Let us consider that wonderful sign [of the resurrection] which takes place in Eastern lands, that is, in Arabia and the countries round about. There is a certain bird which is called a phœnix. This is the only one of its kind, and lives five hundred years. And when the time of its dissolution draws near that it must die, it builds itself a nest of frankincense, and myrrh, and other spices, into which, when the time is fulfilled, it enters and dies. But as the flesh decays a certain kind of worm is produced, which, being nourished by the juices of the dead bird, brings forth feathers. Then, when it has acquired strength, it takes up that nest in which are the bones of its parent, and bearing these it passes from the land of Arabia into Egypt, to the city called Heliopolis. And, in open day, flying in the sight of all men, it places them on the altar of the sun, and having done this, hastens back to its former abode. The priests then inspect the registers of the dates, and find that it has returned exactly as the five hundredth year was completed (1 Clement 25; note: This fable respecting the phœnix is mentioned by Herodotus (ii. 73) and by Pliny (Nat. Hist., x. 2.) and is used as above by Tertullian (De Resurr., §13) and by others of the Fathers).

The Roman Poet Ovid also has a strikingly parallel account:

Most beings spring from other individuals; but there is a certain kind which reproduces itself. The Assyrians call it the Phoenix. It does not live on fruit or flowers, but on frankincense and odoriferous gums. When it has lived five hundred years, it builds itself a nest in the branches of an oak, or on the top of a palm tree. In this it collects cinnamon, and spikenard, and myrrh, and of these materials builds a pile on which it deposits itself, and dying, breathes out its last breath amidst odors. From the body of the parent bird, a young Phoenix issues forth, destined to live as long a life as its predecessor. When this has grown up and gained sufficient strength, it lifts its nest from the tree (its own cradle and its parent’s sepulchre), and carries it to the city of Heliopolis in Egypt, and deposits it in the temple of the Sun.

Christian authors typically refer to the Pheonix as a symbol of the resurrection and the resurrected life (cf. Psalm 92:12 and Job 29:18). And in all traditions the story of the Phoenix symbolizes rebirth. In more modern times, in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, the phoenix dies and rises again. I say this because there are a lot of lessons that can be taken from this story that is applicable to the pornography addict; mainly from the motif, “rising from the ashes.”

How have you risen from the ashes? Or are you like me still in a heap of ashes?

And this Christmas, we spent time with my in-laws. They had “high speed internet” which was a mere 2MB bandwidth. With three immediate families there, we had three laptops all trying to connect to the internet. So as soon as one person began downloading anything it would almost automatically freeze up another person. Eventually the bandwidth was taken up so that all the laptops were unable to connect to the internet. It was maxed out and eventually two of us would just close our laptops leaving the third person excited and surprised that their internet was working.

Both of these serve as good examples to what I believe is happening with me. I have so much stuff in my head that it crowds out important things because there is only so much room. Whether it is my preoccupation with pornography or a lie or two (not that I ever told any) that would compound to three or four (but rarely more than say 10-20 <-sarcasm). So eventually I have to remember reality, truth, the lies, who I told what, what cover-up was used and the amount of details that were given, etc. etc. Furthermore, I am always reading a book here and there and I am always learning more about my work and my job, so needless to say that my mind is on overload! My ability to process and my emotional bandwidth has plateaued.

Being overloaded, I am tired…always tired…more tired than I typically am. I am falling asleep almost at any time at any place. I am lethargic and at times simply unable to do anything (but not from depression per se). So now I am managing my professional life, my home life, and my addictive life along with my emotional baggage of guilt and shame all the while comparing myself against my high Christian standards and values.

When I first really entered recovery only recently, my wife’s counselor told us to clear our plates even if that meant not going to church for children’s choir or the Sunday night service or AWANAS or whatever. At first, I didn’t really understand this and didn’t really care to cut anything out. Actually I added to my plate and overloaded my plate just as a hungry starving person would overload their plate at an all you can eat buffet where their eyes are much bigger than their stomach. Only recently have I finished projects, walked away from opportunities and began to push things off my plate. I have delayed doing things that I wanted to do and wanted to learn. This is so that I can free up space in my RAM or in my emotional bandwidth. And I am beginning to need a simple system reboot, so that changes can take effect.

