary of addictive behavior. And it’s—you’re right, “behavior you’re devoted to or have given yourself to.” And there’s a sense of resignation that something outside of you is going to make you more than you already are. There’s no way that you as an individual expression of God’s goodness, and that’s what Christian Science teaches, could be more than you already are.
spirituality.com host: Because, not that you’re a mortal who’s got certain qualities and that’s it, but that you actually are more maybe than you think you are.
Ginny: Right, more than you think you are. Absolutely. Way more than you think you are. There’s a definition of man on page 475 of Science and Health that I often take when I’m praying for someone else or working on one of my own concepts of myself that isn’t so great—and I put my name in there where it says man, or where it says he, and it identifies me as “the compound idea of God, including all right ideas….”
And I liken it to when the sun comes through my window, if I have a beautiful prism sitting in the window, it comes through that prism and shoots light all over the room in individual rays. I think of each of us as an individual ray of God. Individual, unique, beautiful, one of a kind, but reflecting all the light and the beauty of our divine source, just like each ray includes all the light expressed from the sun, individually. And I like to think that each of us includes “all right ideas.” That definition of man has helped me see myself not as this little blob, again, of stuff, but as an individual expression of God’s good qualities.
spirituality.com host: We have a question that takes us in a slightly different tack from Fred in New Hampshire, and he says, “How do you know if you are addicted? Drugs, alcohol, and tobacco seem easy, but how about food, movies, hygiene, shopping?” And some other people have written in about addictions to celebrity magazines and things like that, and soda, and so forth. Then Fred goes on, “I assume you can be addicted to anything, so how do you know when you are?”
Ginny: I think you pretty much know if you could live without it. Try not doing it for a few days, and then ask yourself, Do I still feel complete? And if you have a question about whether or not you’re addicted to it, you probably want to consider that you probably are—because you know when you feel complete and do something because you feel complete, versus do it to get completeness. If I feel like I can’t live without something—like you were saying there was a question about movie stars…what was that?
spirituality.com host: Celebrities, yes.
Ginny: Celebrities. Then I’m probably feeling like I’m not as good as what I’m seeing outside. For instance, let’s just take the celebrity. There are about five questions in there, so I can’t answer them all at once.
spirituality.com host: Sorry.
Ginny: Let’s just take the celebrity idea. When you see someone who makes you feel like you lose your thought about yourself, and they’re so wonderful and you would like to be close to them, and you’d like to be like them, obviously your sense of well-being, of joy or inspiration is kin to something outside yourself. What you want to see as a Christian Scientist, or as a student of these ideas, is that you’re complete. And then you want to take that wonderful sense of completeness that you’re finding in yourself and share it with others, rather than feeling like others are going to give it to you.
So if you see something beautiful in another, you might make a list of what it is you saw, and then go to the Bible or Science and Health and look those words up, like inspirationor beauty or joy, or something you think is so wonderful out in somebody else—find what those beautiful qualities you see in another are, get to know them better, and then claim, “I am joyous, because I come from God, and joy fills all space, so I have it, too.” So it might just be an opportunity when you see a movie star or a celebrity to see more of your own beautiful nature rather than falling in love with them.
spirituality.com host: That sounds very helpful. Gary in Wisconsin writes, “I’ve studied Christian Science for years. For a time I had a strong sense of the power of God’s truth and was even able to help others with it. The thing is that I still have a difficult time abstaining from all drink. Eventually I came to be dependent more on alcohol and am in AA, but am still falling way short. I seem to have lost much trust and real love for God and His power. Now what?”
Ginny: I find unselfed love a real powerful love. When I’m thinking of others and I’m living my life to bless others, I don’t need alcohol or drugs. I need to find a source of love that will meet their need. So I find doing something for others kind of breaks that—it’s almost like a hypnotism that says, “I need to take care of my own feelings and my own needs.
