fookisan
Guest
Last week my son disclosed how he was trying to make quick money and fell into a Ponzi or pyramid scheme. Luckily he only lost a few hundred dollars. Funny thing was I had lectured him on the subject just a month earlier. Oh well, until a person sees it for themselves they don't understand the concept of 'mind blindness' and how it applies to themselves. Mr. Ponzi is still alive and well even though his earthy body died some years ago. Here is an old post on this subject.
"Paying Homage to Charles Ponzi" written for a 12 step group
Why am I paying homage to a con man named Charles Ponzi? Because Ponzi provided me with a very important recovery concept. Charles Ponzi, an Italian immigrant, was born in the late 19th century and was credited with developing the first pyramid scheme in the 1920's, which has appropriately been dubbed "The Ponzi Scheme" He would deliver the promise "Would you like to be rich? I can double your money every ninety days, guaranteed" and was successful with bilking people out of many millions of dollars For those that do not know what a pyramid or Ponzi scheme is, here is the definition from Investors World dot com:
"An illegal investment scheme in which investors are promised impossibly high returns on their investments. These are scams in which money from later investors is used to pay earlier investors. The creators of the scheme get most of the profits while those who come later are left with nothing because there are eventually an insufficient number of new investors to pay the existing ones. These scams inevitably collapse because they require exponential growth in the number of participants at each step, which is impossible."
A few years ago I read an article in the Wall Street Journal about Ponzi. The article stated when Ponzi was interviewed he was asked how he was able to swindle so many people so easily, his responded, "When a man's mind is concentrated he is blind." When I read this it hit home that this is what I had been doing all those years with my addictions. I was anesthetizing myself to living and dealing with life with my drugs and had done a good job blinding myself with my addictions and unbalanced way of living. This blindness lead to more blindness and more unbalance and it snowballed from there. This case of having your mind concentrated to the point of blindness is not anything new. The ancient philosophers new this well. They called it "putting passion before reason." Both these areas of passion and reason where the foundation of much philosophical discussion of ethics and virtue with the ancient Greeks. They knew when passion rules the mind, that the only job left for reason is that of the subservient task to find cleaver ways to satisfy the passions. When our minds are occupied with too much wreckage of the past, too many problems and complexities and out of control passions then there is little room left in it for reasoning. This is why addicts make poor decisions a lot of the time. Addicts blind themselves with their addiction and out of balance life.
You see this same concentration of mind in many other lifestyles as well. The chronic volunteers that mind everyone's business other than their own suffer from it. Remember what the program tells us - "we cannot transmit what we do not have." They do not understand the concept of getting their own house in order before loosing themselves in others problems. The collectors that concentrate on perfecting their obsessions can also suffer from it. I've know many collectors and was a massive one myself. A funny thing with many collectors is once they finish a collection they lose interest in it and must find another collection to start to occupy their minds. It is a never ending treadmill of desire, attachment and unsatisfied demands. This is the same reason that we can only find transient state of happiness in people, places or things that we pursue in life. They all deliver various states of pleasure but the happiness they deliver is short term and not sustainable. Once we acquire our acquisition the happiness only lasts a few days and sometimes does not even last for the drive home from the store. Whenever we put our happiness in people, places or things we will sooner or later be let down. Happiness starts from within us and cannot come from anyplace else. We can achieve a "diminishing of pain" from people, places or things, but cannot find true happiness in these material things as the pleasure found in such things can readily be turned into pain as well. True happiness has no limits, whereas the aforementioned do have limits and also contain qualities of pain in them
Perfectionists of all sorts can be blinded to the big picture when they get concentrated on some unimportant minutia they fixate on that they think will mean life or death to them. Personally, I used to work to perfect many unimportant areas of living. This gave me the illusion that I had some control over at least one "thing" in my life, when the broader part of my life was a total mess and out of control. I found that balanced living is better than concentrated living in one area with the rest of my life being sickly out of balance. We sometimes get so wrapped up in these external areas that appeal to our ego that we forget to work within us to develop self worth that is real and stems from within us. All the addictive areas we participate in are in the same boat whether we are concentrated on a bottle or a fix or what to buy next. I had to learn to restructure my life in a balanced way under the guidelines of the 12 steps with special attention given to living right size and accepting and living comfortably with my OWN means as is mentioned in the Alcoholics Anonymous 12 Steps and 12 Traditions on pages 122-125. I also had to learn not devote too much time to perfecting any one area of living for fear of being too concentrated in one thing and blind to many other important areas of my life. My Buddhist practice also warns me against developing attachments and whenever I try to perfect anything to a high degree I cannot avoid this area of clinging, desire and attachments so I try to avoid it if possible. While I can never be 100% perfect with this, I give it much thought and work on living within my comfortable means in the broad spectrum of my life and not just on certain concentrated areas.