There is an old recovery story about a man desperately trying to get out of a jungle. Searching for an escape, he came to a raging river with apparently no way to get across. So he built a sturdy raft out of wood and vines, which was all that was available. He launched the makeshift craft into the white water and managed to push himself to the other side. While recovered his strength, he thought about the he effort he put into the raft. He decide he needed to bring it with him. He told himself that there might be other streams, ut maybe no materials to build a new raft. Consequently he pulled the heavy raft through the jungle, which slowed him down rather considerably. It was a great deal of effort but he was convinced he had to do it. He then met a traveler who observed that if he had let go of the raft, he would be out of the jungle, because there are always other solutions at each crossing (From Patrick Carnes’s 40 Day Focus).

My sexual acting out is a solution to one or many of my problems and/or perceived problems. And frankly it worked well enough for me to continue to do it again and again. For example, when I was in high school, I was scared to death to get drunk and have sex. My dream was to be a scholar athlete and to have a full ride to college using both my brains and my athletic ability. However, I knew that if I had sex, I would get a girl pregnant the first time…no doubt (though this later proved to be untrue with my wife). And I was afraid to get drunk because I was afraid what I would do if I were drunk. Mainly, I was afraid that I would have sex. So in preparation for a date, I would always look at pornography and masturbate before hand so as to drive my sex drive down. Most of the time, it worked, and I was only interested in the making out stage.

However, now I am married. I have also realized that I use pornography to cope with stress, anger, guilt, loneliness, frustration, exhaustion, excitement even…almost every thing frankly. It was convenient, and it didn’t take long at all or it only took as long as I’d like–or so I believed. However, that soon proved otherwise as I would look at pornography for hours while I was in college and in graduate school even though I only wanted to take a peek sometimes. So instead of learning for new ways to cope with my stress or whatever it may be, I always ran to my idol, worshiped, and returned. Now, I need to do the same with Jesus. However, it will prove to be more difficult to escape the trap of pornography. Simply I have been dealing with real life problems with the wrong solution. Now I know about Jesus…it is time for me to really re-experience Jesus.

I love this quote by Albert Einstein:

“The significant problems we face cannot be resolved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.”

First you will come to the Sirens who enchant all who come near them. If any one unwarily draws in too close and hears the singing of the Sirens, his wife and children will never welcome him home again, for they sit in a green field and warble him to death with the sweetness of their song. There is a great heap of dead men’s bones lying all around, with the flesh still rotting off them. Therefore pass these Sirens by, and stop your men’s ears with wax that none of them may hear; but if you like you can listen yourself, for you may get the men to bind you as you stand upright on a cross-piece half way up the mast, and they must lash the rope’s ends to the mast itself, that you may have the pleasure of listening. If you beg and pray the men to unloose you, then they must bind you faster.

So Odysseus recounts this prophecy to his men, and they quickly reached the island of the Sirens for the wind blew favorably for them. However, it quickly calmed and the men went rowing. So Odysseus took a wheel of wax, cut it, kneaded it with the help of the sun, and plugged his men’s ears with it. They in turn tied Odysseus to the mast as he stood upright on the crosspiece. Upon coming within earshot, the Sirens started singing. Odysseus continues:

“‘Come here,’ they sang, ‘renowned Ulysses, honour to the Achaean name, and listen to our two voices. No one ever sailed past us without staying to hear the enchanting sweetness of our song- and he who listens will go on his way not only charmed, but wiser, for we know all the ills that the gods laid upon the Argives and Trojans before Troy, and can tell you everything that is going to happen over the whole world.’

“They sang these words most musically, and as I longed to hear them further I made by frowning to my men that they should set me free; but they quickened their stroke, and Eurylochus and Perimedes bound me with still stronger bonds till we had got out of hearing of the Sirens’ voices. Then my men took the wax from their ears and unbound me.” (Source)

And so it is also with pornography addiction. As Patrick Carnes states, “Addiction rests in delusion, denial and deception.” A friend of mine has a question that he loves to ask people, “How do you know that you are deceived?” Or, “How do people know that they are deceived?” The answer is simple, but think about it. How do we know if we have been deceived? Simply without some sort of help, we don’t. We don’t. We don’t have the slightest clue without something external to me whether that be a friend, a book, the Bible, or the Holy Spirit. Likewise, we don’t know if we have been disillusioned or deceived. Frankly, we don’t even know if we are in denial until some sort of crisis. And often and typically, if not always, the crisis is external to ourselves.