We have six kids, and boy, they constantly are making me do that—think about somebody besides myself. I find just taking a little step when you start feeling like you want to do a behavior, drinking, for instance, as this questioner asked—taking a step to do something unselfed, unselfish: writing a thank-you note, calling someone, doing something just a tiny step out of self-will often make that behavior seem like it’s unneeded.
spirituality.com host: And that isn’t going to necessarily be an easy thing to do at first. But it is a kind of spiritual discipline, isn’t it?
Ginny: Well, it isn’t easy, but it’s kind of a loss of self for the greater good. And nowadays the media are all saying, “I deserve this,” and “It’s all about me and what I feel.” And yet, it really is about the whole. Life is really about the bigger picture, and we can become part of the solution to this self-focus and find bigger answers in unselfed love. And no, it isn’t easy, but it starts with tiny things, so it’s like a long journey. It’s not really hard if you just take it one step at a time. So just one tiny step at a time will lead you out of that sense of self and needing to take care of all your own needs before you can love.
spirituality.com host: That’s very helpful, too. Bertha in Winterhaven, possibly Florida, writes, “I’ve seen the nothingness of alcoholic addiction in several cases. How can we tell them about their freedom if they do not seem to want it?” And I’m assuming she’s talking about the cases.
Ginny: Yeah. I find that being my brother’s keeper, which the Bible instructs us to do, is “Where do I keep them in my thought?” And how far are we willing to go? If everything is screaming that somebody is addicted, that they’re separated from their source and that they’re useless or no good or whatever, it takes a discipline of great love, and God gives us the love to love like this with, to continue to hold the right idea of another. Taking that step—to refuse to be fooled into categorizing others as either addicted or whatever, is a big step in learning to love.
I had a fellow living—well, he came to our house with our daughter, and he seemed to be addicted to a bunch of stuff, and the picture didn’t look so good. And it was really tempting to think of him as a loser. I really fought, and I had to go again to the Bible andScience and Health and look up things about man and really love him in my own thought of him, and refuse to pin this “loser” tag on him. And I did this in spite of the fact that he robbed us—we went through a whole bunch of stuff with this boyfriend, until he finally disappeared from our experience, and our daughter moved on.
We got a letter years later from him—actually my daughter got the letter—thanking our family. He’d married, had five kids, straightened his life out, and he was a Christian. And he said we were the only people who had ever loved him in the way that allowed him to move on. I didn’t think I’d had any effect at all on this individual’s life—in fact, I was kind of glad when he moved on. But I learned a great lesson in continuing to know the truth, the spiritual truth about those we come in contact with, whether it’s a clerk in the grocery store and she’s got tattoos, and we don’t approve of them, or somebody we’re praying for. Stick to the truth no matter what, because they are God’s children, they are God’s ideas, whether they know it or not. And that, to me, is being my brother’s keeper.
spirituality.com host: Right. I think that that’s wonderful, really inspired. I never thought of being your brother’s keeper that way until you mentioned it.
Ginny: Yeah. Where we keep them in our thought of them. I’m glad people kept me in the right place in their thought of me when I was going through stuff, because I was pretty lost and didn’t know that I was good, and I was doing everything to the contrary. And I’m sure that I was being held in love by a number of people in my family.
spirituality.com host: Al in Boston says, “I’m listening to all the forms of addiction being mentioned and realizing that selfishness might fall into the category of addiction and might even be the root cause of a host of other addictions. Would you comment on this?”
Ginny: Yeah. Selfishness definitely seems to be one of the things that holds us in that place of addiction. But we also want to see that we’re more than DNA products. That’s one of the things I was suffering from—is that Dad was an alcoholic, and somebody once said to me, “The apple doesn’t fall very far from the tree.” And I thought that meant that I was kind of destined to be an alcoholic through DNA.