Sometimes we make a conscious effort to escape through fantasy and fixation on something, someplace or somebody else. Other times we are not aware of what we are doing and can get lost though ignorance. Isn't it much easier to fantasize about something else than stay in the hear and now and deal with today's problems? I try and catch myself when I practice this escapism and work to bring my thoughts back to the present. Whenever the fantasy starts I check to see what I am escaping from? Why do I fixate on something else instead of where I'm at? My Buddhist practice of mindfulness helps with this area as well as my 12 step work of living in the present. I have to make an effort to stay balanced, as I can still live unbalanced even from putting too much effort in a seemingly good area. Chronic gamblers seem to live in this fantasy world quite a bit. Here is an excerpt from a Gamblers Anonymous pamphlet.
"The Dream World of a Compulsive Gambler."
"A lot of time is spent creating images of great and wonderful things they are going to do as soon as they make 'the big win.' They often see themselves as quite philanthropic and charming people. They may dream of providing families and friends with new cars, mink coats and other luxuries. Compulsive gamblers picture themselves leading a pleasant, gracious life, made possible by the huge sums of money they will accrue from their 'system.' Servants, penthouses, nice clothes, charming friends, yachts and world tours are a few of the wonderful things that are just around the corner after a big win is finally made.
Pathetically, however, there never seems to be a big enough winning to make even the smallest dream come true. When compulsive gamblers succeed, they gamble to dream still greater dreams. When failing, they gamble in reckless desperation and the depths of their misery are fathomless as their dream world comes crashing down. Sadly, they will struggle back, dream more dreams and of course suffer more misery. No one can convince them that their great schemes will not come true. They believe they will, for without this dream world, life for them would not be tolerable."
End of page 1 continued on page 2
"Paying Homage to Charles Ponzi" written for a 12 step group
Why am I paying homage to a con man named Charles Ponzi? Because Ponzi provided me with a very important recovery concept. Charles Ponzi, an Italian immigrant, was born in the late 19th century and was credited with developing the first pyramid scheme in the 1920's, which has appropriately been dubbed "The Ponzi Scheme" He would deliver the promise "Would you like to be rich? I can double your money every ninety days, guaranteed" and was successful with bilking people out of many millions of dollars For those that do not know what a pyramid or Ponzi scheme is, here is the definition from Investors World dot com:
"An illegal investment scheme in which investors are promised impossibly high returns on their investments. These are scams in which money from later investors is used to pay earlier investors. The creators of the scheme get most of the profits while those who come later are left with nothing because there are eventually an insufficient number of new investors to pay the existing ones. These scams inevitably collapse because they require exponential growth in the number of participants at each step, which is impossible."
A few years ago I read an article in the Wall Street Journal about Ponzi. The article stated when Ponzi was interviewed he was asked how he was able to swindle so many people so easily, his responded, "When a man's mind is concentrated he is blind." When I read this it hit home that this is what I had been doing all those years with my addictions. I was anesthetizing myself to living and dealing with life with my drugs and had done a good job blinding myself with my addictions and unbalanced way of living. This blindness lead to more blindness and more unbalance and it snowballed from there. This case of having your mind concentrated to the point of blindness is not anything new. The ancient philosophers new this well. They called it "putting passion before reason." Both these areas of passion and reason where the foundation of much philosophical discussion of ethics and virtue with the ancient Greeks. They knew when passion rules the mind, that the only job left for reason is that of the subservient task to find cleaver ways to satisfy the passions. When our minds are occupied with too much wreckage of the past, too many problems and complexities and out of control passions then there is little room left in it for reasoning. This is why addicts make poor decisions a lot of the time. Addicts blind themselves with their addiction and out of balance life.