Yet, with all addictions, there is that voice that everyone hears that calls us back to our sin. Just as Israel kept wanting to return to Egypt, likewise an addict sometimes has in his/her mind that he/she wants to return back to Egypt. As the saying goes, “Better the devil I know than the one that I don’t.” However, addicts hear those voices as though those voices have the power and the pull of the Sirens, where, if we are not tied down to something, we will do everything we can to go there, even though we may not want to return. Patrick Carnes calls this the “Sweet Voice of Escape” from Paul Jefferson’s song where he sang, “Addiction is like the sweet voice of escape.” This internal conflict and contradiction is typical of us addicts.

So as I think through this story, there are three important things to consider.

1. What are some things that I have been warned about that if I do or come close to doing, it’s already a lost cause, just as though Ulysses approached the Sirens without being tied down?
2. A second thing is that pornography does offer something.
3. Who do I have that will inform me of possible future traps, just as Odysseus had Circe?

What are some things that I have been warned about that if I do or come close to doing, it’s already a lost cause, just as though Ulysses approached the Sirens without being tied down? One thing that my wife and I have talked about is my looking at pictures on the internet as part of my job. Periodically, in creating something for work, I’ll go to the internet to pull Creative Commons pictures of a wide variety of things. However, when I do this, there is always the possibility of seeing something that will cause me to stumble for I can only control the words I type, not the results. And people are crafty and will post inappropriate pictures with the wrong safe-guard level tagging on purpose. So this is one thing that if I do without some immediate support (e.g., doing these type of searches with my wife, etc.), then I will be sucked in and will fall victim (though a victim may not be the best word as it was spawned by a poor choice) to the “Sirens” of sorts.

A second thing is that pornography does offer something. It is not something that is completely and utterly empty. There is something there. There is some sort of pull. Pornography promises the ultimate and best fix. Pornography promises control, power, and acceptance. Just as the Sirens promised knowledge, charm, wisdom, even divine knowledge and wisdom, likewise, pornography promises similar knowledge, charm, and wisdom, even divine knowledge and wisdom. For with the pornography addict, we control the destinies of what they are watching or seeing. We see things that only God should see. We are privy to intimate things. However, it is only a show. It is false. It is empty. It is vain. And eventually we learn that pornography, like other addictions, fail the fantasy, the promises.

So, as an addict, I need people around me. I need friends that will tie me down. I need advisers that will inform me of possible future traps, just as Odysseus had Circe. These people are people in my life that understand the addiction, that will call me to the rug, that will love me enough to speak truth in my life. These are people who will drop everything they are doing to help you. These are people who are committed to my success at overcoming this problem. For me, these are my friends from my therapy group, 12 step groups, old friends, and my wife. However, I must do my part as well. As much as I’d like to blame some of these guys for some of my failings, I cannot. I must do my part and call them when I need them. And I must also do my part and have more than one person to depend because having only one person to depend on is setting myself up for failure. Yet, while this process can take a long time, it doesn’t have to take that long. However, I must have these people in my life, because as an addict, I do not look ahead that often. So I need those people around me often. I need these people around me deep enough to really know me (something I struggle with greatly).

Admiral Jim Stockdale who was the highest ranking US military officer in the “Hanoi Hilton” prison-of-war camp during the height of the Vietnam War. Tortured over twenty times during his eight-year imprisonment from 1965-1973, Stockdale lived out the war without any prisoner’s rights, no set release date, certainty as to whether he would even survive to see his family again. He shouldered the burden of command, doing everything he could to create the conditions that would increase the number of prisoners who would survive unbroken, while fighting an internal war against his captors and their attempts to use the prisoners for propaganda…[In Collins' preparation of meeting with Stockdale, he read In Love and War]

As I moved through the book, I found myself getting depressed. It just seemed so bleak–the uncertainty of his fate, the brutality of his captors and so forth. And then it dawned on me: “Here I am sitting in my warm and comfortable office, looking out over the beautiful Stanford campus on a beautiful Saturday afternoon. I’m getting depressed reading this, and I know the end of the story! I know that he gets out, reunites with his family, becomes a national hero, and gets to spend the later years of his life studying philosophy on the same beautiful campus. If it feels depressing for me, how on earth did he deal with it when he was actually there and did not know the end of the story?”

“I never lost faith in the end of the story,” he said when I asked him, “I never doubted not only that I would get out, but also that I would prevail in the end and turn the experience into the defining event of my life, which, in retrospect, I would not trade.”

