“Except for awareness, nothing changes a person, nothing at all. So don’t try to pretend. That which has not happened has not happened. Understand it, and don’t pretend, and don’t try to make others believe it has happened because nobody is going to lose in this deception except you.”[1]
The quote above is exceptionally harsh for those of us who have always thought we could only achieve our goals over extended periods of sweat and tearful effort, struggle, abstinence, and hardship; we had to selflessly pay our dues to reach happiness and the satisfaction of changing our physical abilities or mental capacities. So, it is incredibly frustrating, as one suffering from addiction, to accept the term ‘awareness’—which I didn’t fully understand—as the only means to get sober and stay sober.
Did this statement mean that all the tools that I learned while building my new Recovery plan and all the different systems and stepwise processes that have been explained to me will not keep me sober? Will staying connected to a sober community and distracting myself in endless hours of service work be enough to dissolve my cravings and keep me immunized from relapse? The sad news is working tools, plans, systems, and processes can keep me sober for extended periods. Still, until I wake up from sleepwalking through life, I will continue to be trapped in addiction, continuing to mentally suffer in sobriety without understanding how my mind works.
So, how do I wake up from my addiction to thinking that I can change my way of living just by changing my way of thinking about the way I’m living? That is the definition of addiction: trying to change the future by repeating the past, thinking I can change my past way of thinking by better applying the way I think. That’s sleepwalking, thinking you’re awake, when you’re sleeping, thinking you’re awake. Addiction is thinking in circles: it’s all crazy self-talk!
Waking up from addiction does not happen by thinking about ways to stay sober. Addiction doesn’t end when I get sober; addiction ends when I stop thinking about how to stay sober. When I no longer identify with my past addiction or the need to stay sober in the future. Addiction ends when I become aware that I am aware, and the ‘I-ego’ stuck in the illusion of psychological time—past addiction or future sobriety—disappears by being neither in the reality of the present moment. All that remains is my true Self-awareness: awareness itself.
I need to be careful in early Recovery of my true Self-discovery of awareness. My mind, the ‘I-ego’ self, has been addicted to crazy self-talk—thinking—for my entire past; that’s all it knows. So, remember, it is not always easy to stop crazy self-talk; it takes courage to let go of time, all that I know from the past, to stay aware of the constant newness of life, the reality of ‘what is’ happening in the present moment. The good news is that it doesn’t take time; it only takes self-love now to stay aware. Learning to love the self—from the past—again is true Self-Love—Now!
That is why I need the unconditional love of community to help me maintain my awareness of being aware in the present moment so I don’t get confused again in the illusion of psychological time: the duality of choice—thinking in circles of crazy self-talk—between avoiding reality in the present moment with the numbness of addiction to the past and by the deception of a better—unreal—future in sobriety, which is still addiction.
Until I can love my past self again now, I need to stay connected to the unconditional Love that I can find in my sober communities with all the tools, systems, processes, and service work I can use to discover how to end the deception of all the crazy self-talk of addiction that is my mind—created by my past. Self-love is being aware of my true nature: that Love is the life energy constantly flowing through my existence into the world. My mental suffering of desire, craving, and addiction ends when my naturally flowing love is no longer blocked by the crazy self-talk of my thinking mind trapped in psychological time—so that the mirror of the world that I create can reflect the same—Love—reality to me.
I Love you guys—stay connected!
VAB 08-26-04
©2024 stillawakening.com All Rights Reserved
[1] Osho, “Love, Freedom, Aloneness: The Koan of Relationships,” St. Martin’s Griffin, New York, 2001 by Osho International Foundation, (pg. 223).