So I found a new sense of my origin to be freeing from that DNA pull, almost like a helplessness. I wasn’t trying to be selfish. I just seemed to be pinned or categorized in a place where I had these tendencies. So when I thought of myself in light of Genesis 1, where God saw everything he made and it’s very good, as opposed to Genesis 2, where Adam and Eve mess up and their progeny all fight with each other and they’re all messed up—this was a whole new way of identifying my, if you will, spiritual genealogy instead of physical DNA as my source.
So it could tend to be a little condescending if you just say you’re selfish if you’re addicted. Some folks don’t know what else to do. And the Christian[ly] Scientific prayer prays to know that they are not trapped, that they have this wonderful divine consciousness, the Christ-presence that Jesus showed us in his Christlike living. That that same Christ is with that individual who looks so lost, and it’s speaking to their consciousness, telling them that they’re loved and good. This sense of selfishness, then, is lifted with a freer idea of where we’re coming from and our spiritual rights. If we see someone else who doesn’t know these rights, we can’t necessarily say they’re just selfish. We can know, however, that the Christ is speaking to them and that they have the right to wake up and know their rights.
spirituality.com host: Yes. I think when you think about your own experience and others’ where people have been abused or subjected to experiences that are just very difficult and painful, sometimes it’s really almost a desire for, well, just a mistaken sense of what will bring comfort.
Ginny: It is. And not to be condemning them in our thought is often the biggest step toward healing.
spirituality.com host: Yes.
Ginny: There’s a passage in Science and Health that I brought out that, “Jesus beheld in Science….” so we can behold the ideas that that individual expresses as God’s child. And sometimes we might just see one or two things. Like with the clerk who looks like she’s out of sync with what we think is right, we might see intelligence or spontaneity or something of God, something of God’s goodness in that individual. Or even with a drug addict—when somebody takes drugs…my son went through…. I called him in preparation for this chat, asking him what kind of drugs he was healed of, and he said, “Do you want to know what kind I didn’t do, and then that would be a shorter list?”
He was lifted out of that whole mess through a sense of his innocence, a spiritual innocence that never was touched. It was interesting because I noticed even in the middle of what looked like a messed-up life, my son was tender and he was thoughtful and he helped others when he served a prison sentence to communicate with their loved ones through drawing things on the envelopes for them. And so I would take the spiritual qualities that he was expressing, even in the midst of what looked like a messed-up life. And I knew that where one of God’s qualities is, they all are. It’s kind of like finding a little gold in the sand means the whole treasure’s there. And I just really claimed that those beautiful qualities could not be hidden from my view. That’s my job, and I think the listener’s, who asked that question—as an individual who loves, is to never lose sight of what God’s qualities are in another, even if you just see a few of them.
spirituality.com host: Yes. Wendy in Kilowea is writing to say that she has a friend who attends AA and he’s convinced that his addiction is absolutely a fact in his life and can’t see it any other way. She’s asking, “How can I help him?”
Ginny: Well, I think that what AA is doing there, and I know my dad worked with that idea, is they’re just getting them to face up to it so they don’t ignore the problem, and that’s commendable. He’s trying to deal with something instead of ignore it, because there’s a lot of denial in alcoholism. And Christian Science is not about denying evils in our lives, but knowing that God got there first, or the good is the reality.
So I think…in my experience, it was best not to contradict anything that my dad felt AA was giving him, but to support the good. And for me, I would maybe say one or two things that would carry it a little further beyond thinking of himself as an alcoholic who is having to stay close to AA in order to remain free or clean. And so I might say one tiny thing that would magnify his good, instead of dwelling on the fact that he had to call himself an alcoholic, and that was supportive, then, of his efforts. Eventually, that individual—bless their heart for taking hold like he is and working like he is to be free—will find there’s a greater basis for his freedom than admitting his alcoholism and having to struggle with it. Eventually they’ll see that it never touched them. And that’s what I saw in my life with my dad’s freedom, is that the alcoholism never touched me or him. And then there was total freedom for me and for him both.
