In my journey of understanding conscious awareness, reading about meditation, I came across this statement regarding the brutal reality of pursuing a spiritual journey:
“If your heart is unwilling, then there is no need [to begin your journey]. Then, the time has not come for you to move on the way or search for the Truth. [You will not find the way if you are immature].” “Maturity means one that has looked into the life and found that this is just a dream—an illusion. When the reality you think is real starts looking like a dream, you are mature.”
—Osho, The Buddha Said: meeting the challenge of life’s difficulties, OSHO International Foundation 2019, Watkins Media Limited, London, pg. 431-432.
That may sound a bit harsh to get our heads around because it means life as we know it is an illusion.
So, I have restated the quote in terms of my addiction, which I can relate to. For me, Hitting Bottom means one has looked into addiction and found that this is just a nightmare—an illusion. When the reality that you think is real starts looking like a nightmare, you have hit bottom: you are beginning to wake up—to realize addiction is not reality.
My version of Hitting Bottom: when I realized I was living a nightmare and decided there was nothing I could think of to do, I let go of thinking I could fix my broken self—alone; finally, I decided to get help to get sober. Whether or not I knew it, I started to “surrender” my ego and stop relying on my thinking, which does nothing more than repeat my past. I began to realize that the image of myself from my past only made me feel different and separate from everyone else: isolated, lonely, confused, and depressed, thinking I was unique and dysfunctional. My only choice was to become humble, open my heart, and allow myself to receive help from others to figure out what is real.
That is what I have found to be my Truth. All I had to do was surrender and become aware that there is something bigger than my separate, isolated ego, which is my connection to the unified consciousness of community—the higher power of unconditional love.
So, I’m saying that each of us is more powerful in our ability to stay sober (today) than we were before we came into this community because we were blessed to receive unconditional love when we let go of our egos together. We let go, dropped the barriers imprinted on our minds since we were innocent children, and opened our hearts to receive unconditional love and share it in return. Well, that’s easy to say because we are all sober now, but how do we grow this higher power of unconditional love?
What I’m asking is this: what have you surrendered?
What are you doing to open your heart, and how are you becoming humble enough to receive and share the power that comes from belonging to this community? And I know that answering this question requires humility and courage to surrender. But, still, I swear if you can identify where you are finding the courage to be more humble—to surrender your ego—you will be able to see how you are becoming more powerful in your sobriety. So, where are you finding the courage to surrender and become more powerful in your sobriety?
3/27/23
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