You see this same concentration of mind in many other lifestyles as well. The chronic volunteers that mind everyone's business other than their own suffer from it. Remember what the program tells us - "we cannot transmit what we do not have." They do not understand the concept of getting their own house in order before loosing themselves in others problems. The collectors that concentrate on perfecting their obsessions can also suffer from it. I've know many collectors and was a massive one myself. A funny thing with many collectors is once they finish a collection they lose interest in it and must find another collection to start to occupy their minds. It is a never ending treadmill of desire, attachment and unsatisfied demands. This is the same reason that we can only find transient state of happiness in people, places or things that we pursue in life. They all deliver various states of pleasure but the happiness they deliver is short term and not sustainable. Once we acquire our acquisition the happiness only lasts a few days and sometimes does not even last for the drive home from the store. Whenever we put our happiness in people, places or things we will sooner or later be let down. Happiness starts from within us and cannot come from anyplace else. We can achieve a "diminishing of pain" from people, places or things, but cannot find true happiness in these material things as the pleasure found in such things can readily be turned into pain as well. True happiness has no limits, whereas the aforementioned do have limits and also contain qualities of pain in them
Perfectionists of all sorts can be blinded to the big picture when they get concentrated on some unimportant minutia they fixate on that they think will mean life or death to them. Personally, I used to work to perfect many unimportant areas of living. This gave me the illusion that I had some control over at least one "thing" in my life, when the broader part of my life was a total mess and out of control. I found that balanced living is better than concentrated living in one area with the rest of my life being sickly out of balance. We sometimes get so wrapped up in these external areas that appeal to our ego that we forget to work within us to develop self worth that is real and stems from within us. All the addictive areas we participate in are in the same boat whether we are concentrated on a bottle or a fix or what to buy next. I had to learn to restructure my life in a balanced way under the guidelines of the 12 steps with special attention given to living right size and accepting and living comfortably with my OWN means as is mentioned in the Alcoholics Anonymous 12 Steps and 12 Traditions on pages 122-125. I also had to learn not devote too much time to perfecting any one area of living for fear of being too concentrated in one thing and blind to many other important areas of my life. My Buddhist practice also warns me against developing attachments and whenever I try to perfect anything to a high degree I cannot avoid this area of clinging, desire and attachments so I try to avoid it if possible. While I can never be 100% perfect with this, I give it much thought and work on living within my comfortable means in the broad spectrum of my life and not just on certain concentrated areas.
Sometimes we make a conscious effort to escape through fantasy and fixation on something, someplace or somebody else. Other times we are not aware of what we are doing and can get lost though ignorance. Isn't it much easier to fantasize about something else than stay in the hear and now and deal with today's problems? I try and catch myself when I practice this escapism and work to bring my thoughts back to the present. Whenever the fantasy starts I check to see what I am escaping from? Why do I fixate on something else instead of where I'm at? My Buddhist practice of mindfulness helps with this area as well as my 12 step work of living in the present. I have to make an effort to stay balanced, as I can still live unbalanced even from putting too much effort in a seemingly good area. Chronic gamblers seem to live in this fantasy world quite a bit. Here is an excerpt from a Gamblers Anonymous pamphlet.
"The Dream World of a Compulsive Gambler."
"A lot of time is spent creating images of great and wonderful things they are going to do as soon as they make 'the big win.' They often see themselves as quite philanthropic and charming people. They may dream of providing families and friends with new cars, mink coats and other luxuries. Compulsive gamblers picture themselves leading a pleasant, gracious life, made possible by the huge sums of money they will accrue from their 'system.' Servants, penthouses, nice clothes, charming friends, yachts and world tours are a few of the wonderful things that are just around the corner after a big win is finally made.
Pathetically, however, there never seems to be a big enough winning to make even the smallest dream come true. When compulsive gamblers succeed, they gamble to dream still greater dreams. When failing, they gamble in reckless desperation and the depths of their misery are fathomless as their dream world comes crashing down. Sadly, they will struggle back, dream more dreams and of course suffer more misery. No one can convince them that their great schemes will not come true. They believe they will, for without this dream world, life for them would not be tolerable."
End of page 1 continued on page 2