I hope I answered that question; there’s a lot to it. But basically support whatever good an individual is finding for whatever reason.
spirituality.com host: That seems very helpful to me. Tony in Wilkes-Barre says, “After 30 years of addictions and being an artist and musician, Science has really begun to make sense out of this life for me. But I’m still struggling. What is the ‘thought level’ that needs to be healed, and how do I do that? Where’s the focus?”
Ginny: That’s beautiful. The thing that lifted me above it and made me quit struggling, (because I was struggling with all this stuff, including guilt), was that there is one Mind—especially for an artist. Because I was doing drugs to get new ideas, but the ideas that I already had just got messed up. I didn’t really get new ideas. That’s what Science and Health teaches, and the Bible, one of the names [is] that God is Mind, infinite consciousness filling all space, and that we’re individual expressions of that infinite consciousness.
I did a thorough study of the word consciousness and of Mind, and that lifted me above the place where I’m trapped in the tide trying to swim against it.
Go in another direction. There’s only one Mind, and that’s all you’ve ever been—you’ve never been addicted. Say to yourself, “I am not addicted. I have never been addicted, because I am the reflection of infinite Mind. And that addiction was like a dream.” You don’t have to go back and clean up your dream after you’ve had a nightmare. You wake up, you get out of bed, and you do wonderful things. And that’s what I found freed me from the guilt and all the rest of the stuff from my former experience.
spirituality.com host: That’s very helpful. We have a follow-up question about the idea of using a timer, to wait five minutes and read the Bible. This is from Ruby in New York City: “What about the type of addiction that seems to be chemically based? I know some people who have disorders that the medical community says are because of brain chemistry. These compulsions are incredibly difficult to ignore. Five minutes would be an eternity.”
Ginny: It would. It would. And I think, again, you might take the idea, whatever’s pinned on you, and if it’s a brain disorder, go to Science and Health and look up the word brain. There are some wonderful references. I had to do that because of the aftereffects of the drugs. There are some wonderful references that will begin to…like fog dissipates in the sunshine. As you pour some of these right ideas into your thought of yourself, your chemical reactions, and so on, or your chemical demands, it begins to lessen the intensity of those chemical causes, and they begin to be gentler and quieter until they dissipate, like the fog in the sunshine.
So there is a truth, a spiritual truth, right in the place where brain says I’m in control. And that spiritual truth is “God, divine Mind, is your consciousness, and is totally in control at every moment, and always has been.” That passage I gave you really works for that. So you contradict the senses. It’s very radical for me, and I love that part of it. You’re contradicting and taking up…there’s a passage I love in Science and Health on page 393, line 10: “Take possession of your body, and govern its feeling and action. Rise in the strength of Spirit,” which is another name for God, “to resist all that is unlike good. God has made man capable of this, and nothing can vitiate,” which means “weaken,” “the ability and power divinely bestowed on man.” That passage is so strong. In those moments, rise in the strength of God. You don’t have to do it on your own. We’re not alone here. There is a divine Love that wants you to know yourself and how loved you are. And that love is never leaving you, no matter what this mortal condition looks like. It’s always right there.
spirituality.com host: Thank you. This is a question from Charlotte in Wauseon, Ohio: “I’m working through an extended healing, and sometimes, it seems as though I am addicted to fear. I know that fear is wrong, and I want to break free from it. Do you have suggestions?”
Ginny: Charlotte, we all face fear. There’s a passage—“Fear never stopped being or its action.” Look up in Science and Health the word fear. Go to a Christian Science Reading Room—usually they have a Concord on a computer if you don’t have a way to look these words up. Fear doesn’t have any power to touch reality. Even if you seem to be afraid, even if you’re in the midst of fear, it has no power to touch your reality. You’re standing on a rock right where you are, and that rock is Truth. And you can stand and be as afraid as you want to be, but it never touches your solid foundation as a loved child of God. Keep facing the fear. I had to work through panic attacks. And I just refused to admit that fear had any power over my infinite Mind, God. And I kept affirming that I was the expression of that infinite Mind. It took me quite a few years to work through those feelings of fear that tried to be so debilitating. But fear began to dissolve, and eventually, it was completely gone and silent. But it “never stops being.” Do what you know is the right thing to do, in spite of the fear, and you will win, because God really got there first, and God’s not going anywhere.
spirituality.com host: That’s a beautiful statement. Martin in North Carolina says, “Following on that question of knowing when you’re addicted, I like to have an occasional glass of wine with dinner. Does this make it an addiction? Is any/all alcohol consumption wrong?”
