For me, Sobriety is not some secure destination where addiction disappears; it is not escaping addiction at some rehab haven; it is not making adjustments, modifications, or implementing new routines, systems, or self-disciplines to protect me from my addiction environment; it is not the culmination of acts of service to replace addiction as some temporary reward for not using; it is not the illusion of time passing to find a new way of life while gracefully leaving the old way behind; all of these attempts can be nothing more than subtle escapes to distract, delay, and maybe even deny or hide the truth: relapsing in addiction is simply a matter of time. But, for those who are aware of time, not trying to think their way out of addiction, but instead open their heart to feel their way out, any one of these recovery tools can reveal the truth: sobriety is the constant surrendering of psychological time (our past) by confronting our emotions, to understand how we feel, deep within our hearts, about our way of life now; and staying aware of our addiction to thinking—time.
As painful as ripping off a bandage, confronting our current way of life often hurts like hell…
but the wounds only fester and become more painful—deadly—if we ignore them. Nothing is easy in early sobriety when we start to look within; that is because we’ve been living, for so long, in the delusion of psychological time, reliving our regrets from the past and projecting similar fears into the future. It hurts like hell to relearn how to live with the hard truth, the reality, of what is happening now.
We wake up to realize that living with truth is constantly being sober (present) to face life that is changing every single moment. Otherwise, we are avoiding life in addiction to thinking: planning our actions based on time—using memories from the past to imagine our desires for the future—which is the source of our conflict with reality that causes our suffering. In addition, we compound our suffering in time by adding substance addiction as another means of escape from being present. Substance addiction is escaping through something outside ourselves, something we add that separates our intelligence from our feelings—which is ignorance: living by memory alone. This division of time—thinking—the ego that can’t exist in the present moment likes to add alcohol, drugs, sex, gambling, or anything that offers an escape from feeling inadequate—not loving ourselves enough, to be enough—when dealing with the reality of our environment—Now.
Sobriety is not a secure destination; it is constant present awareness, when the mind and heart remain unified in understanding the cause of our environment: the truth about life arising in the present moment—truly living! Understanding the significance, with acceptance, of whatever naturally arises through complete mind-body awareness—being enough—is our Higher Power. The Higher Power of choiceless—without thought—spontaneous action (intelligence)—to be enough for whatever is required to do the next right thing in the present moment.
The madness of it all is…
We discover that the truth of our Higher Power is the awareness that our thinking ego—what we know—results from the same imperfect social environment in which we want to survive. This means until we become aware, our flawed ego—who we think we are—tries to navigate, some would say ignorantly, all the man-made barriers, boundaries, social regulations, and moral authorities to function respectably, fit into the mold, and survive in a dysfunctional society. It is no wonder how easy it is to forget to remind ourselves throughout the day that we are not our thinking. Remember that if we focus our attention, we can transcend the ego through awareness to reach a meditative state of natural intelligence. To respond with a unified mind and heart, rather than react from memory, can only happen when time (the ego) is dissolved by awareness in the present moment.
Everyone, not just those trapped in substance addiction, is looking for security, a haven with the same values for how they perceive life and death—which can provide peace of mind. However, in too many cases, those safe havens can be just another result of our environment, similar to the ego—that seeks only its self-preservation—which separates our minds from our hearts and creates the other, the division and conflict between people, cultures, beliefs, and nations.
So, by staying aware of the conflict and division of time to witness the ever-changing nature of life happening in the present moment, intelligence arises with the understanding we are all connected by universal love that flows through each of us into the world. Still, we are on our own to discover the truth: each of us, no matter our physical or mental limitations, we are enough to be an extension of that unconditional love—before anything is added.
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