I didn’t say anything for many minutes, and we continued the slow walk toward the faculty club, Stockdale limping and arc-swinging his stiff lef that enever fully recovered from repeated torture. Finally after about a hundred meters of silence, I asked, “Who didn’t make it out?”

“Oh, that’s easy,” he said, “The optimists.”

“The optimists? I don’t understand,” I said, now completely confused, given what he’d said a hundred meters earlier.

“The optimists. Oh, they were the ones who said ‘we’re going to be out by Christmas’. And, Christmas would come and Christmas would go. Then they’d say, ‘We’re going to be out by Easter.’ And Easter would come, and Easter would go. And then Thanksgiving, and then it would be Christmas again. Then they died of a broken heart.”

Another long pause, and more walking. Then he turned to me and said, “This is a very important lesson. You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end – which you can never afford to lose – with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.”

That conversation with Admiral Stockdale stayed with me, and in fact had a profound influence on my own development. Life is unfair–sometimes to our advantage, sometimes to our disadvantage. We will all experience disappointments and crushing events somewhere along the way, setbacks…What separates people, Stockdale taught me, is not the presence or absence of difficulty, but how they deal with the inevitable difficulties of life.

The Stockdale Paradox simply is maintaining unwavering faith that you can and will prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties, AND at the same time have the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they may be.

And so it is with recovery. We must do two things:

1. Maintain hope and unwavering faith that I can and I will prevail in the end, and
2. Confront the brutal facts and effects of my current reality.

Hope. Reality. In my own recovery, it is extremely difficult for me to do both. Typically in the past, I either have one or the other, but primarily one and that being a naive, faint hope. I have only been an Optimist, as Stockdale put it, and I have died again and again and again. I am not surviving whatsoever. I tend to shy away from confronting the “brutal facts” of my current reality. And that’s what they are: brutal. My reality is often exposed by my wife at times I don’t find convenient…then again, no time is convenient! Basically, I don’t want to face my reality. I don’t really want to face them for when I do, I am not sure if I can handle it. Living in the world of ignorance, denial, and un-reality is bliss, but only bliss for me in a very limited sense. It is anything but bliss and serenity for my family. Instead my selfish bliss becomes a raging storm for those around me. And I sit in the midst of the storm believing that I am not getting wet and that it will not have any affect on me whatsoever.

As the Calvin (little boy) and Hobbes (tiger) comic goes, Calvin says something like, “If I see/hear something I don’t like, I think I’m going to ignore it.” And Hobbes says, “Don’t you think that’s kind of irresponsible.” And Calvin says, “Wow, isn’t it a nice day?”

That is me in a comic strip. I ignore things I don’t like instead of confronting them and facing them head on. I am the big pink elephant in the room, and I am perfectly happy so as long as no one talks about me, talks to me about me, or brings a mirror in the room.

Scot Peck, in the Road Less Traveled, says:

We must always hold truth, as best we can determine it, to be more important, more vital to our self-interest, than our comfort. Conversely, we must always consider our personal discomfort relatively unimportant and, indeed, even welcome it in the service of the search for truth. Mental health is the on-going process of dedication to reality at all costs.

This is extremely difficult. As an addict, I have lied again and again, over and over, to myself, to my wife, to all my friends, and on and on. I have lived a lie masquerading as something that I am not really putting my family in situations where they must also masquerade in order to “protect” me. So to face this truth will be extremely difficult; however, it is one that I must do.

John 8:32 says, “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” For so long I wanted to be free without knowing the truth, without anyone else knowing the truth, and if I could help it, without God knowing the truth. And part of knowing the truth is obeying Jesus Christ, for John 8:31 says, “If you continue to follow my teaching, you are really my disciples.” This is consistent with much of 1 John which speaks about abiding in Christ and obeying Jesus’ commands. However, for me, the truth is that I haven’t been following Jesus’ teachings in regards to sexual immorality. The truth is that I haven’t been obeying Jesus Christ with my tongue, lying constantly and rather consistently. The truth, my reality is that I have created a wake that is ugly, devastating and brutal for all parties involved.

The truth and my true reality is not gray regardless how gray I would like things to be. Instead, the truth is black and white for that is the nature of truth. My reality is not gray. It is black and white. My pornography addiction has created a gray environment where something that should be seen as sin (as black) is seen as gray or not so bad because of my rationalizations and failed moral compass (if I can even say that I have one).