Ginny: You know, I’m the last person to be able to say what’s right or wrong for that individual, but for me, I wouldn’t touch it because of what it did to my dad’s life, and I figure if something’s good, the more of it the better. So there’s no way that I’m going to drink wine, because I’m not going to support something that when abused or used a lot would hurt.
So I don’t do any gambling, because I’ve seen what it can do. I mean, I don’t do lotteries or any of that stuff, because if I’m knowing that all good’s coming from God, whether you’re drinking wine or gambling, then why would I want to give something outside me the ability to make me feel at peace, which a glass of wine might do, or richer, which gambling claims to be able to do? Why would I honor that false god when I’ve got this infinite abundance giving me all I need?
spirituality.com host: Very helpful. Madeleine in New York is asking, “Can you speak to the ‘addiction’ of disease, the habitual thoughts that come over and over when working toward healing?”
Ginny: There’s a passage—one of the first ones I memorized—that I’ve used through the years on page 495 of Science and Health. It’s line 14, and it’s a whole paragraph. For me, that was a big stretch to memorize, but I’ve found it helpful. It says, “When the illusion of sickness or sin tempts you, cling steadfastly to God and His idea.” And this is the part I like—I’m skipping a sentence. It says, “Let neither fear nor doubt overshadow your clear sense and calm trust, that the recognition of life harmonious—as Life eternally is—can destroy any painful sense of, or belief in, that which Life is not.” Now when I memorized this, there’s this little part in the middle that says, “your clear sense and calm trust.” I didn’t feel like I had very much clear sense and calm trust. I just felt like I had maybe a tiny bit. And I thought, “Well, all I have to do is just preserve what little bit of clear sense and calm trust I have.”
So, I again went to the books and I looked up trust and clear and spiritual sense, and magnified that little tiny bit of confidence that I might have already felt until it became more real to me, and I became more in tune to it. It was kind of like turning a radio on and having all this static, but just barely hearing the music in the background. And you just keep tuning it until you can hear it more clearly. And you might mess with the antenna and do all kinds of stuff, but that music of your life that is free and whole is right where you are right now. And we’re tuning in through this law of divine Love to that precious wholeness that you have the right to feel as God’s loved child. So take what you now are doing that’s good and magnify it. Be grateful for it, and love the good in your life already. And that, for me, has helped me get to the next place where I saw a little more.
spirituality.com host: Thank you. This one is a question that’s coming from Michigan, and the individual says, “I’m dating a man who seems to have a problem with pornography and an attraction to other women, and with it, problems with dishonesty. I’ve had the same problem in other relationships, as well. What would you suggest I might do to find my freedom in this situation and those like this?”
Ginny: I think that’s really interesting, and very loving that she said, “my freedom,” rather than, “What I can do to help him find his freedom?” I worked a lot…because I was involved in relationships—I lived with guys and didn’t see morals as relevant to my experience. And I found that working with my own male and female qualities, and claiming my wholeness and completeness helped me to be free of attraction to individuals who may or may not be moral. Finding my own spiritual manhood meant thinking about all the physical relationships that men and women might get into. And then looking at the spiritual qualities behind those relationships, like, for instance, holding hands might expresstenderness or strength or support. So I wrote down, tenderness, strength, or support. Or hugging…. There’s a passage, in Science and Health, “Metaphysics resolves things into thoughts, and exchanges the objects of sense for the ideas of Soul.” So I really had to think deeply about, What exactly is it you are as a complete expression of both the male and female qualities of God? Then claim your manhood and your womanhood within you, and that will help you to express it in more full, Godlike, appropriate ways in your outward relationships. And again, refuse to accept in your thought of this individual that he’s lacking what he hopes to get through the pornography. When he looks at this pornography, there’s something he’s asking for. It might be a sense of completeness or joy or satisfaction, but we each, individually, include all right ideas, so we don’t have to go to a TV or a computer screen or to a movie to find our satisfaction and our wholeness. That’s ours by reason of where we come from. These are just ways to keep us from claiming our freedom and our completeness as individual expressions of God. They are lies about our completeness, and we’re not going to buy it. And that gives us the right, then, to go further, when we say no.
So don’t think of him as addicted, or the other fellows, or whomever, and find your own wholeness. And then that will naturally allow you to experience a good relationship. There’s kind of a twofold answer there.
spirituality.com host: Yes. We have a question from The Mother Church Reading Room here in Boston, which is asking, “How did you allow music to make you turn to drugs?”
Ginny: I didn’t really allow music. Music is wonderful. The thing that made me turn to drugs…it was a combination of things. We wrote all our own music, so I needed new ideas—new, fresh, individual ideas. And I wasn’t getting them through my concepts of myself as an abused alcoholic’s kid. So I thought if I took drugs, which a lot of the musicians in the ‘60s were thinking, that I would get these fantastic new ideas. And I didn’t get fantastic new ideas. We made a lot of noise. And some of the music wasn’t that great if you’ve listened to it.
So that was my misconception, that I had a little brain that I had to do something to, to get new ideas. And people do that with most addictions. They think they’ve got this little brain or body that they have to put something into to feel peace or to feel whatever. And that was a little box concept of my identity that was broken when I realized through Christian Science that I had this infinite Mind to think with, to express ideas from. And it just lifted the lid off the box. I wouldn’t blame music, because music is often an instrument of beautiful ideas. It was just my misconception.
spirituality.com host: Roberto in Santa Fe, New Mexico, says, “I’ve been trying to quit smoking for the past several months, but I feel that unless I can stop through my own human will power, I have no business turning to God for anything. How can I correct my thinking about this and feel worthy of God’s love and help?”
Ginny: Well, Roberto, thank you so much for the courage to have written in. I think the fact that you’ve already taken this first step shows that you’re not addicted. You’re listening to a chat, and that means you aren’t devoted to the addiction. And that’s what addiction is—you’re devoted to something. You’re not devoted. And so you’re taking possession of what you think by listening to these new ideas. You have to think something before you feel it. So you can first of all, refuse to think that you’re addicted. You can say, “I am not addicted to cigarettes.” And know that you have the right to say that because you can know you come from a full, infinite source of peace, of all the good that you could possibly want. So instead of quitting something, what you’re really doing is starting something. You’re doing something that will show you to be so full that there’s no room left for cigarettes. You just simply are so full of intelligence, so satisfied and so complete, that there’s just nothing more you need to add to yourself.
spirituality.com host: This question relates to a topic we’ve approached in a couple of different ways. So we’ll answer this one, and sort of cover those others.
Ginny: Okay.
spirituality.com host: “How do you handle the claim of someone who seems to be addicted to sexual activity?” We’ve talked about pornography, but I think this is something a little different.
Ginny: Well, there are so many places to look at that. That is a huge question—if they’re in marriage, or what do you do? I think always the thing to do, for me, in any prayer, is to start with what’s the most loving, most gentle, kind thing to do under the circumstances. Without it being a more specific question, I think that’s hard to answer.
spirituality.com host: Okay.
Ginny: Because I’ve really answered that in a lot of the different answers. Holding, again, the right idea of another. I think that’s one thing. If it’s in a marriage and you’ve got a partner who wants more sex than you do, that’s another issue altogether. So I don’t know that I can answer that without a few more specifics.
spirituality.com host: Okay. That makes total sense to me, because, as you say, it’s very specific, too specific, in a way.
Ginny: Well, I don’t mind it too specific if they want to get that, but I don’t know.
spirituality.com host: Yeah. Well, we probably won’t have time.
Ginny: Okay. That’s another chat, huh?
spirituality.com host: That’s right. Cheryl in Georgia writes, “My late husband had quit smoking. A few years later he started going to the Christian Science church with me, but about two years later, he developed lung cancer, and two years and nine months later, he passed on. I have not been able to stop smoking. I lost my faith when my husband was not healed, and I’m trying to find it again, as I had it as a child. But I still carry the thought with me, ‘Why bother quitting, if I will get sick?’ I need to quit, and I need to regain my faith. Any ideas?”
Ginny: Oh, yeah, again, I wish we could have a whole hour just talking with her, because, I think what I just answered—the fellow who was trying to quit, the question before—also applied to this question a little bit. I think, for me, when Dad passed, he hadn’t overcome everything. He’d overcome the alcohol. I think he still smoked, and probably still smoked pot. I don’t know…Dad was kind of a wild guy. But he didn’t drink anymore. And I love to think that this is just one chapter in a huge journey, and that what I can’t see beyond this life doesn’t mean that it isn’t going on. And that her precious husband may have had his healing, but that our limited view of what life is all about doesn’t allow us to see any further than maybe a hundred and whatever years, if we live a long time.
So I think if you hold your husband within the limits of his life as a material thing, a guy, who died as a failure, you’re kind of selling him short, in a way; and you might want to release him to the idea that he’s gone on and perhaps had his healing. We just don’t know it yet.
So I did that with my dad, and I found that very freeing. Write a longer chapter in your thought of his life—add a few more chapters to his life. And you might read about Mary Baker Eddy, because she had so many things that she was persistent in dealing with, with her students and with her own life, that I found inspiration in reading some of the works about her life that give me courage to keep going when it looks like I’ve failed or am failing.
So don’t give up, and just broaden your sense, maybe, of how much good your husband is continuing to realize.
spirituality.com host: That’s very helpful. And we’re coming to the end of our time, but we have three questions on my screen here, and we’ll answer these three, even if it means running a little bit over our time. This one is a question asked for clarification from Julie in Australia. She says, “I’ve been enjoying this, but I don’t understand when you answered the person who just has an occasional glass of wine. You said you saw what it did to your father. But I thought you know that it has no power or reality because it is not of God? Surely these things have no power over us if God is All-in-all. Doesn’t Jesus say, ‘Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink?’ I’m confused. Either these things have power or they don’t. Can you please explain?”
Ginny: Yeah, they don’t have power, so why in the heck would I give it any by drinking it? It’s kind of like, I’m not going to give it any by honoring that thought of wine. Rather than giving the wine power—if I was forced to drink a bottle of wine, I would have to pray to see that it had no power. But I don’t have to indulge in an idea, which is the wine, just as a thought. I don’t want to indulge in an idea where that idea doesn’t benefit someone and didn’t benefit my dad.
Now the idea of writing a thank-you is a material thing, but it has power to bless. So I would indulge in writing a thank-you note. So I’m looking, I guess you would say, at the idea behind the wine rather than at the wine itself. I don’t know, without taking a lot of time, that that’s clear enough, but that’s the way I look at it, is, What does this represent? What statement does this activity make about my relationship to God?
spirituality.com host: Well, I think also one of the things that we can say is that right now, we are having a human experience. And within that human experience, there are beliefs that alcohol and various things are addictive, and we’re also exposed to advertising that makes them look very appealing. And all those different forces are affecting us humanly, and from a spiritual standpoint, no, none of those things have power, but we have to prove that by resisting them or refusing to indulge them in any way, and affirming our spiritual nature.
Ginny: Yes. That’s well put. Thank you. Thank you for doing that.
spirituality.com host: So that’s one way to look at it also.
Ginny: Yeah.
spirituality.com host: There’s a question that sort of is related to this again from the Boston Reading Room, from Trevail: “Why are students of Christian Science addicted to different things if God only creates good?” And in a way, that ties in again with just the human experience of all of our coming from different families, and different jobs, and all kinds of things.
Ginny: Oh, yeah. None of us is beyond addiction [to] something. Some people like to watch the news every night at exactly…. I mean, you could call that addiction. We could stretch this all over the place. I think, again, you have to ask, “How does this express my relationship to God?” We’re working toward overcoming the belief that we’re separated from our infinite source. Not so that we can be limited and be restricted in our activity. But so that we can do the things that Jesus did—so we can walk on water and feed the hungry. The reason we’re doing this isn’t to be proper little religious human beings, but so that we can be free and find the abundance of peace and joy and goodness in this experience that Jesus showed us is here. He said the kingdom of heaven is at hand and that it’s within us. So the kingdom of heaven has to be a wonderful place to live without all the suffering and dying and stuff that we seem to be in as human beings. So this is about finding more good, not limiting our lives.
spirituality.com host: Right. And also bringing that good to others by virtue of our ability to perceive it, right?
Ginny: Yeah. Not just our own good, but the good of the entire universe, so that we can actually feed the multitudes through knowing the spiritual abundance of substance like Jesus did. Wouldn’t that just take care of all kinds of problems?!
spirituality.com host: Oh, yeah.
Ginny: So that’s the goal here. I certainly wouldn’t want to just see how many things I couldn’t do, but what’s possible. And we’re going to see more of what’s possible when we get free from these thoughts that we’re addicted to some kind of a material stuff. Then we’re going to see that the spiritual reality of Life makes all good possible to each of us. No one is left out.
spirituality.com host: Exactly. Louise in Michigan is asking, “Can thinking materially be considered an addiction? And can you turn from it?” I think she has a point.
Ginny: Yeah. If we’re just trying to manipulate our human experience, then that’s no different from being addicted. I don’t want to just live in a material experience for a hundred years and then be nothing. I’m trying to find in my study of Science what’s beyond this human way of thinking to the infinite reflection of Life. So for me, human thinking can lead us to a greater understanding of spiritual reality, but it isn’t a substitute for knowing that there’s one infinite source of thought and that’s God, infinite Mind. I find I discover that, when I yield up my human will, my human reasoning, and listen and go beyond self. There’s this definition of angels I use on page 581 of Science and Health, line 4 it says, “God’s thoughts passing to man; spiritual intuitions, pure and perfect; the inspiration of goodness, purity, and immortality, counteracting all evil, sensuality, and mortality.” And this is what Christian Science is about. It tunes us into the angels so that we can be free from the limits and the suffering that this material world imposes on us. And I’ve seen this law heal over and over again. And I’ve seen addictions melt away through applying these spiritual ideas to my human thinking.
spirituality.com host: Well, Ginny, you’ve really just made a wonderful closing statement, but I wonder if you have any additional things you’d like to say as we’re reaching the end of our chat together?
Ginny: One thing that helps me the most is that statement I made that God got there first. It’s so simple, and it was my first article. But can you imagine an all-powerful, loving Father-Mother God in the very spot where you are—how much that Love loves you? And would it ever leave you free to be addicted or separated from that love? No way. So we have the right to tune in to, to feel, to be blessed by and healed by that love. And that’s what this chat’s all about.
spirituality.com host: Thanks, Ginny. If you’d like to read some of Ginny’s articles on spirituality.com, just go to the search line on your screen, and type her name, Ginny Luedeman, into the box. There’s a special article Ginny wrote about her son for The Christian Science Journal a few years ago that’s on the site. It’s called, “My son was still innocent,” and it deals with how she prayed when she learned that her son was suffering from addiction. It’s very helpful and has some very practical ideas that will supplement all that we’ve covered in this chat.
Citations used in this chat
Science and Health
King James Bible